Abhishek Sundararajan

There is this creature in the house.

Article: Gandhi and Liberal Modernity Great essay on Gandhi, which positions his stance on caste as not mere sentimentality or conservatism, but deeply thought response to liberal capitalism.

Non-functional Requirements CAP: When a network partition occurs, do you choose availability or consistency?

The first time I saw The Killer, I was not particularly impressed.

Note: This is an attempt at fiction.

Book: Playful Parenting Author: Lawrence Cohen One of Maria Montessori's organizing principles was this: “In the life of the child, play is perhaps something of little importance which he undertakes for the lack of something better to do.”

Book: Life of Sri Ramanuja Author: Swami Ramakrishnananda, translated by Swami Budhananda This was a throwback to the books I read as a child, the stories one is told before the disenchantment sets in.

Book: Pronto Author: Elmore Leonard I did not want to read more Elmore Leonard, but I came across a deal and the first few lines made this one a no-brainer.

Book: The Joys of Compounding Author: Gautham Baid Summary Firmly embedded in the landscape of Munger literature, in the tradition of Peter Bevelin and Guy Spier.

Book: Out Of Sight: A Novel Author: Elmore Leonard I knew of Elmore Leonard’s reputation as one of the modern masters of crime, but I just never got around to reading him.

From wikipedia: David Ricardo developed the classical theory of comparative advantage in 1817 to explain why countries engage in international trade even when one country's workers are more efficient at producing every single good than workers in other co…

Two TILs: Only 28 books sold more than 500,000 copies last year—and eight of them were by the same romance writer.

India has changed rapidly since the last time I was there in 2018.

Kumbakonam was hot.

So a religious life is a life of meditation, in which the activities of the self are not.

I had to make a trip to Bannerghatta to drop off my documents for the visa.

Book: The Star Principle Author: Richard Koch If you want to get rich, you could work hard, use natural abilities and such, but you can do quite well by being at the right place at the right time.

In popular imagination Tamil Nadu is the land of Tamils, a more or less homogenous population even though they might be distributed into different jatis, with a sprinkling of minorities.

Till I started taking my daughter out on walks I never paid attention to the trees on my street or those along the creek.

Book: No Country For Old Men Author: Cormac McCarthy It’s been a while since I made an impulse purchase.

The oath of the 'Coonan Cross' (Leaning Cross), Mattancherry, Cochin, January 16, 1653 A.D "The Coonan Cross Oath (Malayalam: കൂനൻ കുരിശ് സത്യം, romanized: Kūnan Kuriśŭ Satyaṁ), also known as the Great Oath of Bent Cross, the Leaning Cross Oath or the Oath

Book: What's our problem?

Book: The Happy Sleeper Author: Heather Turgeon, Julie Wright Summary The good: to the point and after some experimenting, the technique appears to be working so far.

Book: From Zero to Kyocera Author: Kazuo Inamori Summary Old man looking back on a well lived life.

Here are some books by old east asian men looking back on a well lived life.

Book: Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World Author: Roger Crowley The Ottomans were the lords of the Mediterranean for close to half a century, from 1520 to 1570.

Book: The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World Author: Marie Favereau Soon after Chinggis Khan died, the Mongol Empire was divided between his four sons, following a long-standing Mongol practice.

Book: Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest Author: Wade Davis A very absorbing and ambitious piece of work that combines such disparate narratives such as the opening of Tibet in early 20th century, the Great Trigonometric…

I have been rabbit-holing into Bristish histroy these last few days, thanks to the excellent Rest Is History podcast.

Some very interesting stats from Wade Davis' book on Mallory and Everest.

Summary Andy Grove really doesn't grok bullshit.

A cache is a software or hardware component that keeps a copy of data in order to serve future requests faster.

Agency and Responsibility "Whenever you think that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it’s actually you who are ruining your life.

Blog: Russia, Ukraine and the Donbass War All you want to know about the history of Russia, Ukraine and why they are fighting.

An interview with the legendary actor Sivaji Ganeshan, where his assertion that he is "200% Indian" sits comfortably with his admiration for EV Ramasamy and Annadurai.

In an interview with Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris says slavery is explicitly endorsed in the Old Testament and the New Testament doesn't repudiate it.

General Caching Another way to optimize increasing read load, using an in-memory cache like Redis or memcached.

Jed Perl is an American art critic whose writing I have read in NYRB and The New Republic.

Book: Embrace Fearlessly The Burning World Author: Barry Lopez This is a collection of Barry Lopez's essays over the past 30 years, the oldest of which appears to be from 1989.

And don't seem obviously insane or charlatan.

Having a child and nursing them is so exhaustive for women.

I have always been a deep sleeper.

When a week-old baby cries, there is a reason and it is always one of these three: The baby has wet her diapers.

Book: Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dōgen's Bendōwa Author: Dōgen, Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi Bendōwa is one of the two early texts Dōgen wrote after his return from China in 1227.

Book: Liberalism and Its Discontents Author: Francis Fukuyama Liberalism is a big tent.

Book: Tales Told By Mystics Author: Manoj Das Manoj Das is a much decorated Odiya author and a devotee of Aurobindo.

GBS Group B streptococci (GBS) is a bacteria found in some pregnant people.

Book: Each Moment Is The Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time Author: Dainin Katagiri, edited by Andrea Martin Dogen is the founder of the Soto Zen school of Japanese Buddhism.

At a family function earlier in the day, someone sang this composition by OVS on the Ramayana.

Book: Several Short Sentences About Writing Author: Verlyn Klinkenborg After putting it off for months, I finally got to this one during the winter break when I was in-between books.