Mundane month of October (October 2020 Reads #1)

Mundane month of October:

By this time, I got caught up with Supernatural and started to procrastinate. But it didn’t last long as my Dan Brown Procrastination.

Thinking about Dan Brown, I finally picked up the last book on Dan Brown Bibliography (Ironically it was Dan Brown’s first book). I didn’t plan on picking this book to finish Dan Brown’s bibliography. But I wanted to spend some time reading something. Also, I had a lot of books on my TBR and I thought of cleaning that one up.

Dan Brown turned Silicon Valley Guy:

October 13

Following my Supreme Supernatural Plan, I finally got caught up with Season 15. In a month Supernatural is going to end and I am planning on watching Supernatural weekly. And when there’s nothing to do then, I thought of picking up Digital Fortress by Dan Brown.

I never planned to read that book. I thought of reading some other novel (especially Tamil novels that I had bought on August). Then one day, my friend Uzumaki asked me to recommend some books. We both planned to read Dan Brown novels together. But he just finished Da Vinci code and he wanted to read some other Dan Brown’s book.

Somehow, he ended up choosing Digital Fortress and somehow, I ended up choosing the same. And I began reading my last Dan Brown book.

I never finished an author’s bibliography before. This was my first Author to finish all their works.

And this book didn’t disappoint me.

As with any other Dan Brown book, this book too carries a message. This book talks about Privacy in the Digital World and discusses the dilemma of whether one should be in control of every person’s secrecy or not.

The twists in this book were amazing and as usual, Dan brown has written a twist even in the last page of the book.

As a computer science graduate, I know a thing or two about security in digital world. So, it was fascinating to read about Brute force technique and some other encryption technique Dan had explained in this book.

In all Dan’s books, he uses different technique to reveal the mystery. For example, the Nadu Iravil technique used in Da Vinci Code. Likewise, in this novel, Dan uses a mystery technique which was like a computing term called Two Way Encryption. Dan always use one technique (Nadu Iravil) to reveal the final Bad guy followed by another twist to reveal the answer for the dilemma that the novel speaks off. In Digital Fortress, He uses both these mystery-reveal techniques in one shot.

When the final Bad guy got revealed, there was a twist that even the final bad guy didn’t know about. This is like an encryption method in computing called Two Way Encryption. People who have read the novel would able to understand what I am trying to say.

All the Robert Langdon books involves two major storylines. One involves Robert Langdon in it and the other involves the assassin or the guy who got hired by the Big Bad. Likewise, this novel has two storylines (has many storylines but these two were the major ones), where one involves the Lead girl, Susan Fetcher and the other involves her boyfriend, David. David’s storyline was racy to the core. I never read a racy and nerve wrecking thriller on any other books.

It took only 3 days for me to finish this book and it was a great one!

My logs for Digital Fortress are found here!

Jallikattu – The book

Vaadivaasal written by Si. Su. Chellappa was a book that I was waiting to read for a long time since Director Vetrimaaran announced that he would direct his next movie based on this novel and the lead actor who plays the lead character in the books was none other than Surya.

When a book meets a commercial cinema, then that would be Jallikattu. For the first few pages I struggled to grasp and keep up with the book. After reading two pages, I would forget what I just read. Then slowly I picked up the pace. Then suddenly the books started throwing difficult words. I have never in my life used a Tamil Dictionary to know the meaning of a Tamil word.

This was the first time. It was difficult for me to understand the Madurai Dialect of the book. But after I crossed 25+ pages. I kind of able to understand the gist of it. After the initial trouble, the reading experience was just a bliss.

I couldn’t able to put the book down and for the first time in a long time, my imagination ran wild. On reading Vaadivaasal, I was reading a stunt scene of a tamil movie in a book. The jallikattu fight scene was new kind of fight scene for me. I can able to imagine the whole arena of Jallikattu – The Vaadivaasal and their players – Pillai, Kaari and Koral.

The core concept of this book was not just the fighting with Bulls (Jallikattu) but the politics that revolves around Humans and Bulls (And Humans and Humans too). There were no hatred of Bulls and the sense of animal cruelty in the minds of the people who conducts Jallikattu. People who hate animal cruelty and people who protests against Jallikattu thinks that they were dealing with a bunch of barbarians who enjoys themselves watching an animal getting tortured.

But when we read this novel, that’s not the truth behind it. I am not picking any sides here and I am not saying that people who conduct Jallikattu were good guys because they treat the bulls with care. After reading Vaadivaasal, one may feel that these guys use Bulls as a tool for letting their emotions out. The lead character – Pichi, never intends to torture the bull. He thinks of it as a human who killed his father. It’s just a revenge for him. And the main antagonist of this novel – The Jamindaar, thinks of the Bull – Kaari, as his status symbol.

There’s a difference between people thinking Jallikattu as a game of animal cruelty and people thinking Jallikattu as a game of letting out their emotions. I am not trying to discuss the moral or ethical dilemma instead I am trying to say that empathising with these people would be a great idea to understand whatever dilemma people facing on this issue.

If I feel I am torturing an animal and still loves Jallikattu, then maybe there’s a problem with me and people who are against animal Cruelty can sue me. But what if my only chance of getting married is by defeating the bull? I have a bull in my house, and I love it. But to prove myself as a man (there are a lot of misogynistic references in this book) and to get married, I must defeat another bull. And I won’t think another Bull as my family Bull. This is the kind of empathy I am talking about.

Abolishing Jallikattu will never solve an issue that is deep rooted in the minds of people. And this book strongly reflects those deep-rooted issues in the minds of the people who partake in Jallikattu.

Otha What a book!!!