HISTORICAL CRIME FICTION

I have read a few historical crime fiction but can recall only the books of C.J.Sansom at present. He has written a fictional series set in 16th century England ruled by Henry the 8th. The main protagonist is a hunch backed lawyer Matthew Shardlake  and there are 6 books in the series.

Dissolution 2003
Dark fire 2004
Sovereign 2006
Revelation 2008
Heartstone 2010
Lamentation 2014
Tombland ( to be released on April 9, 2019)


I have read and loved each of these books! Hats off to this writer ! The characters are so believable. I learnt a lot about life in those days i.e. the life of ordinary people and royalty.

Since childhood, I have always wondered about life in ancient times, in India and all over the world. But the absolutely shallow social studies texts I had in school, which only focussed on names of kings, dates of deaths of kings and  dates of wars, with zero information about anything else, left me dissatisfied & ignorant. I also had a terrible memory and barely scraped through the tests! If the history lessons had some depth of information, I am sure I would have enjoyed and learnt and remembered a lot more ! The  DRY, B-O-R-I-N-G texts never gave any information about how people lived in those days, the prevalent economic system, agricultural practices, etc.  I am referring to the social studies text books  published or prescribed by the Karnataka State Government in the years 1971 to 1980. I also think that the kids who had access to Amar Chitra Katha comics probably scored more  in social studies tests than the ones who had only boring texts,  boring teachers and boring notes to rely on!
I had several questions in childhood and  I never got answers until decades later when the  internet came to India. My questions were also answered when  I  borrowed history books by British authors from the  Toronto public library.  (I learnt about Indian history in Canada...no access to books and no books in India about India! The Indian public libraries are appalling and people cannot afford to buy all the books they want to read). I am now getting information about life in India, the caste system, the superstitious beliefs, the agricultural practices by reading online things like the Karnataka Gazette, etc. There is such a wealth of documentation of all aspects of life in all parts of India, done by the British and now available online! One can also read from the British library archives online.

Some questions I had in childhood for which I never got answers from my history text books for a long time were:
(1)How did people stitch blouses for women and shirts for men? Needles were invented in the west and we were apparently wearing clothes even before the British came. So how did we stitch?
(2)Another question which bothered me was how did we know where to dig for iron, gold, diamonds, etc?
(3) I know that villagers shit and piss in the fields. But I was always curious about where the people in cities and the kings and queens especially went to shit and piss in the past centuries. This question haunted me for years of my childhood but no one knew the answers! Even with lots of 'educated' people around me,  I could not get this answer. The elders would say things like, " Why do you want to know?" or say "Indians were smart. I am sure they had some  sort of toilets".

(4)How did we know we had to melt the stuff to get metal? ( I never had any questions about diamonds as I was ignorant enough to think that the diamonds were shiny and we simply dug them out! I blame Indian movies for my ignorance.

Reading historical crime fiction by good authors makes history fun and exciting instead of dead and boring.  And C.J.Sansom is one great author!

I will add other books to this list as I recall. I know I have read a few others related to Christianity (Knights Templar) but cannot recall now.

The Far Pavilions by M.M.Kaye is a  romantic and  adventurous historical fiction set in British India I   enjoyed ! I have read it more than once though it is a huge book. I am sure all Indians who love romance, adventure and want to know about life in India in British times would enjoy this . I am saying Indians as I think Indians would be more interested than others in reading this.

I am looking forward to reading three crime fiction set in British India by Australian writer Brian Stoddart i.e.
A Madras Miasma 
The Palampur Predicament
Straits Settlement

Other books set in Pre-independence India are:
Barbara Cleverly's
The last Kashmiri rose
Ragtime in Simla
The Damascend blade
The palace tiger

Leigh Copeland's
Where Gods dwell
The body in the Bokhara

Upendra Dharmadhikari & Changali Anand
The princess in Black:An unheard story of the Mughals(2014)

George Macdonald Fraser
The (Harry Paget Flashman)Flashman series by this author are more funny adventures than crime fiction and there are 12 books in this highly acclaimed series.
The ones set in pre-independent India are
The Flashman papers book one 1969
The Flashman series book 4 Flashman and the mountain of light 1990
The Flashman papers-book 8 Flashman in the great game 1975

Rudyard Kipling:
|Kim(not sure if this would be crime fiction exactly)

Sharath Kommaraju
The crows of Agra(set in the times of Akbar, Mughal emperor of India)

Michael Kurland
The empress of India(British India)

Alun Lewis
In the green tree (some short stories are crime fiction set in British India)

Madhulika Liddle
The Englsihman's cameo
The eigth gang and other Muzaffar Jang mysteries
Engraved in stone
Crimson city

John Masters
The deceivers 1966(set in British India)
Bhowani junction 1954
The lotus and the wind 1953

Abir Mukherjee's
A rising man

Currently(fall 2015) I am reading a crime fiction set in New York of  the 1890s  called Murder on Washington Square by Victoria Thompson. I am enjoying it and it's a pleasure to know the life of people, especially women in those days. The days when women were not considered equal to men and good enough for work men did such as police work.
There is a whole lot of historical crime fiction being written all over the world and I will add to this list as I read them.
 I hope these historical crime fiction set in New York of over 200 years ago will keep me happily engaged this cold fall!

I finished Murder in Gramercy Park and I find her style of writing very similar to Georgette Heyer's. Many phrases and words to capture certain emotions are exactly the same as Georgette Heyer. I am enjoying these books as it's a pleasant way to discover New York's history..the life of the rich, the middle class and the  poor, the rich, women's lives and the challenges they faced due to society's attitudes toward them, the life of the immigrants such as the Chinese and the racism they faced, even the racism faced by Europeans such as  the Irish in New York about 100 odd years ago!
 I am sad that many of the current New Yorkers are ignorant and remain uncurious about New York's fascinating history.
The entire list of 20 crime fiction books by Victoria Thompson, set in New York of 19th century are:


Murder on Astor Place 1999

Murder at St. Mark's Place 2000
Murder on Gramercy Park 2001 Murder on Washington Square 2002 Murder on Mulberry bend 2003 Murder on Marble Row 2004 Murder on Lennox Hill 2005 Murder in Little Italy 2006 Murder in China Town 2007 Murder on Bank street 2008 Murder on Waverly Place 2009 Murder on Lexington Avenue 2010 Murder on Sister's Row 2011 Murder on 5th Avenue 2012 Murder in Chelsea 2013 Murder in Murray Hill 2014 Murder on Amsterdam Avenue 2015 Murder in Morningside Heights 2016 Murder in the Bowery 2017 Murder on Union Square 2018
Every single one of these Thompson books emphasizes the corruption in the New York City's police force of those days. I believe that today's NYPD  is not corrupt. These books give me some hope that one day, the Indian police force  too will change and be more honest.

As of now, the Indian police is a lot more corrupt than the police force depicted in the Victoria Thompson's New York of a century ago.

Victoria Thompson has written another series which is  historical and has crime and  a lady as the chief protagonist.

City of lies 2018
City of secrets 2018 


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HISTORICAL CRIME FICTION IN TV AND MOVIES

There is quite a bit of historical crime fiction movies and TV shows being aired these days. I am using historical loosely and am adding any show set even early 20th century here.

I have seen many episodes of a Canadian TV show called Murdoch mysteries set in Toronto, Ontario where I live!

It is nice but for some reason, I always find something lacking in Canadian shows when compared to American TV shows. The Canadian shows have good acting, good plots, good direction, etc but they seem so lacking in fieriness or drama and seem so understated. I like this show but if a different show was being aired at same time as this, I would go for the other show! But I do like the main character, his boss, his assistant and the lady doctor in this show.

I saw a few episodes on Netflix an Australian show called Miss Fisher's murder mysteries where a female is the main protagonist set in 1920 Melbourne, Australia. I saw a few episodes and for some reason, I cant explain, I stopped seeing it. I really cannot explain why I stopped...the acting is good, the costumes are great, the actors are nice looking and act well, yet, it din't hold my interest. Maybe, just because it's set in Australia, I could not feel like relating to it.
LA Confidential a movie set in 1950s LA is one of the best crime movies I have ever seen.




CRIME FICTION RELATED TO FINANCE

Here are a list of books whose theme was financial crime. I loved these books. Some of them are not available in the public libraries as they are 'old'.


Lawrence Sanders's Timothy Cone series
The Timothy files
Timothy's game
I love  Timothy and have read these books multiple times.  I love this guy! He is so different from the polite backstabbers of today!

I had been to the Toronto Public  Library recently and a book by Christopher Reich was kept on display right in front i.e. THE PRINCE OF RISK. Liking the blurb and the synopsis, I borrowed the book and discovered a great author! The book was fast paced and crime in the world of finance which is new to me (sort of new...I have read a long time ago, the  Lawrence Sanders's Timothy Cone series which I loved)
I read this book in the same month that (1)my friend's son joined a bank as a finance analyst and he would tell his mom, who in turn told me about his job, which seems pretty exciting(2)My friend's son recommended a movie called Margin Call , also related to finance and I saw that movie, online around the same time(3)And then I saw the Wolf of Wall street...which is also related to crime in finance!
And then I happened by pure chance to see this book and picked it up

I then went on to read other books by this guy Reich starting with his first book i.e. Numbered Account . I loved this book. This book too is about finance i.e. crime in the world of Swiss banking. I then borrowed another  book of his...I loved this one too  i.e. Rules of Betrayal...But this book is NOT about finance...it is about  terrorism, Gulf countries, Pakistan, etc. I am now reading The Devil's Banker.
 What was amazing about The Devil's Banker was the accuracy of his description of certain places in Pakistan. I have never been there but I have been to places in India, which are similar and he has got the men's attitudes towards women, exactly as it is..and the description of their unwashed bodies, stinking of sweat is real. I wonder if Reich has been to Pakistan and experienced all this. His description of an Indian villain in The rules of betrayal captures the behavior of  Chauvinistic men, with feelings of inferiority, who abound in many eastern cultures.(I am from the east and so if I sound racist, so be it..I have first hand experience of Indian men's behavior). The scene where a lady in a burka is surrounded by men and attacked by one, with the rest watching or cheering him on, is scary and unfortunately, all too.......I hope a lot of people read this book to understand the life of  Pakistani people in general and women in particular.

There is one minor error in Devil's Banker,(first line of chapter 10) where he says the Bay of Bengal is near Karachi, Pakistan. It should read Arabian sea  and not Bay of Bengal.
Thank you Christopher Reich!

Christopher Reich's

The prince of risk
Rules of Betrayal
Numbered account
Devil's banker
Rules of deception

Dick Francis's
Banker


Dick Francis has written over 50 crime novels with horse racing as a theme in all books and one other art or craft in each book. Banker is about horse racing and banking crimes.

Margin Call &  The wolf of wall street are two  movies I saw which is about financial crime. Not sure if they are book based movies. I found the wolf of wall street disgusting and it is disgusting to realize that it is based on true events! How unethical, callous, greedy, can humans get?


The book,  "The financial expert" written by R.K.Narayan is NOT crime fiction. It's a book set in a small town in south India. The life of people is refreshingly simple(compared to life today) simple and is a contrast to life today! This book is more about this financial expert, his family and the people of the town and there is a tiny bit  about finance.
Comparing this 1952 book about life in a small town in south India  to the crime fiction listed above set me thinking.


Someone should compile and review crime fiction (or any other genre) of literature  written over the years and then write about the changes in the plots over the passage of time. Just comparing books written in the 50s such as Chase's books, books written in the late 80s such as Timothy Cone's game, I see that the crimes are getting more and more sophisticated. The one constant in all these books written decades apart is  human behaviour! Human indecency has remained the same since for ever I think!

I will add to this list as I recall the ones I read. Right now, nothing more pops into my mind! adios!

In 2017 I discovered the writer Ian Hamilton and his series of crime fiction books with a female protagonist i.e. Ava Lee. Ava Lee is a forensic accountant and she 'follows the money' and thus solves crimes. But I don't know if the books can be called as 'financial crimes'.  Ava Lee's books are listed below.

• The Water Rat of Wanchai 2011
• The Disciple of Las Vegas 2011
• The Wild Beasts of Wuhan 2012
• The Red Pole of Macau 2012
• The Scottish Banker of Surabaya 2013
• The Two Sisters of Borneo 2013
• The Dragon Head of Hong Kong (novella) 2014
• The King of Shanghai2014
• The Princeling of Nanjing 2016
• The Couturier of Milan2017
• The Iman of Tawi-Tawi 2017
• The goddess of Yantai (to be published)

Why dont people "like" on Facebook?

After writing why people 'like' on Facebook, I realized there are many weird reasons why people don't click on 'like'...even when they like!


1) Most of the time people don't click on  like(at least the ones I know) when they don't feel very excited by the post.
2)When they like the post but not the person posting it!
3.)When they are angry with the person who is posting it and want to 'take him/her down a notch'
4.)When the person who's posting does not  click on like for their posting! (tit for tat)
5)A sudden attack of jealousy...Hey why I am I liking others post always and no one likes mine? I am going to stop liking others' posts until they like mine!
6)You don't want your friend to get annoyed by liking his rival's posts!
7)You are taking a break from FB and it appears to others as if you have stopped liking...but you are actually not checking your FB
8)For reasons unknown to you, the posts don't show up on your FB. (but the person posting may get hurt, without realizing the posts are not visible to you...this can lead to a lot of 'real' hurt feelings, due to this half-real, unreal network of Facebook!
9) You were liking some posts at first but now you have reached saturation point. or you dont like the stuff anymore.
10)Damn! I wish I could think of a 10th reason, simply to round off this piece!

Why do people click "like" in Facebook?

1.Because they truly and  really like the photo, video, quote or whatever
2.People   'like' not because they  'like' but because they feel obligated...
When do people feel obligated... when they feel guilty ...for example when they have forgotten to call a person or when they have had an argument and now feeling messy about it ...and many other such reasons
3.When the 'boss' puts up something, many people feel it's safer to 'like' than remain silent
4.When a person has had a huge fight with another and stopped talking...Then 'liking' something put up by the other person on Facebook is a kind of overture  to reconcile
5.People know that some people simply crave for likes! They oblige these ' like-collectors' by clicking on like, for every thing put up by these people. Sometimes they don't even bother to read or open what they have liked!
6.Sometimes, people are bored and having nothing better to do, scroll through Facebook, clicking like to posts they normally don't.
7. Some click like to things put up by a stranger, to start a dialogue and get to know the person or befriend them
8.Sometimes people like everything put up by a young person such as a child or a teen to be encouraging, like everything put up by a best friend, niece or nephew, a son or a daughter or someone they really care about.
9.Some people 'like' in order to encourage  the person who has put up the post if the person is troubled with self-doubts.  I always click on  like for anything put up by people I perceive as 'underdogs'.
10.Some people compulsively click like.
11.Some believe that they are making a difference by clicking on like. This is one lazy ass way of feeling good because you think you did something to improve the world!
12. I have liked posts and photos put up by people I have not contacted for years and years...I cant explain why. But I feel uncomfortable if I dont click on 'like'. I cant see a clear reason for this discomfort though I am trying to analyze myself.
13. When someone with a mental health issue or a person who lacks confidence, puts up, a post, many people 'like' out of compassion and to help the person feel good.






What about the psychology or the logic behind the 'likes' pressed by  'crazy people' . The reasons why a crazy person likes or not likes something on FB could be really weird and interesting. Delusions, jealousies, anger, ecstasy, love, misunderstandings and misperceptions could influence the clicking on simple 'like' button !

What is happiness?

Everyone wants to be happy and so do I . But, what is happiness? I have been thinking about happiness a lot and  find that it's  one elusive emotion to define! I can easily define and recognize  other emotions such as thrills, excitement, nervousness, relief, fear, depression, and anger . But happiness is something which I either 'rarely' experience or can't recognize it when I do.  Yet, like everyone else,  I  seem to do things because I want happiness or   avoid unhappiness.

Daily, I go through a range of emotions(and thoughts). And like most people, I try to do whatever it takes to experience pleasant emotions & avoid unpleasant emotions.

Listed below, are the pleasant emotions I feel when I engage in some activities. I wonder if  happiness is simply  another word for these emotions? or is happiness something else?

• Pleasure: when I eat something tasty like a Tobelerone chocolate or any other favorite food. But this pleasure is brief...the pleasure ceases when I have swallowed the chocolate and the taste is no longer on my tongue...so this pleasure is as brief as a few minutes. Pleasure can be got through any of the 5 sensory routes...taste, touch, smell, hearing and vision. Yet, happiness is more complex than what we experience through our 5 senses. The touch of a massage is pleasurable; the smell of aromas we like is pleasurable; Listening to music we enjoy is pleasurable; seeing a lovely scene can be pleasurable.
• Mild pleasure: smelling rain on earth, any pleasant smell like flowers or perfumes you like. This too is brief and after a couple of minutes, I either stop feeling that pleasure or my attention is not on the fragrance anymore.
• Laughter & smiles: when I make a joke or hear one, when I watch funny stuff on TV or read funny stuff or a witty conversation. Here the sense of joy is much longer and the wittier and longer the show/book/whatever, the longer the duration of laughter/happiness. Recalling and retelling the jokes of the show later brings about the same elevation of mood as when I was watching the show. Here the sense of joy lasts for half hour or an hour and the happiness can be re-experienced by the memories. (Recalling the taste of the sweet does not create the same  pleasure/happiness as when actually having the sweet sitting on the tongue)
• A physical kinesthetic sense of pleasure: a.while coming down when on the giant wheel...this again lasts for 3-4 seconds. b.Being on a swing.c.Being jolted when sitting at the back of the bus travelling on a bumpy road...some hate this jolting but I love it! d. watching a movie where the plane swoops fast and your eyes are following and you feel dizzy (like in the 2018 movie black panther).e. any of those rides for adults in places like Disney land, Canada's wonderland, etc.
• Thrills, excitement & an adrenalin rush: when reading a crime fiction book or watching an exciting TV show/movie especially when at an exciting junction. Here the emotions of thrill, etc. last for the duration of the book reading and may last for many hours. The thrills wax and wane depending on whether the part of the book being read is exciting or not.
• Relief: When I have been holding my urine or poop for ages and finally reach a "decent" toilet! The feeling of relief is exquisite! This can last for up to a minute or more. Or when I have been working for hours and finally get to bed...that moment when I get to lie on the bed, flat on my back is wonderful! Other mildly pleasurable reliefs are : when you sneeze and the tickle in your nose stops, untying your tightly braided hair and vigorously rubbing your scalp, picking at dried scabs, ...finally getting to remove the edge of your finger-nail which has been painfully growing into the nail bed with a nail cutter and rubbing the sore spot, etc. This list of 'relief-giving' things may look ridiculous to some. But I find these experiences note-worthy! 
•  Physically pleasant sensations for which I cant find  descriptive words: 1.Scratching when it feels itchy or 2. getting a good massage when a muscle is hurting. That feeling is so great! I can get a massage for ever and a day! 3.The pleasurable pain of digging a nail deep into a painful swelling(swelling caused by an insect bite) on skin is another great sensation.    The relief I experience when I scratch and itch or massage away a pain is a sort of happiness maybe. 4.when something, weightless and light, touches my skin, like a feather or thread, I love that sensation too. But I can't find a word to express what that feeling is!. The emotion/feeling last for the duration of the experience i.e. many seconds or minutes. 5. Tickles...but I don't think tickles are 100% pleasurable as I start screaming for the person to stop tickling! Maybe some things like tickles are a pleasure, only if limited. Could  the tickles and sensation when the thread touches my skin be tactile pleasure?
• The emotion I experience which is a combination of Pride, excitement & joy: When I win a prize or praise especially from someone 'high-up' or from someone who rarely praises. This feeling lasts for many seconds at first and maybe a few minutes. This emotion can come and go depending on how often I recall the moment of  achievement or winning the prize/praise, etc.
• A sense of achievement and satisfaction: when I have completed some creative task or finished some difficult job. When someone thanks me for my help or praises my cooking while eating. This sense of achievement and satisfaction too is for a few seconds, but can be experienced again and again when I recall it.
• Sense of purpose: I am not sure if this is an emotion or an 'aim' or a thought. But this is very very important for us humans to carry on with our lives. I experience this sense of purpose when I am helping someone and it is intensely satisfying! I have helped my family a great deal financially and otherwise. I have helped family, friends and clients with psychological counseling and it has made a big difference in some of their lives and given me great satisfaction.

 I think having a purpose in life is the one vital element which prevents a depressed person from attempting suicide. 

Sense of purpose makes life meaningful for adults . Life is difficult to continue when we don't feel a purpose. {one reason rich people should not make too much money and property for their kids is that the wealth will rob the children of the drive to strive; they may become bored as they have everything and there is no-need to struggle or work for anything i.e. no purpose in life...then they may slip into naughty stuff like drugs for thrills and to avoid boredom}

Sense of purpose is different from and superior to other emotions because, it is something which keeps me striving, even when I am experiencing difficulties.

Sense of purpose is one thing which makes people  sacrifice things which make them happy or do things which they find painful or boring or dangerous.

 I am trying to analyze if sense of purpose is an emotion but it does not feel like one. It seems to be a combination of thought, ambition and efforts. But since all human action is to attain emotional satisfaction, I am trying to figure out what is the emotion I am aiming for through sense of purpose. I think the emotion I experience is a combination of sense of satisfaction and avoiding the experience of guilt (feeling guilty because  I am 'only enjoying' my life and not 'achieving' something). I am not able to pinpoint the precise moment when I experience this emotion of satisfaction. Maybe at the moment of a milestone such as completion of a task or someone I helped reaching a stage of recovery...it's difficult to say when I experience the emotion, how long it lasts, is this emotion ever experienced at the conscious level or not...it is difficult to identify, pinpoint, define, label and  measure! (The west has this great need to label and measure every single thing, even those which cannot be such as poetry....and I am trying to do the same here!)

• Enjoyment: The state of enjoyment I experience  is longer than other emotions and sensations mentioned above; however  the intensity of enjoyment  is not 'consistently' high all through the activity. Some activities I enjoy are: spending time with a few friends(by my choice),eating favorite foods, sleeping especially when I have had a long hard day, reading a book I really like, watching a TV show or movie I really like, travelling on a vacation, meeting and  playing some games either alone or with people, penning down a great idea which flashed to me. This sense of enjoyment lasts for the duration of the activity. But it is tricky in some ways. I eat fast when I love the food and try as I might, I simply can't slow down to make the enjoyment last longer! Similarly, when I read a good book, I race through and cant slow down to prolong the pleasure.
• Feeling good: This emotion is felt when I look in the mirror and like what I see. I also feel good when complimented either with words or looks by strangers or friends.  I feel good and happy when someone talks well of my relatives or friends. If I analyze 'feeling good' I think it's a combination of pleasure, pride and joy. Feeling good too is something which lasts for a matter of seconds. I am not going to have the image of myself looking good, for the entire day and feel happy the entire day! My attention will be diverted to many other things the entire day and so I  feel good when I pass a mirror..i.e. for a few seconds. My comment to men and women who work so hard to buy expensive stuff is this...whether you own a million dollar pair of emerald earrings or a cheap pair of green glass earrings, the happiness you experience when you wear them is momentary. So, is it worth, the trouble, to struggle so hard for such a momentary feeling of happiness?
• Joy: when I am waiting for someone and they arrive. I feel such a joy when I see them and then the emotion subsides. This is what I mean by saying that happiness is elusive. With the exception of 'enjoyment', all of the above mentioned pleasant emotions last for seconds or perhaps a minute. I don't experience these emotions for several minutes or hours at a time.
• Feeling 'relaxed' or feeling a 'pleasant buzz": A few minutes after a tea spoon of codeine, I feel pleasantly dizzy, my mind is calm, I experience zero anxiety or sadness; there are neither happy nor sad nor neutral  thoughts racing through  my mind ...instead I am able to focus on the activity I am engaged in completely. I am not a codeine addict yet but it felt great when I had the sore throat and  had to take this codeine!
• Excited anticipation and wait: This is one of the most pleasurable states to be in! When one is waiting for something good, one's mind is in a pleasant, excited state. I have experienced this many times but not as often as I would like! Waiting for the summer holidays or Dusseera holidays when I was in school was one fantastic mood elevator! Waiting for a letter from a friend who has promised to write is another. Waiting for my birthday and the presents especially in my childhood was another pleasurable wait. Similarly waiting for things I have bought on Ebay to arrive, books I have ordered in the library, friends from distant places, cousins from another country. The rich people miss the pleasure of getting something after a long wait. I think I have brought up this issue in another article in this blog(the pleasure of poverty). Sometimes, the  excitement of waiting is more pleasurable than the happiness one feels when the object arrives. It's like the hunter...the hunt is more exciting than after the animal is caught. The pleasure
• Brain numbness through addictive games: There was a time when I played 2 card games on the computer for hours and hours ! Solitaire and free cell.  The games were a time consuming, brain numbing addiction! When I try to recall and explore, the emotions I experienced when playing these games,  I cant find any emotion at all...not pleasure, not happiness, nothing. Yet I played these games, hour upon hour and the only emotion I can recall is feeling irritated if called away from the game before I was ready to stop. There was no 'jump of joy' if I won; there was no anger if I din't. I simply kept on playing and playing and playing. I wish I could label the emotion I had when I played these addictive games;What do you call the empty calm, non-emotion state as you play a game repetitively feeling nothing at the end of the game..winning or losing has no effect on the emotions experienced. you simply start playing again at the end of the game?
• Many of these emotions disappear, when I stop to 'analyze' or think about or understand the emotion I am experiencing at the moment. As you all know, emotions cease when thinking starts and vice versa. Rarely can one  feel and think at the same time.

Below are other pleasant emotions I have experienced; However, they are emotions which didn’t strike me as I was writing the article… I got the emotions below by googling ‘pleasant emotions’ after I finished writing the above

• Curiosity: When I see something amazing which I don't understand, my curiosity is piqued and I enjoy the process of hunting for the answer. It may be a sense of marvel and wonder when I see a magic show or some miraculous thing I don't understand. Joy, amazement and wonder mixed with awe and curiosity is experienced when I see someone do something exceedingly well or exceedingly fast...Like when I see my husband make Bisibelebath in the time I take simply to wash the coriander leaves!

• Admiration: I have experienced this when I see skilled people at work. I have admired and longed to watch forever a psychiatrist interview a patient! This psychiatrist is so respectful and humble and sweet that the patients love him and talk freely and it is such a joy to watch this guy! The joy of knowing and interacting with a fantastic person who is not only highly intelligent and skilled and humble is such a fantastic happiness. This happiness is wonderful as such people are as rare as the Kohinoor!
• Joyful learning: I have had the great good luck to have had amazingly good teachers. It was a joy to sit in their classes. I loved their classes so much that I would not miss their classes even when I was sick. This joy was the joy of learning, hero-worship, love and admiration. I had these amazingly good teachers who loved their subject(English and psychology lecturers), who were fantastic teachers and great human beings. Their classes were something I never wanted to end.
• Love, tenderness, laughter, wanting to protect, playfulness: This combination of emotions I feel when with babies or pets. This too is a great feeling and I can play with a pet for as long as it wants to without feeling bored or wanting to stop. Wanting to protect is something I feel with regard to all of my family members, close friends, pets of course, random babies, children, etc.
• Relaxation: I feel this when I get to sit and stretch my legs  after a long walk, when I wake on a Sunday morning, knowing that  I don't have to get out of bed. This too is a great feeling but it does reach a saturation point.
• Satisfaction: When I got good marks with the remark, 'good' in red ink on my school tests! When I taste what I have cooked and it's good. When I wrote a great skit and read it.
• Thrill of the chase(similar to excited anticipation and wait listed earlier) This is a low-key prolonged sense of joy and thrill and pleasure when ends when the object I was hunting for is found. The joy of owning the object is so brief, it's sad! I experienced this when I was buying used books for my collection, searching for old coins and stamps, bird nests, rocks, antique brass and copper vessels and whatever else I collected over the years. I had this nice feeling when I was roaming in various areas of Bangalore  looking for used books, when I was in my village searching for birds nests such as the weaverbirds nests, hunting for unusual rocks in villages, by the sea and rivers, etc. I also experienced this when I went to used book stores and thrift stores in Toronto. I experienced fantastic thrills when I was bidding on a set of books on Ebay! I have now realized that the thrill of the chase is a greater happiness and the pleasure of the chase lasts much much longer than  the happiness of actually finding the desired object. Even if the chase is long, the thrill never wanes for me. The thrill of the chase is greater than getting the object of the chase for me; I have searched for books on the internet, shops and other places. But once I get the book I don't read it for quite a while! Why the heck did I chase it for so long if I am not going to read it? I think the chase was satisfying and once I get it, I tell myself, now that I have it, I can read it any time...I needn't read it right now.

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Paradoxical emotions: Paradoxical emotions is feeling the opposite of what one should logically feel. For example, one should feel happy when one gets a job. One should feel happy if one is getting married. But paradoxically, I felt  stressed  at the time I started work after getting the job and  stressed before the wedding. I felt  relief  along with  some happiness after the events. I may have felt  satisfaction but at a much later time! I wonder if others feel the same as me.

 I feel a lot more of pure happiness and satisfaction about small things. But anything big, the stress while doing is more than the satisfaction after completion, even if the job gets done.

Below are a few other positive emotions, akin to happiness I have experienced at various times.

• Quiet joy: Good memories bring a quiet joy to my mind.
• Feeling energized: I get this when a vacation is decided. On a vacation, I am bursting with energy, even if I have not eaten for many hours! I simply can't understand where I get my energy from when I am on a holiday, roaming around some foreign city.

I get this sense of energy when I am window shopping or looking in a used book store or antiques store!

• Orgasm:  There is no 'emotion' word for the intense physical pleasure during orgasm. It's brief, intense and great.
• Peace: I don't know if I ever experienced peace after a positive event. I seem to experience peace after a fight has been successfully resolved between family members. I wish I could experience peace without peace being the outcome of resolution of a conflict.
• Hope: I am not sure if it is a positive emotion for me or a mixed one. This is because I am pretty pessimistic and when I feel hope, I also feel hopelessness and that things will not work out! Due to my intense pessimism, I vacillate rapidly between hope and hopelessness and so this is not a purely  positive  experience.(I picked hope from Dr.Fredrickton's list on the internet)
• Gratitude: I have felt this many many times when I have received help from various people. I have also felt pleased when people expressed gratitude to me.
• Freedom: I felt this when I passed out of a department with a very controlling HOD, got out of a family with a very controlling head and got out of a job with a very controlling & bossy boss. I felt relieved and enjoyed my freedom after my exit, but I don't remember feeling elated or ecstatic....I think it took me a lot of time to recover from the negative emotions which had piled up during the unfree phase and it took time for me to 'stop being wary' and start enjoying the freedom. (I picked freedom from a list on the internet and did not come up with this emotion myself)
• Interest: I have felt interest often and this goes with curiosity. (I took this emotion off a list of emotions on the internet).
• Spirituality: I cannot really describe what I experience when I pray. My daily or almost daily morning prayer is nothing but asking God(I read out a list of God's names) and ask them to bless me and my family and friends( I read out a list of names of family and friends too). I notice a definite reduction in anxiety or anxiety type feelings and feel calm and sort of have the belief that all my family and friends will be safe and problem free; this emotion of calmness lasts for a few minutes/seconds after my prayers. Then I am engaged in  whatever activity after my prayers and I am neither anxious or happy or whatever. On the days I miss saying my prayer, but I am aware that I didn't  pray, I have a few seconds or minutes of uneasiness but this vanishes as my mind gets busy with some other thoughts or work. Sometimes I think my praying is simply an anxiety reduction activity and not really one which makes me experience joy or spirituality or any of those 'better' emotions. It would be nice if I could get something more out of my prayers emotionally.

Nostalgia: This is one emotion I forgot to add. I love to indulge in this mood or emotion or thoughts or whatever...I feel nostalgic when I see or recall things form my childhood and even recent past. It's hard to describe this nostalgic feeling...I have experienced it often but how to describe it(without looking at google). It's a warm feeling of joy at happy memories and wish I could have the same experience again, now...but things have changed and so even if the same event/experience is repeated,  I doubt if the same feeling can be experienced. Because I have changed, things have changed. Maybe for food items, I can get the same joy now. But for movies I can't get the same emotion. For example, I ate the Thombittu my husband got from my mother from India yesterday(14th March 2018) with hot milk and ripe banana and loved it! It was just like eating Thombittu on Shivratri for Phalahara. The taste was such pure pleasure for me and nostalgia of course!

But when I tried to see a favorite movie of my childhood days i.e. Marocharitra(Telgu), I could not bear to sit through it for even half hour! I have changed so much!

So many things bring Nostalgia in me...each visit to India and roaming the streets of Gandhi Baazar, Malleshwaram, Yeshwantpur Santhe, city market and avenue road, etc.  Certain books (Enid Blyton books)make me feel nostalgic but I can't read them anymore as my attention wanders. 

Nostalgia is an amazing emotion. it's gentle, it makes you feel a little sad that the days are over and no longer can you experience those days and events. I want the simplicity of the life of the 70s. I want the quietness of Bangalore, the less population, I don't even mind the hardships of life of those days as we had less money and less amenities. 

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 Yet, we humans labour so much and so long  for these exceedingly brief moments of happiness.

Why am I writing this? Why am I analyzing what I feel?

Recently, I have asked myself whether I am happy or depressed? Thinking about my feelings, I discovered a few things about myself.

 One. When I am awake/conscious, my mind is never blank. It has a thought or more likely a stream of thoughts or an emotion. Like most people, I find it impossible to be both  conscious and  without any thought in my head.

Two. Often, I seem to fill my mind with thoughts, simply to keep out worries. My mind seems to be an empty space which HAS to be filled... if left vacant, worries will fill up the space. So I have to make a conscious effort to fill it with neutral or positive things.

Three: Most of the time, I am either 'neutral' emotionally or experiencing 'negative emotions' such as anxiety or worry, sometimes, anger, sadness, frustration, jealousy, irritation. The positive emotions mentioned in this article seem to last for a few seconds at a time, a few times per day. I am sort of shocked and sad that no-emotion or negative emotions are filling up most of the time in my mind! Do all others feel like me or am I inclined to depression?

Four: Should I do something to reduce my negative emotions?

Five: I have come to the idea that true and pure happiness can be experienced only by children below the age of five or six. They can be experience pure happiness because they are as yet ignorant of the world. They are in the 'here and now' and if the here and now has what they want i.e. playmates, toys, good food, they can be totally involved in the activity and enjoy. However adults, are aware that unhappy things are happening in the world and to be happy, they have to block out the world and enjoy whatever is making them happy at the time; later they go back to remembering all the unhappy things happening  in the world. For example, how can I be happy knowing that my friend is struggling without money or my sister is having a tough time at work or my aunt is having health issues? These thoughts may not be on the forefront but are definitely in my mind and memory all-the-time. Ergo, happiness, for me, is an extremely brief period of time, probably lasting seconds,  when I  forget  the problems of the world to enjoy whatever joke-I-am-listening or chocolate-I-am-eating. I don't think I can be 'fully' or 'truly' happy, knowing that there is so much suffering in the world.

Maybe this is what comes close to happiness for me :

(a)when my attention is fully focussed on some enjoyable activity, so engaged that I am oblivious to all else. 

(b)those brief periods of time, I am able to successfully block out worries about my families and friends current problems such as worry about a close relative's unemployment, another's financial problems, my own problems at work, etc.  The stream of consciousness, for some reason, has zero negative thoughts for several seconds to a few minutes at a time and it is this period that I am labeling as happiness!

(c)The emptiness or calmness I feel for a few seconds after my morning prayers. ( I don't mean emptiness in a negative way, I mean empty as in absence of any thoughts or emotions). My prayer is a single sentence (Devare-kapadappa...)  in which I ask a whole list of Gods(including the scary Shani... I dont dare miss his name out of my list!) to bless me and a whole list of family and friends.

Since the last few years, I have stopped reading newspapers online and otherwise, simply because they triggered so much of sadness and anger and frustration in me. The news about animals and children and women are especially disturbing to me. I have reduced the triggers of my sadness by avoiding news but the increase in my happiness is not much.

Six: I have had my share of blessings or maybe greater than most people's share. Yet, I wonder why I am not as happier than I am at present. I have a great husband, a great job, lots of good friends and a wonderful family, no health issues, no money problems. I have a few hobbies. I have a lovely pet. I enjoy some activities.

 I am now wondering, what is the source of continuous happiness? As mentioned earlier, I experience daily, these brief moments of happiness...when the taste of the food is on the tongue, when reading a book, when talking to friends and so on. But I wonder

 if I can be happy without a cause i.e. happy for no reason?

 Can I be happy, even if I don't have what I want?

Can I be happy, even if there is misery in the world?

 Can I be happy, even when my family and friends are suffering?

Can I be happy, even if I am suffering or in want?

Can I be happy, even if my mind is blank i.e. no thoughts, no ideas?

 Is it crazy to be happy without reason? or is it  Moksha?

If I ever reach a stage of 'prolonged happiness' will I then slip from  this 'state of happiness'  into 'boredom', simply because my human mind reaches saturation point for happiness?

Happiness is also 99.9% of the time, 'tainted'.  I am not sure if tainted is the word I am looking for but I will give a few examples to explain what I mean. I am happy that I won the slogan writing competition but not fully happy as my best friend did not also win; I am happy I got the job but my happiness is sort of tainted because   the guy with 2 kids to support, who took the interview with me dint get the job. 

Reading this article, I discovered three things about myself

(1) I am a  neurotic ...with some symptoms of anxiety & depression.

 (2) I want the impossible in order to be happy...I want Utopia; I won't get it; so I will remain unhappy.(3)I may never be happy...because I want 'other' people to change for me to be happy; I want 'things' all over the world to change for me to be happy...for example I want a complete end of trapping, hunting, poaching, fishing,etc for me to feel happy or to  'stop worrying about animals' sufferings'.

(4) I am not generating  happiness by my actions; instead I am depending on others making changes or circumstances changing for me to be happy...and that will not happen in a million years!  ergo...I am doomed to unhappiness !

Or I change and I actively seek  the best ways to be happy.

A major reason for exploring the theme of happiness is that I feel so enraged when I read news about crimes such as robbery, murder, rape, fraud, etc. When happiness is so elusive, but pain is so long lasting, why the hell do people hurt others...is the so called 'happiness' the perpetrator experiences, worth causing so much pain for the victim ?Pain which is so long lasting to the victim, but the act gives the perpetrator only momentary pleasure? That is one un-understandable thing for me! Take rape for example...whatever pleasure the rapist gets is so brief...but the pain he/she causes the victim is so severe and damaging and permanent with ripple effect affecting others. So why does the rapist commit this act when he can get only a brief  moment of evil joy ?

What triggered me to write this piece?

I have been meaning to write about happiness since many months. But a major trigger was the killing of elephants for their tusks. I know this sounds like an awful and really weird reason to write about happiness.  But let me explain. I HATE HATE HATE the poaching of wild animals for their skin, ivory or whatever. Humans have populated the world and taken over the entire planet, which ought to be shared with all the species. We are putting all other animals, birds, insects, plants and trees to unimaginable suffering by looting this planet. And when I saw elephants, those glorious giants being killed for their tusks I cried with shame and grief. I asked myself, why do people want that ivory? What kind of happiness do you get by owning that ivory when you have caused immense pain not just to the one animal whose tusks you stole but to it's entire family?

So you got the tusk? Now are you happy? No. The tusk is carved into some ornament or statue and it looks beautiful but how long does it's beauty give you happiness? Until your interest in this ivory wanes and moves over to the next item of desire. The ivory statue may be beautiful forever. But you are not going to be happy forever. You get bored and your mind wanders and u want something else. Your mind wants something else to be happy now. So, for the few moments of joy you get by looking at a beautiful object, you killed a great and gentle animal?  

This makes me burn. Why do people kill and torture animals and birds? Why do they trap them through cruel snares and put them to intense pain and torture? The happiness you get is disproportionately brief to the pain you put the animals through. Why cant you simply give up those few moments of  pleasure of enjoying the beauty of their ivories or skins or feathers?

I know people get a lot of joy and pride by 'owning' these things. The rarer the thing they own, greater their joy and pride. 

Why cant they tell themselves, " I am but a traveller on earth, here today and gone tomorrow. For this brief journey, why do I want to own things? Why cant I enjoy the things without this need to own them? I am not able to take it with me when I die. I cant own anything forever. Why do I kill and hurt to enjoy the brief pleasure of ownership? 

• I HATE THE RICH WHO FEEL THE NEED TO OWN THE IVORY OF ELEPHANTS, TIGER SKINS, LEOPARD SKIN SKIRTS, CROCODILE SKIN SHOES, BEAR CLAWS AND SO ON.
• I read that a lot of this stuff is going to the rich people in China. the killing of animals in Asia and Africa is due to demand of rich Chinese and of course impotent Chinese men who think that eating the powdered horn of the Rhinoceros would make them virile.
• I pray that people all over the world understand that animals and birds deserve to lead a life in peace and without being tortured and killed. Their skin or ivory contributes very little for your happiness. You should seek happiness WITHIN yourself. 

• YOU WILL NOT FIND YOUR HAPPINESS  IN SOME POOR ELEPHANT'S TUSKS.
• YOU CAN FIND HAPPINESS ONLY IN YOURSELF

 

Honesty and Friendship… disappearing virtues...casualties of the 21st century?

Honesty and Friendship… disappearing virtues in India…maybe in the rest of the world too!

 

Having decided to buy a house in Bangalore, I contacted my husband’s close friend, a real estate dealer and am currently in the process of buying. When I shared this information with two colleagues, who are also from India, both commented I was lucky to have someone I trusted to take care of the purchase. They commented that they would have invested in India if only they had someone whom they could trust to take care of their purchases. We then chatted about the horror stories we knew of NRIs investing in India who had been duped by their own kith and kin or friends whom they trusted. Some had been duped by close family members or friends, some had been duped by the very lawyers they had hired and many had been duped by the real estate agents.

I realized, how precious and how rare were the fast disappearing virtues of honesty and friendship.{I know many honest people; I also have several really good friends.  And of course, all my friends are honest.} I am so damn lucky to have a friend who is called “Karna” in his circles because of the way he cares for his friends, and he, unlike many Indians is scrupulously honest in all his dealings plus he's in real estate!

To find a person/real estate agent, in India especially, who's both honest and  dedicated is nearly impossible! On my part, I am paying my friend/real estate agent his full commission and I am not exploiting him. Truth be told, there are several real estate dealers who take their commissions and yet do a shoddy job or outright cheat their clients. But thanks to my fantastic luck, I have this great friend/realtor buying a house for me and I have complete peace of mind during the process! As this process is going on, I am marvelling at this person's friendship,honesty & dedication and shocked that I cannot find a single other person to fill his shoes, were he to be absent! He belongs to the rare breed of honest men who are becoming extinct in India and maybe in the world!

When I see the children and people of today, I feel depressed about the absence of friendships in their lives. Trust is disappearing day by day, people are becoming wary, & judgemental and it’s rare to see healthy friendships between people or even between children.
Some children have  toxic parents who caution their children not to befriend children because of their caste, poor performance in school or for ‘playing too much’. In high school, feelings of inferiority seem to set into a few children and they avoid friendships. Parents try to break friendships as they think it interferes with ‘studies’. How the hell will a child develop social skills if he has to focus on studies to the exclusion of all interactions with people. Parents actively discourage their children being friends with kids who don’t study well, who have any sort of a handicap and this is unpardonable. I have also noted with disgust, a few parents who encourage their children to be friends with children of ‘well-connected parents’ as it will be ‘useful’. Seeing all this, I wonder if friendship will die out altogether in this increasingly toxic-competitive  and paranoid world.

In colleges, especially in professional courses, there are a few health friendships but also a lot of invisible psychological damage caused by competition between the students. I have seen friends who were bitterly hurt when a friend whom they considered as ‘best friend’ kept secrets from them…secrets such as applying for GRE or a job or whatever.

I have worked only in two places in India and I am grateful to God that I had great friendships with my colleagues.  We shared our joys and sorrows, we were open about our thoughts and had arguments and did not carry grudges or talk behind backs. This great camaraderie may have had to do with our personalities and also the fact that we were not competing with each other. In today’s private sector, such as the software companies of Bangalore, it is impossible for friendships to thrive…the office atmosphere seems to be non-conducive to building friendships.  In some cases the competition is cut-throat and there is neither friendship nor ethical decent behaviours in some of these places.

I wonder if a day will come when joyful friendships exist only between humans and their individual pets; between the children who are in day-care/kindergarten i.e. children who have not yet lost their innocence, children who have not yet  become too competitive  to feel friendship, children who are still too young to mistrust and children who are young enough to enjoy friendships.

The one absolutely positive development in urban India over the last decade I have seen is the growing interaction between boys and girls of teenage and above. About 40 years ago when I was a child, boys and girls did not speak to each other; a girl would be teased if she spoke to a boy and a boy would be teased if he spoke to a girl. Now there is a wonderful change where boys and girls interact with each other with ease. They travel together, eat out, visit each others houses, etc. Even platonic relationships between boys and girls was discouraged by parents and by society in the past. Romantic relationships between boys and girls were a definite no-no in the ‘olden days’. However, now parents in urban India are tolerating friendships of their children with the opposite sex. Now I see lots of young boys and girls who have fantastic friendships and are simply thriving!

I will next write about what I think are the factors that foster and factors that damage friendships.

Why to stop buying books

Space Space Space...books occupy space. and with the increase in population and decrease in size of homes, space is becoming precious and books, if hoarded, simply take over precious space. If you can get a e-book reader like Kobe or Kindle or download books on your computer, you would save lots of space, cost of bookshelves, time and effort spent in dusting the books, save on the trouble of keeping them safe from silverfish, dampness and borrowers who don't return.


People move a few times over their life and moving books one has hoarded becomes a problem. Especially if one is moving long distance or into a smaller space with less space for book storage.


One of the most important reasons for not buying books is that books become outdated. Textbooks, encyclopaedias, dictionaries all become outdated so fast these days due to the constant influx of new information due to new research, findings and discoveries. Books cost a lot of money and once you buy a book, believe me, it's value has depleted by more than half. If you can get the information online or from a library, do that.


One of the main reasons we bought books in the past was for INFORMATION; For example, most middle class houses in the 70s in Bangalore had a dictionary, an atlas and some rich people had encyclopaedias. Now the  information these books gave us is available on the internet and also it's  constantly updated information. Hence these sort of 'information books' have become redundant. Whatever information, one wants, one can get it on the internet. I do know that in-depth information is not available on the internet for free but a lot of information is available.


Some of us buy books we love as we believe we will read them over and over again or we simply want to possess it as we love those books. I have bought a few books for these reasons. But I have discovered that I am constantly reading new books and though I have the books I love, I hardly seem to have time to reread them. Today, there is also the constant demands on my time by the new TV shows. Between TV shows, books, work, home upkeep & travel I have zero time for rereading old books. They are simply sitting in my basement and now I have to dry them out as my basement got flooded!


Saving/buying books for the next generation or for someone 'else' I realized is a no-no. My sister bought the books she loved in her childhood for her kids but they prefer the books of today! She bought them Enid Blyton but they like the Harry Potter and Diary of a wimpy kid series and the Blyton books she paid a fortune for, are simply gathering dut in her home, unread! If you buy books(or anything) buy for yourself; don't buy for others because you love them and you expect they will love it too.(I find giving cash as a gift is the best as the recipient gets the freedom to get what he/she likes).
 I have seen one insane parent spending a fortune he does not have (he takes loans) to buy Kannada  books  for his grandchildren who read only English! He wants them to read Kannada but they are not interested and he does not back down! Similarly I have seen parents buy books (or items they love) for their kids and try compelling the kids to read/use them ! We want our kids to enjoy what we did and we simply don't accept that tastes have changed, times have changed and even if it's a classic, it is not the same...experiencing a book today is a different experience from reading the same book 30 years ago. Only a few novels are timeless; most novels are enjoyable in a certain time and context; times and contexts change and the books do not have the same effect years later on a different set of readers. Here is an example: I loved the novel 'Painter of signs' by R.K.Narayan when I read it maybe 35 years ago when it was published in the Illustrated weekly of India(serial form). I bought the novel recently to reread and I found the main character so lame and annoying! The book has not changed but I have changed so much! My values have changed and now, I simply cant stand the painter i.e. the chief character in the book!


I believe people buy books, though they don't need, for reasons such as their inability to change; they were buying books before the internet, Kobe & Kindle came and they are unable to adapt to these new entries into the world. People may also buy to help authors  and the book industry but  people with this particular motive for buying are few in number. People may also be buying books as they get a sense of security but that is a sheer waste of money! ( I have seen a friend buy books, 'to read when she retires'. She has access to reading these books free of cost from the Toronto public library but she's buying books regardless.(she's also not well placed financially)


So, I believe, people buying books in today's world should examine why they are buying books...Buying books (or DVDs, CDs, etc) may be due to a psychological problem and the problem should be fixed; buying books is not going to fix the problem!


There are many places where the libraries are not good and the only option is for people to buy books. In countries like India for example. So I suppose buying books in such places is okay. (India has the internet and e-readers but people prefer to buy the books second hand which is cheaper than pay in dollars to download into their e-readers...I think). Many books in Indian languages are not available online and so one has to buy those books I suppose.

CRIME FICTION SET IN NIGERIA

I tried reading the crime fiction novel by a Canadian writer, Will Ferguson set in Nigeria (and a bit in Canada). The novel is called 419 and it deals with the internet scams originating from Nigeria.

I started this book partly because I am now into crime fiction from various parts of the world and mostly because I have myself received a few of these scamming emails! The emails read something like this...I am having a lot of money and I need help to move it out of my country...blah...blah...blah.
(Believe it or not, I know of 'educated' people with double degrees who have fallen for these scams!

I did not finish reading this book as I found it too slow for my taste. It is a bestseller in Canada and it must be good, but it's not my type

Another book set in Nigeria is An African affair by Nina Darnton. It's written by a journalist and not a novelist and  she  narrates the ongoing events in a style which is not appealing to me.
However one does get a glimpse of Nigeria as she has described cities, a bit of villages, the daily life of ordinary people and the politics. It is through novels by journalists like this one, that I am discovering the dirty role played in the underdeveloped countries by western 'democracies' and the companies from the developed countries. 
One paragraph in this book, about Lagos a major city in Nigeria, certainly applies to the Bangalore of 2013, I visited. I have typed the part of the para here
.....As we kept driving, the houses got bigger and nicer, but the smell never changed and the garbage mounds were just as high....

When will the Karnataka politicians find a permanent eco-friendly solution to the growing garbage problem in Bangalore! Your home in Bangalore may be luxurious and cost over a 300,000 US$ but you will still find stinking garbage right outside your house, you will still face water shortage and power outages. Indian politicians boast that the Indian economy is booming and Bangalore is a silicone valley...yet, people have to live in filth!
Now in 2015, I don't know if the Bangalore garbage-disposal situation has improved but I doubt it.

Two other crime fiction set in Nigeria I enjoyed reading are by Leye Adenle that is 

Easy motion tourist and
When trouble sleeps. 
It has a female protagonist and I enjoyed learning about the Nigerian underbelly, life in Nigeria, especially the rich people's life style and nature of crimes. Both books are in toronto public library.



A book called Americanah by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the best books I have read in over a year! Incidentally, this book is not crime fiction.  This writer has such an accurate  perception of people, honesty  and is a gifted writer! Another great book by her is Purple Hibiscus. It is her first book and we discover the life of Nigerians during a military coup in the country. Domestic tyrants have always  disturbed me due to the vulnerability of their victims...women and children. In this book, is a terrible domestic tyrant and his victims all of who seem so real, one wonders, who the characters are based on!
When people move from one place/country to another their perception of the old place and people is altered by the experiences of their life in the new place. Adichie has written about her fellow country men and women with her new perception.  This is something a lot of people can relate to.

If you are going to read only book this year, you should choose to read this fantastic book. Other books by Adichie are Half a yellow sun and The thing around your neck.  

CRIME FICTION SET IN KENYA

I have read two crime fiction books set in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya by Ngugi Mukoma Wa. The books are:

Nairobi heat  
Black star Nairobi 

 Learning about the places in Africa though crime fiction novels is certainly entertaining and not boring like the history texts I had in school!