Sai's Blog

The book tells a semi-biographical story that author's Jewish grandfather likely experienced during the Second World War, specifically during the siege of Leningrad. I liked the book so much I finished it in less than a week in about 4-5 sittings. Obviously, it was easy to read. The author prioritizes telling the story and conveying the emotions in simple words rather than indulge in esoteric language. The prose flows easily from paragraph to paragraph, chapter to chapter. Set in the backdrop of Leningrad Siege it educates the reader about the extremely harsh realities of the war and the siege without rendering itself into a documentary. The two main characters Lev and Kolya one a Jew and the other a Cossack end up unlikely partners in a very strange quest finding a dozen eggs for a Colonel's daughter's wedding in exchange for their freedom. They develop a wonderful friendship over a short span of a week, each entertaining the other with their talents, exploits and latent i...

 Perfect retirement timing in Indian cricket seems very elusive, maybe because it's got as much to do with cricket as with public perception and human psychology. The ideal timing is one where people wished you stayed a little longer, when they specifically buy tickets to cherish your last appearance. Few Indian cricketers get this right. I can only think of Sunil Gavaskar and M. S. Dhoni. When one doesn't get this right, each day towards the end becomes miserable. It seems two of the greatest batsmen ever to play for India, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are going through the same. The more celebrated a player you are the more the misery.  The lesser players, even someone as accomplished as Cheteswar Pujara, have the "luxury" of being told bluntly that they are no more needed in the team. The problem is particularly worse for batsmen; where there is little room for error. A batsman can get out by playing one bad shot; bowlers on the other hand can survive tens of bad b...

     So my favorite sports team, the Indian cricket team, just made an inglorious exit from another high profile tournament, the ICC T20 World Cup. It caused me a lot of heart burn. At the moment my mind is filled with a lot of masochistic soul-searching inquires like “Why are we not good?”, “Why don’t we ever win anything ? (never mind the Indian team played some of the most exhilarating cricket over the last year)”, “Seriously, what’s wrong with us?”,  “Is it the vegetarian food we eat or the polluted air we breathe or something in our genes?”, “Is it our culture that is not quite suited for reaching the pinnacle at sports?”. Mind you this is T20 format a version of cricket for which I have little respect, yet the agony is real. Not seeing my team play the semifinals felt like being left behind in cricketing civilization, seems like a little overreaction, but trust me it's a spirit that has been expressed amongst fellow comrades. There is something about men and te...

     Pictures of star trails resembling comets have fascinated me for a long time. In addition to the visual splendor of the images, the scientific fact that they illustrate Earth's rotation about the polar axis was the topping on dessert for my inner geek. In this blog I will describe some of my attempts to photograph the star trails. My description here is going to be very plain and simplistic suitable for the curious beginners, SLR Ninjas please bear with me. Overall, my experience has been that it is technically easy to do this, but you need to some good homework before you go out to shoot. Pick the right night (around new moon), dry weather, and pick a good location with less light pollution, and pick a good background that has the right blend of landscape and sky. Fig 1. ISO 1600, 3minute Exposure, 34 Frames, ~1.5hr Duration, Post Processed for Temperature, Sharpness, and Highlights      A basic requirement for shooting star trails seems to be SRL cam...

Hello World, Welcome to my blog, My lovely wife say's it's pretty boring, but u decide