READING & WATCHING

A couple of books I picked up in India are currently on my read list. I'm a little better than 100 pages into Hyderabad: A Biography, which you can pick up in trade paperback for about Rs. 300 at the Walden Book in Hyderabad, but then you have to factor in the plane ticket. On deck is Shantaram, a fictionalized autobiography set in Bombay. It looks intriguing.

I will also plug again White Mughals, which I read last year, and is set in Hyderabad around the turn of the 19th Century. I was privileged to visit the deteriorating Residency where it is set a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps that visit warrants its own post.

As for watching, and in a complete change in direction, I was solicited a few weeks ago to watch and review Season 1 of the sitcom Dharma & Greg in exchange for a free copy (this by way of full blog disclosure). Now why me, you ask? Because I had mentioned the show in an earlier post in an off-hand way. As it turns out, my wife and I actually do like the show pretty well, so I received it and left it for my wife to watch while I was in India. Alas, she did not have time. So doing my duty, I am mentioning it now, with a promise to write more when we actually get a chance to watch it. The advent of TV shows on DVD is actually a good thing, as you can pick your shows and watch them commercial free for a lot less than you'd pay for a month of premium cable that never has anything on it anyway.

Of course, it works out well for this post that 'dharma' is the teaching of Buddha who was from India; the world's largest monolith statue of Buddha happens to be in Hussain Sagar lake in Hyderabad, just down from the hotel where I stayed. Picture of said statue, which I took about 10 days ago, below (click for larger version).