There’s so much I have to share: I completed publishing my book and I want to tell you more about that (the last piece in this article), I want to share all the fantastic new music I’ve heard, I’ve been so excited about the FIDE Chess Candidates and there’s so much to write about that, there’s the book that I read last week, and the new game that I’m playing! And all this, while not covering my trip to Mumbai last week or the brilliant VALORANT get-together last Sunday in detail. Let us get started…
Book: The Murderer’s Ape #quickread
Let’s start small. After the mammoth, tough, and brilliant Middlemarch (that keeps on giving to me: I keep thinking about it), I was looking forward to reading something light and fun. And I struck gold with “The Murderer’s Ape” by Jakob Wegelius, which I completed in the last week.
This is a wonderful children’s book (~580 pages), a terrific tale about the adventures of Sally Jones, a gorilla that sets out on a voyage to clear the name of her friend, who has been accused of murder. I loved the book: the gorilla is a terrific mechanic, chess plays an important role in the book, and a large part of the book is set across various parts of India (Mumbai, a fictitious place called Bhapur near Jodhpur, Cochin, and even Matancherry!). The book is a romance in the old meaning of the word: filled with excitement, adventure, and love.
The book is filled with wonderful illustrations as well which makes reading it a lot of fun. I will remember Sally Jones for a long time!
The book I’ve started on now — variety after some great fiction — is “The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine” by Michael Scott-Baumann. Review coming up next week!
Music: An overflowing of riches #quickread
What a couple of weeks for music: The Tortured Poet’s Department by Taylor Swift, One Deep River by Mark Knopfler, and Dark Matter by Pearl Jam. But my favourite song of the last 2 weeks is not from any of these albums… keep reading to find out more, after my quick reviews!
The Tortured Poet’s Department, by Taylor Swift: I’ve heard this album twice (the shorter version that dropped on the 19th, and the anthology that dropped the next day). First impressions: I like it, especially the writing, but I don’t love it. It sounds familiar, but in a worn-out way. I’m going to give it a few more listens though…
One Deep River, by Mark Knopfler: I remember my RD Burman crazy friend telling me about this album earlier in the year and I had made a mental note to keep a ear out for it Now this album feels familiar in all the right ways: you know what you’re getting with Knopfler, the clean guitars, the great riffs, and the half-hearted and mumbled singing (!), and you just can’t get enough of it. I’ve heard this album twice, and I’ll likely listen to it whenever I go out on a drive…
Dark Matter, by Pearl Jam: Remember Pearl Jam? Well, they’re still alive — please laugh if you got that — and they’re rocking! This is my favourite rock album of 2024 (maybe since there are so few rock albums coming out now?!). Honestly though, this is a really good rock album. My favourite tracks on the album are the rock ballad Wreckage and the Pearl-Jammy Upperhand.
My current favourite song though, that I’m playing on loop, is All In Good Time by Iron & Wine with Fiona Apple. My daughter had introduced me to Fiona Apple a few years ago: it took me a while to get into her music since I found the brilliant “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” album that my daughter loved quite difficult to get into (till I heard it a few times and started to me amazed — and a bit upset — at my daughter’s evolved taste in music). This collaboration of Fiona Apple with Iron & Wine is fantastic, and I can’t wait for the full album “Light Verse” from Iron & Wine that’s dropping on April 26th.
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Game of the week: Harold Halibut #quickread
I’ve been getting into Harold Halibut, a beautifully handmade indie game with a stop-motion like feel to it — over 10kgs of clay was used in creating the models in the game (!) — that was made over 11 years. Do check it out if you like warm, story-based, indie games too, here’s the Steam link, highly recommended.
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The Exhilarating and Terrifying FIDE Candidates #longread
Even as I start to write this, I wish I were a good sports journalist, so that I could do justice to this story.
The last two weeks of the FIDE Chess Candidates has been filled with the kind of excitement and drama that is worthy of a movie, and now hangs poised terrifyingly on the last day, with 4 possible winners of the tournament — including the 17-year-old Gukesh, one of the three Indian contenders in the tournament — who is now in sole lead at 8.5 points (and with Fabiano, Hikaru, and Nepo, all of who were among the initial favourites to win the tournament, close on Gukesh's back at 8 pts).
The tournament has been one of incredible competition across it's two halves. Some of the highlights of the tournament for me:
The brilliant Vidit Gujarati from India, with 3 early wins was looking promising in the early part of the tournament, but then he also had 3 early losses. He lost a marathon 6 hour long game, where he had some advantage, to Nepo in round 11, and seemed crushed by that, following that with a loss to Fabiano Caruana. He stands at 6th place, with 5.5 points, a mercurial showing at the candidates, his wins against Hikaru in the 2nd and 9th rounds are the memories to take away for him from the tournament.
Hikaru's progress through the tournament shows that you can't count a champion out. He was having an average tournament in the first half, with many draws, a few losses and just 1 win. But the loss to Vidit in the 9th round seems to have energized him - and he came back with wins in 10th, 11th, and 12th rounds to now be at 2nd place, and in threateningly good form...
World number 2, Fabiano Caruana, was also having an average tournament - 1 win, 1 loss, and all other draws till round 9. But with wins in round 10, round 12 (against Vidit who looked crushed after his defeat to Nepo in the previous round), and in round 13 (against Pragg) - Fabi is also at 2nd place with 8 points, looking ominous...
Pragg, my favourite, has had a topsy-turvy tournament. He has had winning positions, has shown his genius, but has also lost games from winning positions... I wish he had held in round 13 against Fabi and round 11 against Hikaru, so that Gukesh could have had a more clear chance at victory... but then, this is an individual tournament! He is now in 5th place with 6 points, a decent showing for his first candidates.
Nepo has been the leader throughout the tournament, till the last round when Gukesh moved ahead by half a point. He has had a brilliant tournament, with no losses at all... and that is frightening. His victories have come, 2 against Vidit, and 1 against Alireza; he has drawn with all the strong competition, even from positions that were tough and demanding.
The last 2 players - Nijat and Alireza - have had a tough tournament. For Nijat who was the lowest ranked player entering the candidates, this is understandable; for Alireza who was belled as one of the contenders to win the tournament, the tournament has been forgettable, including drama where there were complaints about his squeaky shoes distracting the players…
And that brings us back to Gukesh. He had a tough loss to Alireza - almost on time - in round 7, and victories against compatriots Pragg and Vidit. He has come back late in the tournament with wins against Nijat and Alireza in the last 2 rounds. He now stands in sole lead, but the final round later tonight will be decisive: a win will put him as sole leader and winner of the candidates, but a draw will not be sufficient (he'll tie for first place), and a loss would be disastrous…
Two of the final round pairings are what matter to determine the winner: Gukesh v/s Hikaru (Hikaru, who is in fine form, needs a win) and Fabi v/s Nepo (both of them need a win).
Who will it be? It will be nerve-racking from midnight till 4 am, but I am going to be up to watch this drama unfold... while cheering on for Gukesh!
Some tweets worth seeing:
Fans cheering for Gukesh after the last round
Chess.com reportage on the upcoming final round of the candidates
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Publishing my book #longread
I published my book — Failing Well — yesterday. It should be available on Amazon as an eBook in the next 2 days, and as a paperback (only in the US and UK, more on that later) in the next week. Do buy the book: all proceeds will be going to Sparsh Hospice, which is one of the few organizations in India working on end-of-life care.
Here’s the blurb and the cover of the book…
“Failing Well” is a captivating blend of memoir and instruction manual by Arun Rajappa. With over two decades of experience, Arun's journey spans from working on Outlook as a junior product manager to leading a product management organization for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365, and Emerging Markets as a Partner Director at Microsoft. He then transitioned to Google as Director of Product for Android & Play Store before taking on his current role as Country Manager for RIOT Games in India & South Asia.
In this book, Arun shares lessons learned from his many failures and hard-won successes in the ever-evolving world of product development. Guided by a mentor's wisdom that “success is all luck, but you can build a plan to avoid failure”, Arun reflects on his experiences to uncover the essential principles and strategies that underpin the creation of world-class products.
Through anecdotes and practical insights, Arun's narrative not only inspires but also equips readers with a deep understanding of what it takes to navigate the complex landscape of product management. From ideation to execution, from user research to dogfooding, this book offers a comprehensive roadmap for aspiring and seasoned product professionals alike.
I wanted to share a few thoughts on the actual publishing of the book:
I wrote the book in 2022 - 23 after losing my father. The book is dedicated to him, However, the book lay unpublished, though more or less complete, for a year.
The inspiration to complete the book came from two sources: the book Name Place Animal Thing by Lux Narayan and the book The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. I reviewed both books in an earlier post in February.
From “Name Place Animal Thing”, I found the inspiration to complete this “thing” that I had been working on, and had left incomplete…
From “The Creative Act”, I felt that I was writing the book just for myself, and that it didn’t have to be perfect before I put it out, and the reason that I had left it unpublished was because I felt a little overwhelmed with the publishing process.
When I started working on the book again in February this year, I initially thought I’d do an entire re-write — change the book completely. It took me a while to finally recognize that the book I wanted to re-write this one to was a different book, and this book was complete: I should just publish it!
When I restarted editing the book, I spent the first few weeks just in line editing, things like commas and dashes, fixing spelling mistakes, and so on.
Again, in the past two weeks I made a push: at the end of it, I felt that I wasn’t satisfied with 2 chapters of the book (they were OK, but a little complicated), and that many of the chapters could do with more pictures to make them more clear. But then I decided against it: I was complete with the book, and it was ready to see the light of the world, with all it’s imperfections…
Then started the tedious process of publishing the book on Amazon: I decided to do it all myself, and had to struggle with the poorly developed tools from Amazon: Kindle Create and KDP.
First was reformatting my entire document (which was in Google Docs) to Kindle Create, a page-by-page process. Once I had done this, I could export to the custom KPF format (for ebook) and epub format (for paperback).
Then the struggle began with the archaic KDP platform — uploading the manuscripts, editing cover pages in a tool from the 1990’s, understanding royalties and setting prices.
The fact that KDP platform requires different things for ebook and paperback was painful; and required a duplication of work!
At the end of the entire process, I was done — my book was published as an ebook, and as a paperback (though the paperback will not be available in India, something I found out after completing the process on KDP!).
Overall, I’m excited about publishing my first book; it feels like I’ve completed something that I wanted to do for a while, as a remembrance of my father — and that feels good…
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Extras: VALORANT Regional Retreat & my Mumbai Trip
Meeting students is perhaps the best part of my job! I love the energy & optimism that I hear from students, and it is great to see the joy & passion that our games spark in them. It was wonderful to meet the students at Vidyalankar Institute of Technology yesterday; it is also fantastic to see the support and recognition that our institutes are giving to gaming… (from my LinkedIn post)
… and this picture is from the VALORANT Regional Radiants influencer get-together we had in Bangalore last Sunday: it was a fantastic event, and especially good to meet Juice (who reads this substack) & to meet our passionate influencers from Kerala!
Keep reading — and do pray with me for Gukesh in the final round of the candidates!
I am always dumbfounded when I realize that pragg is older than gukesh, perhaps due to appearances.. But still hard to believe that Gukesh is just 17! I was hoping Vidit might place in the top 3 but alas..
And Gukesh wins the candidates!!! Drew with Hikaru, and the Fabi - Nepo game was so tense, with Fabi having a clear winning position, but being low on time - he missed the win, and they finally drew, which means that Gukesh WON! The youngest candidate at 17 years of age...