spiders, spammers, sweet tongued flatterers

    
I haven't posted personal stuff here of late. I've mainly posted links to my published writing (yes' I wrote that stuff and they're my original ideas). But a recent deluge of fake 'comments' have urged me to speak out.

What is it with unscrupulous freeloaders and shameless self-promoters?

Every day for months, my blog's been swamped with thinly disguised 'comments' which are nothing but promos and links to the poster's e-commerce sites. These comments may be generated with plausible human sounding names by spiders and other mysterious creatures stalking cyberspace. But I'm human and can clearly see through the ruse.


Readers are most welcome to post genuine comments and generate legitimate and relevant discussions. BUT I do not encourage 'comments' here which have no connection with my blog's content, but are solely meant to promote sales of some on line stores.

My blog is not here for spammers to flood the comments space with free advertising.

Even if you add something like "content was useful" as a preamble to a promo of your commercial venture, such comments will be still be detected and sytematically deleted. Don't waste my time and yours.

If you want to promote your on line store for flowers, candy, gadgets or whatever, kindly advertise these in appropriate venues.

Sigh! and back to work.

Fate and the individual as a shaper of his own destiny

Man of a Thousand Chances

Author: Tulsi Badrinath      Hachette

Why do the just and innocent suffer for no apparent fault of their own? And why do some people get away with murder most foul? Why are some blessed with more money than they know what to do with, while others are forced to lead a hand-to-mouth existence? These and allied questions, which most of us wonder about at some point in our lives, are examined in the course of this novel. At first glance, middle aged, greying, careworn Harihar Arora seems anything but heroic. Striving to rise above petty joint family rivalries where he is the underdog younger son,Harihar secures a job as assistant to the curator of the Madras Museum. He struggles to make ends meet on a modest salary, and plug the unforeseen places from where his money leaks away triumphantly. Settling his darling daughter Meeta into a happy marriage is his primary concern, and the means he adopts to arrange for the money fall on the wrong side of conventional morality.

Harihar is by turns both a victim and a mover of his own fate. Beneath the beguilingly simple surface of an interesting story are deeper philosophical questions which Harihar, and by extension, the reader, are compelled to examine. In the end, Harihar sees that “life, despite the worst of circumstance, was not a prison. Each day with every single thought and act of his, he was building his future lives. If he paid attention to the now, he would ensure an excellent, though indescribable, later.”

My detailed review can be read in Sunday Herald