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As the year draws to a close, I look back to see which blog posts received the most views from you, my readers. I hope you enjoyed and found value in what you read. And, in case you haven’t had a chance to read a few of these posts, here’s a list. And for everything else, there’s our All page. LITTLE LEGACIES The past is a strange thing. It can never be relived even though we often carry it with us. We’ve all been down paths of nostalgia remembering with fondness even that which had, in the past, felt like tough times. And then, there are pieces of the past we visit every day without giving them much thought. For instance, you may tie the laces of your left shoe before the right because a kindergarten classmate told you that it was lucky. Now, decades later, you continue to do so subconsciously. WHY RATAN TATA'S PASSING FEELS LIKE A PERSONAL LOSS I never met Mr Ratan Tata. Nor have I ever worked for a Tata-owned organisation. Yet, his passing left me in tears. It felt like we’ve been robbed of something very precious. I spoke to a longtime friend, Smriti last night. She said that she’d been poring over videos of Mr Tata’s funeral and articles chronicling his life since she heard the news. She wondered if being so affected by the death of someone who is technically a stranger made her a ‘freak’. I told her I felt the same way. To this she said, “I’m so glad I’m not a freak. Or that we are freaks together.” SEEKING SYNCHRONICITY In January 2013, I visited Chennai on a professional assignment with a few team members. One day, we had the morning to ourselves. A colleague asked me to accompany him to buy a saree for his wife. Amongst the ones we saw was a muted gold silk saree with a rhomboid weave of golden and silver thread. My colleague considered purchasing it but eventually preferred another. That night, I spoke to a friend who told me about a dream he had the preceding night. He lived in the US and so his night was my day. He’d dreamt of walls covered in wallpaper made of silk. And it was the colour of muted gold, covered in rhombi. Taken aback, I told him about having seen a saree that morning, very similar to what he described. We laughed it off but the incident has stayed with me. Over the years, I wondered if it had been a synchronicit y BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS TO OVERCOME A READING SLUMP From my extensive experience of such slumps, I know that one of the important elements of achieving the requisite momentum to get out of a reading slump is to pick the right book . Something that is fast-paced or soothing (depending on what you need) but mostly, something that reads like a letter from an old friend… easy-going, fun and with bits that make you chuckle or sit up in surprise. THE MYTH OF MULTI-TASKING It costs us our ability to focus, our concentration and perhaps most importantly, our time. Time is irreplaceable even if you were willing to pay for it. Think about it. Something you think is practically free i.e. internet access, robs you of a thing so valuable that, once lost, even the richest person on the planet can’t buy back—Time. Add to that, another precious commodity, Focus. And yet, you think it costs you nothing. This is perhaps the greatest mind trick of our times – a kind of mass hypnosis.   Confession: I’m guilty of unlocking and scrolling through some or the other app even when I can see that I have no notifications whatsoever. Not even the non-urgent kind. This is pathetic behaviour but I know I’m not alone in this dome of dopamine-addiction.   ON FRIENDSHIP Who is a friend? Most of us refer to all manner of people as our ‘friends’. Everyone, from a long-lost schoolmate to a colleague you get coffee with and the guy at the local squash court, is a ‘friend’. And of course, there is that ubiquitous and odd breed called the Facebook friend.   Distinguishing between relationships takes time and effort, and could result in a most unsettling finding - that one does not have many friends and worse still, that one is not a true friend, even to a few. ALL QUIET ON THE WAR FRONT: QUIET QUITTING, QUIET FIRING & QUIET HIRING This is a story about a great plague and how it brought the battle between workers and employers to a head. Every few months, a fresh salvo is fired. And because we live in the times of the mighty hashtag, each of these barrages has a catchy caption. It all began with a little virus in early 2020.   Thousands of people realised that they were working jobs that weren’t doing anything for them, and they would much rather use the pandemic to study and change tracks. Or at least, resign from jobs that they’d been at for years just because they were stuck in a toxic comfort zone. I suppose you could say the pandemic jolted them out of their inertia. That’s what led to the Great Resignation which became something of a movement in 2021. COMFORT TV SHOWS THAT HELP ME UNWIND A long day calls for some couch therapy! This is my list of Comfort TV shows which never fail to soothe.   Comfort TV can be a series, show, sport, or anything you like watching after a long day, looking to unwind before bed. I’ll go first. ONE COFFEE, PLEASE. AND A PORTION OF PEOPLE-WATCHING The barista called out the name scrawled on the venti cup, “Cappuccino for Aditya.” I smiled, a gentle wave of satisfaction washing over me. That was close enough, I thought to myself. My guess had been Abhishek, Abhimanyu or some other common male name starting with the letter A. Sorry for the abrupt   opening. Let me start at the beginning. THE ALLURE OF SIMPLICITY Simplicity has a ring of truth about it, an elegance and resilience that beats trends and momentary peaks and troughs. If you’ve ever seen a belt of sand dunes, you know what I mean. Functionally, it’s just piles of sand shaped into crescents by the wind and yet, one can keep looking at them, mesmerised.   Perhaps, this applies to our lives as well. Yes, we live in consumerist times and there are unending mounds of stuff everywhere we look. And yet, the call of the classic and understated is eternal and cuts through the clutter. WORKPLACE TIPS: WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH IN SCHOOL Chronic stress, mental health issues  and other indicators of ill-health have become too common amongst corporate employees to warrant comment nowadays and yet, the ruinous effects of work stress multiply silently, till a case like Anna Sebastian Perayil’s hits the headlines, rousing us all.   So, what’s the solution? Well, the answer lies within the person reading this post – you. You need to make the choice about how you want to work and live. THE CHARM OF WHIMSY Every now and then, burrowed into the prosaic paths of the commonplace is nestled something whimsical. Amazing and amusing in its quaintness and imagination, it makes us smile and adds a sparkle to the humdrumness of everyday life. I’m very easily charmed by whimsy – a quaint café, an interesting bookmark or a delightful hobby or trait is all it takes. And thus, we conclude the list of the most popular blog posts of the year on Tamed by the Fox. Do leave us a comment on which one was your favourite. Have a great 2025!

I never met Mr Ratan Tata. Nor have I ever worked for a Tata-owned organisation. Yet, his passing left me in tears. It felt like we’ve been robbed of something very precious. I spoke to a longtime friend, Smriti last night. She said that she’d been poring over videos of Mr Tata’s funeral and articles chronicling his life since she heard the news. She wondered if being so affected by the death of someone who is technically a stranger made her a ‘freak’. I told her I felt the same way. To this she said, “I’m so glad I’m not a freak. Or that we are freaks together.” She verbalised what I was feeling. The oddness of grieving for someone known to us only through news reports, rare interviews and legends narrated by his associates. Of course, we’ve all been long-time consumers of the many, many products and services produced by Tata brands but that has nothing to do with it. As I scrolled through social media and read comments from Indians across walks of life, I repeatedly come across the phrase ‘personal loss’. Why are so many people feeling this way? Photo Courtesy: Instagram I’ve tried to understand what makes Ratan Tata’s passing feel like a personal loss. Since the only perspective I’m truly privy to is my own, then that’s how I shall proceed. I had planned to publish a post about work-related truths today. However, late on Wednesday night, Mr Ratan Tata breathed his last. The news spread like wild fire on social media. Upon reading a statement from the Tata Group Chairperson, N Chandrasekaran, I felt a sense of emptiness and disbelief. A dull sheath of gloom descended upon me. To me, Mr Tata represented the idea of doing the right thing even in circumstances where it is obvious that profits lie in accommodating grey areas. I believe there is a Greek inscription that greets visitors at TCS House in Mumbai that reads, “Walk the Straight Line.” Sounds simple enough but practised by very few. We live in a cynical world where ethics, friendship and common decency are sacrificed at the altar of profit and short-term thinking. Here was a man who never indulged in self-aggrandizement, arrogance or hypocrisy and was unfailingly humble and disarmingly considerate. Photo Courtesy: Instagram While the Tata name has long been synonymous with nation-building and being the trustees of the people of India, stories about Ratan Tata always reflect his regard for the last person in the room. I recall an Instagram post by him requesting blood donors for a dog in Mumbai, suffering from suspected tick fever and life-threatening anaemia. Mumbai responded in the best way possible. Five dogs accompanied by their humans came forward to donate blood. A cross-match was found and all ended well. That would’ve been enough for most. Mr Tata, however, returned to Instagram the next day to post pictures of the five dogs who showed up to help and named all of them (Casper, Leo, Scooby, Ronny and Ivan) in his post. It is such thoughtfulness that makes me tear up. In a world where genuine connection is hard to find and people walk around too distracted to listen to each other, Mr Tata exemplified the power of empathy and kindness. He was famously a dog-lover with both Bombay House and the Taj properties throwing open their doors to homeless dogs in all kinds of weather. His example inspires people like me to do my bit as well. Stories of Mr Tata’s generosity and concern for the well-being of everyone who worked for his companies and even those who didn’t, are the stuff of legend and may they continue to be repeated for years to come because they matter. The stories are endless from what he did for the injured or the families of those killed in the 2008 attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, his contribution to improving healthcare infrastructure by funding cancer hospitals or the Tata Group’s exemplary service during the Covid pandemic. Mr Tata was proof that genuine goodness and goodwill that is not aimed at gaining publicity has a sheen that is impossible to tarnish. What’s more, it has the power to inspire anyone who witnesses it. The very chemistry of our bodies supports this idea. Of the four ‘happy hormones’ coursing through our bodies, oxytocin and serotonin are called the ‘selfless’ chemicals, making us do nice things for other people. This helps form bonds of friendship and trust. Each time we cooperate or help someone, the release of the serotonin and oxytocin make us feel rewarded with feelings of fulfilment, belonging, trust and camaraderie. The most interesting thing about oxytocin, however, is that not only does the person exhibiting the tiniest bit of goodness get a shot of oxytocin, the person receiving the kindness also gets a shot of the feel-good hormone. But that’s not all. Even someone merely witnessing the act of generosity gets a chemical boost. Simply seeing or hearing about acts of kindness makes us happy and inspires us to do the same. In a way, Ratan Tata was our dose of oxytocin – reminding us to be proud to be Indian, inspiring us to do better as human beings, counselling us about there being more to life than scoring a promotion or a pay hike. Mr Tata was a living embodiment of how it is possible to be gracious and considerate while having nerves of steel. I believe everyone who has been moved to tears by Mr Tata’s passing and felt like they lost a loved one, is right to feel so. His close aide, Shantanu Naidu referred to him as his ‘lighthouse’. While Shantanu was lucky enough to be mentored by Mr Tata for a number of years, the rest of us echo his sentiment. Ratan Tata was a lighthouse to us all, albeit a distant one. His life has been a beacon that has lit up the way and cut through some dark nights. I recall an interview where Mr Tata was asked how he would like to be remembered. In his inimitable humble way, he said, “I’d like to be remembered as a person who made a difference. Not anything more, not anything less.” If there ever was an understatement, this must be it. Long Live Ratan Naval Tata. May his legacy never fade. P.S. Smriti, if we’re ‘freaks’, so be it. I suspect we're not the only ones.

The case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus’ inhumane imprisonment following his wrongful conviction in 1894 is infamous in the records of world history. The Dreyfus Affair is widely acknowledged as an absolute sham of a court martial, adjudged on the basis of flimsy circumstantial evidence, in the hope that it would look like justice when it was really just a fig leaf for antisemitism and dereliction of duty. Robert Harris’ An Officer and A Spy  is about that case and the two men at its centre—the first, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Mulhouse Jew serving in the French Army who is found guilty of a crime he did not commit and imprisoned most cruelly on Devil’s Island; and second, Major (later Colonel) Georges Picquart, a man of rare integrity and courage who stood up to the entire French establishment to right a wrong at great risk to his career, reputation and liberty. An Officer and A Spy  is an engrossing retelling of a riveting story, taking the reader through the initial court martial of Captain Dreyfus in 1894, right up to the culmination of the case in 1906. In a clever touch, Harris makes Picquart the narrator of the story, allowing the reader to view the facts of the case as they emerge and be a party to Picquart’s dilemma and finally, conversion from being yet another believer in Dreyfus’ guilt to becoming his staunchest defender. Robert Harris opens the novel with Major Picquart narrating to the Minister of War, General Auguste Mercier and the Chief of General Staff, General Boisdeffre, what he witnessed at Captain Dreyfus’ military degradation in public view for treason, on charges of passing on military documents and secrets to a foreign power which, though unnamed, is understood to be Germany. The author establishes Picquart as a man of great intelligence with a flair for words and a knack for knowing what his audience wants to hear. And it is through Major Picquart’s astute point of view that we are introduced to each character. His descriptions are both discerning and entertaining pen pictures of the main players, combining both his keen observation skills and understanding of human psychology. While describing a French officer with delusions of grandeur, Picquart says, “I always found something disconcerting about du Paty. It was as if he were acting the central part in a play for which no one else had been shown the script. He might laugh abruptly, or tap his nose and adopt an air of great mystery, or disappear from a room in the middle of a conversation without explanation. He fancied himself a detective in the modern scientific manner… I wondered what role in his drama he had chosen for me to play.” An Officer and A Spy  evokes an image of Paris as a hub of culture which it was, but also adds a strain of a defeated France, still licking its wounds after a resounding defeat by the Germans in 1870. The stench of a military humiliation permeates the entire novel and Harris conveys well the desperation of the defeated to find someone to blame and victimise almost as an antidote for its own defeat. The inciting incident of the novel is Major Picquart, having played a role in the arrest and conviction of Captain Dreyfus, being promoted to the rank of Colonel and appointed chief of the counter-espionage unit called, in a coup of boring names, the Statistical Section. It is in this role that Colonel Picquart is forced to revisit the Dreyfus case and question whether or not the Army caught the right man. As Picquart uncovers sinister lies and conspiracies, his faith in the incorruptibility of the organisation he is devoted to, is shaken, causing him to question even his own character and motivations. The novel’s key themes of nationalism and ambition versus integrity play out in court as well as in Picquart’s mind, knowing as he does that pursuing this case would destroy his career and likely end in a court martial for him and social ruin for those he loves. When facing disciplinary action himself, Picquart muses, “In this quasi-religious house I perceive that I have become something beyond a mere dangerous nuisance to my masters. I am a heretic to the faith.” Harris is masterful at depicting the sky-high stakes of the political scandal that shook Europe, weaving in the rising antisemitism, the grubby journalism of the scandal sheets as well as the tenacious activism of staunch supporters of Dreyfus’ cause like Anatole France, Henri Poincaré and Georges Clemenceau. At the height of the scandal, Émile Zola wrote, in a French daily, an explosive open letter known quite simply as J’accuse…! , accusing high-ranking officers and ministers of colluding in the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of Captain Dreyfus. An Officer and A Spy  is not a quick read but Harris keeps it pacy even though it must be said there are portions in the middle that focus rather minutely on procedure. However, I suppose that is to be expected in a novel about a real-life case with many fine details and a multitude of characters. While history must be credited with providing the plot of this novel, Harris enhances it with a narrative structure that keeps ticking and a well-rounded narrator. Picquart is a man of culture with his interests in literature and music highlighted throughout the book bestowing him with an air of gentler sensibilities and a sense of humour offset by a few flaws of character making him feel like a real person instead of a bookish paragon of goodness. In a lighter moment, he muses on the status of older bachelors, “Bachelors of forty are society’s stray cats. We are taken in by households and fed and made a fuss of; in return we are expected to provide amusement, submit with good grace…however short the notice.” All in all, I greatly enjoyed An Officer and A Spy . If espionage thrillers and historical dramas are your scene, then do pick this one up. If, however, you prefer watching over reading, you could check out its film adaptation directed by Roman Polanski.

I believe that if you want to get know a person, you must see them with different people (some important to them and some only incidental) and in different situations—after a fight, after a win, after a loss, at the end of long, tiring day or raising a toast to someone else’s success and in interactions with people who don’t have their advantages—in terms of affluence, education or some other signifier of status. I’m sure we all know someone who feels better about themselves having corrected a waiter’s pronunciation at a restaurant or after snapping their fingers at a salesperson in a store. It’s a dead giveaway of a lack of self-esteem. However, if you don’t have such access to the person you’d like to figure out, here’s another one. Late night conversations. I have long believed that late nights are the hooks on which people hang up their disguises, out of weariness. Putting up a front for the whole day is heavy work indeed. What’s that they say about the Sun seeing your body while the Moon sees your soul. Back to late night conversations. The next time, dear reader, you’re having a conversation with someone and the night is past its youth, (though if you’re like me, it seldom does) ask them an open-ended question or at the very least, a question which elicits an answer followed by an explanation for the answer. One such query is: What is a quality in another person that most impresses you? The answer can be very revealing because it carries many tales and can even be a piece in the mosaic of a person’s character. You might, sometime later, reflect on whether the speaker themselves possess that quality or not. It means different things depending on the quality mentioned. For instance, if your companion is impressed by punctuality, it may follow that they value time (at least, their own!) and are also very punctual. Else, it could be a trait they wish they possessed, yet it eludes them (perhaps, because they are bad at time management, prone to last minute changes of plan or pack their days like a hoarder’s cupboard!). Either way, if you’re paying attention, something unsaid will reveal itself to you. That is the beauty of real conversations—chats that are about more than the ins and outs of life, trends and events. Let’s imagine you and I were having just such a conversation. The stars are twinkling, a light, cool breezes rustles through the foliage while nocturnal creatures chirp in the distance. I’m not clever enough to guess your response (feel free to write it in the comments), so I’ll share my answer instead. A quality that impresses me tremendously in others is empathy – where a person can set aside their own ideas, emotions and thoughts in order to understand another’s point of view or situation without the presence of that interloper called Pity. And relates to them as an equal. True empathy isn’t performative or grand. It is unassuming, gracious and found among the little things—being considerate of other peoples’ needs, being thoughtful of issues they may struggle with or trying to view matters from their perspective and lending a hand whenever possible without making a show of it. The way I see it, empathy and its active form, compassion mean treating others the way I would want to be treated were I in their position and having the humility to understand that the current circumstances of our lives are a result of numerous factors, of which our own efforts form only a very small part. Some people are naturally compassionate and kind. Others gather empathy after having weathered a few knocks. There’s no shame in that. In fact, it’s shows that you are capable of emerging better even from things that didn’t work out in your favour. Not everyone has that grace. An oft-repeated quote by Roald Dahl that fits well here, “The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It's about what you're made of, not the circumstances.” I agree but would like to add to it. It’s not just what you’re made of but also what you want to be. It is possible to change and grow , if we so will it. Often, the seed of such a transformation is aided by our admiration of a quality in someone else.

As a child, I wore a fair number of sweater sets knitted by my mother to match with most of my clothes. I loved watching her knit. The pattern books were enigmas with their codes like p2tog, k4 and yo. To my five-year-old self, it seemed like stuff I would never understand. On a winter day a few years later, when I was around 10 or 11, I asked my mother to lend me some of her leftover wool and a pair of needles. I was given a small ball of mousy brown thin yarn with size 12 needles and Mom taught me two stitches – knit and purl. A star stitch scarf from year two or three of Project Knit! I like you and so, I’ll spare you the unabridged account of my miserable first attempt at knitting that winter, except to say that the stitches were usually being taken off the needle and unravelled into their original form more than anything else. I was a pathetic knitter. What’s worse, I was persistent. Over the next four or five years that small ball of yarn went from mousy brown and thin to mousier greyish-brown and thinner thanks to my repeated attempts at knitting something. I wasn’t ambitious enough to decide in advance what I was knitting. Instead, I intended to accept graciously whatever chose to reveal itself! By the end of it, that blighted ball of wool had seen more steam (to straighten out kinks) than most saunas! Then some ten or twelve years ago, I decided to try my hand at it again. With the non-judgmental support of YouTube. It was a crisp winter in Delhi and my mother was in town, on her annual visit. I’m sure she was less enthused than I was by my renewed interest in knitting. This time I was a lot more decisive in my plans. I would knit a scarf. After all, even I couldn’t mess that up. So, I thought. I picked a pattern, jotted it down on paper for reference, bought three skeins of midnight blue yarn, a few knitting needles and off I went. It wasn’t a smooth journey. I dislike making mistakes and had chosen a pattern where a mistake would be visible even to an untrained eye. In what was not a surprise to anyone with a grasp of the inevitable, much ripping and restarting ensued. Eventually, I had a muffler to show for it. I promptly gifted it to a friend who appeared, by all accounts, to be pleased with it. And so, almost every winter I pick out a new pattern and knit a scarf. I suppose you could say that knitting is on a seasonal repeat for me like the repeat rows in all knitting patterns. There are howls of frustration when I make a mistake, followed by attempts to rectify the error. If that fails, I head to my mother (if she’s in town), a much better knitter, to help rescue the situation. When that fails too, I always choose to rip the scarf than overlook a dropped stitch or a mismatched design. Knitting, for me, is about focussing enough on something constructive so as to reach a mindful state. Like when you’re meditating, focusing on your breath or the sounds outside the window - be it the whistling wind, the patter of rain or even the dull buzz of traffic in the distance. Before you realise it, your mind rises above the thing you’re concentrating on, to a cloud of just being at peace with what you’re doing. That’s why I knit. I can't phrase it better than Elizabeth Zimmerman, the British-born knitting teacher and designer who revolutionized the modern practice of knitting through her books. She said, “Properly practised, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn’t hurt the untroubled spirit either.” The repetitive actions that are part of any handicraft bring about an atmosphere of mindfulness and calm. Everything else is a happy by-product. Whether that be the fact that I can challenge myself, little by little, by trying a slightly more complex pattern each time or that I can gift friends and family a hand-made gift which makes up in charm and warmth what it may lack in finesse. The diagonal lace stitch is not for the faint-hearted beginner! It’s rewarding to create something that you can hold in your hands. We live in a world where many beautiful things have been subsumed into the ether as bits and bytes - letters written on airmail have become emails, books are on kindle and music that used to be on mixed tapes is now part of Spotify playlists. Knitting, pottery or embroidery feel almost anachronistic nowadays. Perhaps, that’s makes them so therapeutic . It's a truism that there is no luxury greater than having something custom-made for you. I would add to that. Custom-made with love is the kind of luxury that isn’t available in stores, making it something to be cherished. And so, I knit.

Many of us have been taught history, economics and politics through somewhat incomplete and at times, inaccurate stories of cause and effect highlighting the role of great individuals and exceptional happenings. With The Evolution of Everything, Matt Ridley intends to show us how almost everything around us is a result of a bottom-up, gradual evolutionary process. This book's strength lies in the ideas it throws up, causing us to re-examine and rethink the way the world works, grows and changes. Ridley makes the point that much of recorded history, “places far too much emphasis on design, direction and planning, and far too little on evolution.” In separate chapters devoted to the evolution of varied fields such as government, morality, education, population, money, etc, Ridley lays out his primary thesis, that changes in all these spheres are incremental, inexorable, gradual and spontaneous. And quite often, this slow evolution is not visible to the casual observer who may have trained his or her eyes on larger-than-life personalities or organizations expecting them to be the founts of change. Ridley writes, “Much of the human world is the result of human action, but not of human design; it emerges from the interactions of millions, not from the plans of a few." Ridley states that things which survive and thrive are a result of bottom-up evolution, created without any active decision towards making a change, be it the evolution of all living things, industrialisation, religion or language. No one person or entity created or caused them and yet, here they are… all in working order. Furthermore, Matt Ridley makes the point that top-down policy-making is a recipe for disaster since it is prescriptive without fully understanding any issue in addition to not allowing for the rough-tumble of the real world to separate the wheat from the chaff in the dustbowl of ideas. Ridley leans heavily on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to support his view. For me, the most compelling chapters were about the evolution of morality, culture and technology. Ridley illustrates the concept of nothing being able to stop an idea whose time has come with an example of the light bulb and Edison: “Suppose Thomas Edison had died of an electric shock before thinking up the electric bulb. Would history have been radically different? Of course not. Somebody else would have come up with the idea. Others did. Where I live, we tend to call the Newcastle hero Joseph Swan the inventor of the incandescent bulb, and we are not wrong… In Russia, they credit Alexander Lodygin. In fact, there are no fewer than twenty-three people who deserve the credit for inventing some version of the incandescent bulb before Edison.” The Evolution of Everything sets off to cast aside confirmation bias, the Great Man theory and mostly, the dusty idea of top-down policy-making. Unfortunately, Ridley isn’t very convincing in all chapters. The chapters about leadership and economy are especially crippled by the very thing The Evolution of Everything  is so determined to expose – confirmation bias and the desire to fit cherry-picked events into pre-determined theories about the world and how it works. Ridley states that one of the chief characteristics of an untrustworthy theory is that it is not refutable. Some of his own ideas and versions of events share that characteristic. More specifically, in the chapter about the evolution of the money, Ridley writes that the 2008 Recession was caused more by the top-down policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations rather than bottom-up deregulation (such as the repealing of the Glass-Steagall Act which separated commercial and investment banking activities). He also mentions, in passing, his own exposure to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis . “My own experience as chairman of a bank was of endless reassurance from intrusive and detailed regulation right up till the point when it all went wrong. Far from warning of the crisis to come, regulators did the very opposite, and gave false reassurance or emphasised the wrong risks.” It's a pity that he doesn’t mention that in September 2007, Northern Rock (the bank he was chairman of) became the first British bank since 1878 to suffer a run on its finances . And it’s not like he followed the libertarian, ‘survival of the fittest’ credo when his bank was sinking. Instead, Northern Rock applied to the  Bank of England  for emergency liquidity funding at the beginning of the crisis, but failed. Ridley resigned as chairman in October 2007. In February 2008,  Northern Rock was nationalised following a bailout by the UK government .  A parliamentary committee criticised Ridley for not recognising the risks of the bank's financial strategy and "harming the reputation of the British banking industry". But the 'bottom-up' £27 billion failure of Northern Rock and its 'top-down' rescue don’t find a mention in The Evolution of Everything . That's confirmation bias and ideological blindness at its peak. I suppose, that is to be expected when an author is cherry-picking examples and anecdotes to prop up a theory that springs interesting questions and explains some things but not everything. I found it surprising that there is no mention of China's economic revolution in the chapter about economy just as Singapore's visionary leader, Lee Kuan Yew, viewed as 'authoritarian' by the West, is ignored in the chapter about leadership. Ridley wishes to make the point that top-down policies are always failures and these two examples amongst many others don't suit his narrative.   The American author, F Scott Fitzgerald is reported to have said, “The truest sign of intelligence is the ability to entertain two contradictory ideas simultaneously.” I dare say, it is also a sign of a genuine spirit of inquiry and grace which, sadly, is lacking in The Evolution of Everything . As  a result, it becomes a rather tedious read by the end.

This is a novel about ghosts of the past haunting one’s present. The protagonist of A Stain on the Silence is James who has a good job and a wife he adores. The story is narrated in first person by James takes us through his comfortable suburban life being jolted by a revelation made by Lily Murthington, a former lover whom he hasn’t heard from in 24 years. Lily tells him that their affair from when he was a teenager and she, the step-mother of his school friend, Carlo, resulted in a daughter, Kate. Laid up in a hospice, practically on her deathbed, Lily pleads with James to help Kate avoid going to prison for the murder of her boyfriend. Does James help? Yes, of course, else this would be a very slim book. But there’s a weightier reason for his assistance. James has a secret of his own - one he’d like to take to his grave. However, Lily has evidence that would destroy that plan. As far as set-ups go, this is fairly sufficient but somehow, the unlikeable characters and the unnecessary running about makes A Stain on the Silence feel like a wasted opportunity. It’s a story that is unable to choose between being plot-driven and character-driven. With its bleak outlook and almost every major character from James, Lily, Kate to Carlo being either a liar, manipulative or violent, A Stain on the Silence lacks an emotional centre which readers would identify with. In addition, there are parts where the action in this story comes across as solely a means to etch out a character profile and perhaps, justify the end. The theme of broken families, childhood friendship and deceit in everyday life are never fully explored. I’ve read one other novel by Andrew Taylor called The Scent of Death  which is an atmospheric and layered story set during the American Revolution with characters who, though complex have real-life motivations and are decidedly more relatable. Unlike characters in A Stain on the Silence  who do cruel things and yet carry themselves with the air of injured sparrows. The constant flashbacks in James’ narrative are overwrought and feel false since he holds back crucial pieces of information from the reader for no reason other than to spring a somewhat soggy surprise in the final chapters. Taylor manages to drum up some pace towards the end of the novel by revealing a twist in the final lines of almost every chapter but they left me cold. Arguably, the ending or pay-off at the end of the story in a thriller or mystery, more than any other genre perhaps, is what makes the book. And that is, sadly, A Stain on the Silence’s greatest letdown. It’s an ending so timid and half-baked that I was left looking to turn a few more pages. It’s open-ended with no real resolution of guilt and the reader is left wondering about the real motivations for certain characters’ actions in the climax. The last chapter of A Stain on the Silence  left me with a sense of reading a book which has had its last few pages ripped out.

In Six Weeks to Live , Catherine McKenzie introduces us to 48-year-old Jennifer who is diagnosed with brain cancer and told she has six weeks to live. That’s chapter one. Chapter two has her discovering, while still in her car after the doctor’s appointment, that she has been a victim of lead poisoning. Understandably, she wants to figure out the identity of the would-be murderer. This gives us a whodunnit with a built-in ticking clock. The first two chapters are written in first person from Jennifer’s point of view. The intimacy of this point of view lets the readers see and experience events in Jennifer's life as she does. It’s that very closeness that made her unrelatable and unreliable to me. That’s odd, I know. More on that later. The later chapters show the readers the individual perspectives of Jennifer’s 25-year-old triplet daughters, Aline, Emily and Miranda. These are written in third person resulting in a greater psychic distance between the reader and the triplets unlike the immediacy we have with Jennifer. The other major character in the mix is Jake, Jennifer’s lawyer ex-husband who has been pleading with her for a divorce for about two years. He doesn’t get his own chapters. They are all suspects in Jennifer’s poisoning but I surmise the author was counting on our collective bias gleaned from true crime novels, police procedurals and legal dramas to kick in. Those are the bare bones of the plot. What the novel is really about are things that hide in plain sight behind a sunny façade. Like the book itself, which is a whodunnit that cracks open to reveal a family drama at its core, to show us the many little lies behind the perfect white-toothed smiles of the seemingly close-knit Gagnon family. McKenzie weaves in flashbacks that show us the girls’ childhood and how each of them views it differently. I was reminded of the immortal opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s opus, Anna Karenina – "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The idea of truth being both subjective and more importantly, separate from what it appears to be at first glance is a theme running through the book. A poignant symbol of it are the triplets themselves because Aline and Miranda are identical twins ensconced within their larger identity of being triplets with Emily being the fraternal triplet, if you will. Catherine McKenzie explores themes of family, trust and the unintended and long-lasting perniciousness of lies in Six Weeks to Live . As a thriller, I’m afraid it lags in the middle with not enough happening to maintain the pace expected of a whodunnit. Neither does it have the urgency expected of a dying woman with only weeks to live on a quest to avenge her own murder. The ending was somewhat predictable too, in my opinion. However, the aspect that left me absolutely cold were the characters. Frankly, none of them are particularly likable, not even Jennifer, the dying and wronged protagonist with the marked advantage of being given a first person narrative. As mentioned in the beginning, I found Jennifer being a first person narrator a hindrance to trusting her. This is ironic because as a POV character we are privy to her thoughts or at least should be. And yet, there is a sense that she’s holding out on us. That’s what made her unreliable and ultimately not someone I would root for. I’m all for unreliable narrators and their ilk but to expect the reader to sympathise with them while they play the victim requires more nuanced characterisation. The rest of the characters too seem like stereotypes with lives that fit into neat, corresponding moulds – Emily the organised soccer mom, Aline the Type-A career woman and Miranda the flaky floater without a mind of her own. None of them feel like real people. Creating a kind of circle of causality, Catherine McKenzie begins and ends her book with someone apologising to the protagonist. Figuring out who they are and what they are asking forgiveness for requires you to read the book. Just don’t go in expecting too much.

The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair is a cold case whodunnit delivered with literary flair. The plot takes you through many hairpin bends while the form and style of the writing make the ride pleasurable rather than merely efficient. Broadly, it is a book about two authors – Harry Quebert, a celebrated senior writer who is arrested for murder, 33 years after a fifteen-year-old girl that he loved goes missing; and Marcus Goldman his protégé who, struggling with writer’s block after his successful first novel, resolves to clear his mentor’s name. If you were to set aside the brief excerpt from a 911 call establishing the fifteen-year-old Nola’s disappearance, the book opens with a prologue depicting Marcus’ life post the best-selling success of his second book. It introduces us to Marcus as the protagonist and narrator. This opening also sets up the basic questions readers are likely to ask about the story that is yet to unfold, focussing majorly on the whodunnit aspect. A shift from the usual is the numbering of the chapters as a countdown starting from 31 down to 1, building anticipation and setting off a subtle ticking clock in the reader’s mind. Dicker also uses a little graphic of a rectangle at the beginning of each chapter that denotes how much of the story has been read. That didn't appear to be of any major significance to me apart from being a design element. The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair is structured into two timelines. The first is the year 2008 which follows the discovery of the dead body, the ensuing murder case and the writing of Marcus’ second novel. The second thread is from 1975 – and the events around the disappearance of the fifteen-year-old Nola. There is the added element of excerpts from the book that Marcus is writing. To his credit, Dicker is flawless when it comes to signposting the setting and period that the characters are in, within the first few lines of each section. Not once in this 615-page book is the reader left scratching their head wondering where they are in the timeline of events. That’s no mean feat given the complex structure of the novel. As a novel within a novel, The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair casts a sidelong glance at the cut-throat business of publishing and the kind of machinations that go into creating a buzz around a bestseller. Dicker portrays these tips and tricks of the business as a prism of spin that can refract even a faux pas into appearing like a glimmer of genius. An exchange between Marcus, the young writer and his cynical publisher on the conflict between freedom and economics is thought-provoking. In contrast, the teacher-student relationship between Harry and Marcus is concentrated mainly on the craft of writing. Each chapter begins with an excerpt of the mentor talking to his protégé about writing, boxing or life. Joel Dicker weaves the political landscape of the United States in 2008 into the story giving it a sense of not unfolding in a vacuum. Since the political events that culminated in Obama’s historic victory are well-known to most readers, this device is effective without requiring too much space in exposition. The three main characters – Marcus, Harry and Nola are dynamic and develop throughout the length of the novel. Most of the secondary characters are not one-note characters either and more importantly, have their own motivations. This creates several mini-geysers of conflict which keep the plot bubbling. Dicker employs an array of mythological and literary allusions such as references to Icarus, fallen angels, ‘glory being a Gorgon that could turn you into stone’ and man’s Original Sin. Even Quebert’s celebrated book is called The Origin of Evil. Paradise Lost, anyone? The plot of The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair illustrates the ripples of wrongdoing in the individual lives of characters flowing into and merging with each other. It also shows how the past informs the present. Other literary touches include motifs like Harry’s residence which comes to signify different things over the course of the story, symbolism, social commentary and satire that doesn’t shy away from looking inward at the narrator, the world of writers and the books they write. While reading this novel, I was struck by the pride of place given to seagulls in it. I have a hunch that Joel Dicker was inspired by the characters and themes in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull . The play explores the ills of fame and how the pursuit of celebrity usually has disastrous effects. Chekhov’s characters view obscurity as an unbearable fate and grapple with the gulf between their dreams of success and the reality of their mediocrity. Harry, Marcus and a few other characters contend with the same issues. Imposter syndrome and the threat of being exposed as a pretender looms large in both the play and the novel. Art being a replacement for love is another recurring idea in the story. At least three characters in the book are artists and all of them fill a void in their lives with writing or painting. To know out how it works out for them, you’d have to read the book. There’s a piece of advice Quebert gives Marcus – "Never write a book without knowing its ending.” That’s excellent advice for writers, I’m sure. Readers of this page-turner, however, are not likely to drop this book without knowing its ending.

In Five Years is a book about friendship, destiny and our plans for our lives. Published in 2020 – a year when the pandemic derailed many a plan, it couldn’t have been timed better to fit the presiding mood of unpredictability. It’s a quick, light read. However, if you’re looking for romance with a dash of prophecy, this is not it. Stop reading now and cancel that order from Amazon! The book has a very definite sense of setting – which is New York. It is obvious that the author has lived there given the specificity of her locations. The protagonists’ homes and workplaces signify status and upward mobility. The lead characters are two childhood friends who are polar opposites in terms of personality and life choices – the rational, control-freak corporate lawyer, Dannie who prefers (as we are told repeatedly) the “black and white terms” of contracts over displays of bravado in courtrooms. This is a character who has a specific breakfast marked out for days when she needs to feel like a winner. We get it. Dannie, the character whose point of view we inhabit, likes things to be planned and finessed to within an inch of their lives. In the first chapter, we see that she lives by a timeline, a set blueprint and David, her boyfriend is willing to play along. The other major character in the novel is her best friend Bella, who with her fairy tale name is the quintessential emotionally-damaged but intuitively-grounded, float-with-the-wind, flaky artist (who is also a trust fund baby of indifferent and largely absent parents). She frequently jets off to faraway locales at a moment’s notice. Oh, well. To say that this is a trope that’s getting predictable would be… well, predictable. The Firefly Lane series by Kristin Hannah had a similar dynamic as does the show Gilmore Girls (which I’ve only watched snippets of, but know that it features a mother-daughter relationship that feels more like a friendship between two women with contrasting personalities and a caffeine addiction). The genre of women’s fiction is somewhat amorphous and defined often both by its readership as well its content. To the best of my understanding, the defining characteristic of the genre is that the equation between two or more female characters rather than, say the factors opposing a romantic match, is usually the main source of conflict in the plot. In Five Years delivers partially on that front but the contrast between the protagonists is too on the nose and their friendship doesn't feel grounded. The idea of Dannie’s dream featuring a life quite different from the one she has planned is an interesting premise. This dream, for the convenience of plot comes with a five-year timeline and is the inciting incident that sets the ball rolling. This starting point coupled with the eventual real-life roll out of this 'dream', five years in the future and in the penultimate chapter of the book, act as a frame for the story. The point that context is crucial to understanding events in their true light is well-made but the rest of it was a let-down in terms of narration, characterisation and the frankly, the conclusion. The supporting characters - David, Aaron, Morgan and Ariel lack depth and flesh-and-blood motivations. We never get to see what makes them stick around in certain circumstances or leave in other situations. Completely lacking even that most basic level of agency that is usually accorded to minor characters, they appear to populate the world of this novel only to provide plot points and create a sense of the protagonists having other people in their lives. Perhaps Morgan and Ariel, being a gay couple, are also a token nod to inclusivity. What makes it odder still is that being close friends of both Dannie and Bella and living in the same city, they barely make an appearance post the mid-point of the story. Not even to support their friends during a major crisis. Apart from this, there is the sub-plot of Dannie’s lawyerly work which also pushes her eventually to trust her instincts instead of only the letter of the law. This dovetails neatly with what is missing in her personal life as well. This tying up of loose ends so perfectly into one tidy bow takes away from the story resembling anything close to the messiness and crossed lines of real life. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it because it flubs its chance of being a touching story about the constancy, love and insight it takes to make a lifelong friendship .

The words taciturn and grumpy seem almost pleasant when compared to Ove – the protagonist of this novel. He is the sort of person who seems older than his 59 years owing to his rigidity regarding fairly pointless rules and a blanket animosity toward the rest of the planet. He decides to end his life because he no longer sees any purpose in living on. Ove has a plan and the tools to achieve it. A serendipitous interruption caused by a couple moving into the neighbourhood ruins his design. For the next few days, his meticulous plans to join his wife in death are stymied by some or the other interference. The common elements in all these incidents are his grouchiness combined with an inability to walk away from people he can help. Of course, he doesn’t cooperate graciously but he does lend a hand anyway. A Man called Ove is a book more about peeling away the layers of its protagonist rather than just the events that take place at this stage in his life. Through flashbacks, Backman takes the reader through Ove’s life to show us not only what he is but also why. That’s when we begin to understand his loyalty, his pride in being self-sufficient, his devotion to rules and regulations and his dislike for new-fangled ideas and wastefulness. One of the recurring themes in A Man called Ove is building and fixing things – something of a male preserve in the book. It also fits in with Ove’s idea of masculinity – reserved, dedicated, utilitarian and reliable. The new neighbour also known as the Lanky One, the overweight young man next door, Jimmy and the BMW-driving neighbour, Anders act as foils to Ove. And yet, by the end of the story, both Ove and the reader realise that they too have some useful skills and more importantly, their hearts at the right place. Looking beyond the exterior of a person into their core – seeing their heartaches, weaknesses, fears, secret desires and hopes is another vital theme of the novel. To be truly seen is the gift that Ove’s late wife, Sonja bestowed on him. She’s described as “all the colours” in contrast to his black and white and yet she sees in him, what we as readers also see by the end of the book – a generosity of spirit and a goodness that is rare in this day and age. One of my peeves with this book is its somewhat implausible plot points especially when it comes to neighbours who barge in at all times of day. I’m not sure that’s believable given the curmudgeon Ove is. The other aspect that felt overdone were the similes. I understand that similes and metaphors can make things, especially intangible concepts such as expressions and feelings, easier to imagine and therefore relatable. They’re also fun to read especially when they are as fresh and inventive as Fredrik Backman’s comparisons. However, if a reader were to take a sip of water every time the author uses a simile, I guarantee they would be well-hydrated in a couple of chapters. That, I believe, is an excessive use of the literary tool. Nonetheless, A Man called Ove is a heart-warming book that reaffirms an inescapable truth of the human condition that there are few things more life-affirming and essential than the belief that one is loved and needed. Everything else is negotiable. Note: The Tom Hanks starrer A Man called Otto that dropped on Netflix recently is an adaptation of this novel.

Whether it is one’s life or the story of everything that has ever happened, to fully appreciate a portion of it, one needs to have at least a broad idea of the whole. It’s like the American astronomer, educator and creator of the television show Cosmos, Carl Sagan said, “To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” Origin Story by David Christian is a panoramic look at the unfolding of the universe since its birth – the explosive expansion of space, the formation of stars and planets, the birth of the Earth’s atmosphere and continents, the first sparks of life which took billions of years to grow into dinosaurs, the evolution of our species, hunters and foragers turning to farming, the industrial revolution all the way to where science and innovation have brought us today. This book, as a sample of the field of study that is increasingly being referred to as Big History, shows us what a long way we’ve travelled and how, regardless of all our perceived differences as creatures that live on this pale blue dot, we have a common origin story. A tale with enough plot twists, catastrophes and serendipitous links to make one sit up in wonder at the unlikelihood of our very existence on this planet. How did it all come to be? And why did no other animal or being achieve what we, as Homo Sapiens, have? And which bends in the river led us to our current position at the top of the food chain and a dominating force in the biosphere? Reading this book evokes a sense of wonder at the ties we all share with our ancestors who may have sat around a bonfire and gazed at a different night sky thousands of years ago and pondered the eternal questions – Who are we? Where do we come from? To seek those answers is part of what it means to be human. It is the reason we made up our myths and legends, why all religions have some version of the creation story and why the picture of a Black Hole’s Event Horizon was a top trend on the internet. You could say we are hard-wired to wonder. Given the expanse of time that Origin Story sets out to explore, it is helpful that David Christian breaks up the timeline into blocks referred to as thresholds, depicting how some very complex and significant things appeared at key transition points. The thresholds give shape to the complicated and mammoth narrative of the modern origin story. Highlighting the major turning points, when things that existed at the time were rearranged or otherwise altered to create something new helps us see the causal relationship between these thresholds or key events. This makes it easier to grasp the links between seemingly unrelated and chronologically distant events. Apart from a couple of chapters which I found crammed with too much detail about trilobites, for instance, Origin Story is an engaging read. It also places issues like climate change in perspective. As I understood it, our planet has seen much worse times and will survive and course-correct. What we need to think about is whether or not we, as a species, will survive? There are examples galore of species that didn’t survive ice ages and varying levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. That’s the thing about Nature. While we may allude to its mother-like qualities, it would be wise to remember that Nature is a very impartial mother with no special concern for us and that in the grand scheme of things, our species’ survival is of little or no consequence to anyone other than ourselves. The way that we are different from any other species on Earth is that we can consciously choose to make a difference to our environment. If you’re curious about our place in the universe and fascinated by stuff like how elements created in star nurseries billions of years ago ended up in our bones, Origin Story is right up your alley. I found it interesting and informative. You might too.