Happiness is not the absence of problems

The full quote from which I've taken the title of this posting is "Happiness is not the absence of problems, but the ability to deal with them", attributed to Charles Louis de Montesquieu. Hopefully its relevance will emerge below.

It's nearly a month since I moved to the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) here in Pune. Changing jobs and cities at the age of 56 is not totally trivial, in particular much of the effort (unpacking boxes and figuring out what to do with the contents) proved rather exhausting and left me with a dust allergy and consequent sore throat. Now that this phase is over I'm able to ask how I feel about the move. The answer in one word is: happy! I like IISER and I like Pune.

To briefly sum up the latter: the roads are good, the traffic where I live is far lighter than that in the area of Bombay where I used to live, my new apartment has a spectacular view of hills and little else, and the mutton in this town is particularly tasty. As for the weather, a winter made up of mild sunny days and cool nights (13-15 degrees C) makes for an idyllic existence and a sound sleep at night. I am now a concrete example of the well-known aphorism that "the climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere"!

To be sure there are negatives about Pune and I'm sure I will discover more. For the moment I'd highlight the conspicuous `discouraging notices' one sees everywhere: "no couples allowed" (on a park bench), "no bachelors, no alcohol, vegetarian only" (pasted all over a modern block of luxury apartments) and "please don't ask for directions" (at the vegetable market). But I think people here are nicer and more liberal than they would like to pretend to be.

Back to IISER. It's a relatively young institution (currently in its 7th year) in a growth phase. And I can readily identify what I like about it: there is a very concrete and widespread understanding that we have a mission to build a high-quality science university and that we cannot fail. The philosophy is essentially forward-looking and almost everything I hear is based on a win-win ideal. This ideal appears to trickle down from the very top but also has strong roots and therefore diffuses upwards from the base as well, causing an even distribution across all levels. Long may it last.

Of course it would be naive and foolish (I confess to being both on occasion) to pretend that IISER is not going to have problems. In fact one already hears of a few. But I don't worry too much because IISER appears to be a healthy institution, which means we can try our best to deal with the problems.

I've thought a fair amount about the health of institutions (and even blogged about this matter here and here) and come out with the following universal - though maybe over-simplified - observation. In any organisation, there is a goal to be achieved and this goal necessarily brings with it a lot of "external" problems. But these problems do not normally cause unhappiness. Indeed, scientific research itself is nothing but the attempt to solve external problems ("what's going on in the mind of Nature?"). But even less lofty problems ("what is the best design for a new campus?", "will the students like the cafeteria food?" etc) are inevitable and tend to at worst cause some irritation rather than any genuine despondency.

But there is a second category of problems which I will call, for lack of a better word, "unnecessary" problems. These are caused by human beings who are either immature or incompetent or crooked or corrupt or perverse or plain stupid, who have somehow got themselves into powerful positions and are creating difficulties for others. In such an institution, not only does one still have to solve the external problems, but the very attempt to solve them is stifled by human-created internal roadblocks. The frustration caused by this second-order type of problem is potentially infinite, precisely because it is so "unnecessary". In an institution where the leaders are problem-creators rather than problem-solvers, the question is no longer "what's going on in the mind of Nature?" but rather, "what's going on in the mind of the Dean?" (or Director, or Registrar, or whoever). As Montesquieu would astutely point out, this situation pretty much blocks one's ability to deal with the genuine problems and leads to gross unhappiness.

Note that corruption (financial or academic) is not necessarily the motivation of these problem-creators, as I've discussed previously here. The other adjectives I've used above all correspond to different people I've encountered in positions of power for which they were entirely unsuitable.

So if I have to sum up what is healthy about IISER, it's the fact that everyone I've met here seems to be actively trying to solve problems. There don't seem to be problem-creating officials around every corner so the problems here end up being of the genuine, "external", kind. It's not always easy to solve these external problems, but at least in this ecosystem one can give them one's best.

My wish for IISER Pune is that it should forever remain an exciting battleground to deal with the real problems, those associated with doing high-level research and teaching and administration anywhere in the world. May it never stoop low enough to create its own unnecessary problems.

This is also my wish for all other institutions.

Mahler, Mozart and Ms Jenkins

It started with the announcement that the Symphony Orchestra of India would perform a concert of the German romantics: Wagner, Richard Strauss and Mahler. Now I can live without this particular Strauss, and I don't know enough about Wagner, but Mahler's Fifth Symphony - which was on the programme - has long been one of my favourite orchestral pieces. It opens with a solo trumpet going:

pa pa pa pa... pa pa pa pa... pa pa pa paaaaaaa...

and after a few rounds of that, the gigantic orchestra announces its presence with:

blam, bang, kaBOOM! kerBLOOIE!! dhiSHOOM!!!

All in all, an excellent piece with which to show off your new music system, as I found when I joined TIFR a mere 28 years ago. I can remember parties held at my place exclusively to listen to this piece, and no, I will not reveal what substances were consumed at those parties. Just remember it was the 1980's.

So a week ago an orchestra that despite its name featured a surprising number of blonde and East Asian members, performed this explosive piece at the J.J. Bhabha Auditorium in Bombay. I sat through it with mouth open and heart pounding (no, just cold coffee). The third movement, the Scherzo, moves away from the explosive stuff and features an airy waltz that, every now and then, appears to trip over itself. It has moments that beautifully evoke the German countryside, possibly because Mahler wrote it while living in this hut. This is followed by the Adagietto, an incredibly sad and moving piece that's often performed on its own and became even more famous after it featured in Visconti's film Death in Venice as an accompaniment to the death of Dirk Bogarde. A relatively cheerful Rondo concludes the symphony. This also concluded the evening at the J.J. Bhabha, upon which I wandered out in a slight daze going pa pa pa paaaaaaa, and (only after I was safely in my car) kaBOOM!!

These encounters always plant something in one's mind, so a few days later I found myself revisiting Mozart's fairy-tale opera Die Zauberflöte or The Magic Flute. I've owned a copy for decades and never quite sat through the whole thing, but after the Mahler experience I found it relatively light and enjoyable and have been listening to it for a whole week. There was one surreal moment last weekend when I drove past a few thousand revellers dancing in the streets and carrying their Ganpatis for immersion, with my windows firmly closed and the car stereo going "Zu Hilfe! Zu Hilfe!" I felt irrationally guilty about this, as though it was blasphemy to be listening to opera while the elephant god was on his final journey of the year.

One of the most fun pieces in the Magic Flute is the aria known as Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen ("hell's vengeance boils in my heart") where the wicked Queen of the Night exhorts her daughter to assassinate her rival Sarrastro. The soprano performing this has to fairly scream her lungs out (maybe I shouldn't have described the opera as "relatively light and enjoyable"!). Mozart wrote this part to be extremely difficult, apparently his sister-in-law was the first to ever perform it and she was an outstanding singer.

While reading about this aria, I stumbled upon the fascinating case of Ms Jenkins and thought my readers would like to know about her. My curiosity was stirred by this casual comment in Wikipedia: "The aria was also a favorite of the famously incompetent singer Florence Foster Jenkins." Famously incompetent? I had to know more! And Wikipedia did not disappoint. Her Wiki page describes her as "an American amateur operatic soprano who was known, and ridiculed, for her lack of rhythm, pitch, tone, aberrant pronunciation of libretti, and overall poor singing ability." It goes on to inform us that "From her recordings it is apparent that Jenkins had little sense of pitch and rhythm, and was barely capable of sustaining a note. Her accompanist can be heard making adjustments to compensate for her tempo variations and rhythmic mistakes. Her dubious diction, especially in foreign language songs, is also noteworthy. Nonetheless, she became popular for the amusement she provided."

Whoever wrote this Wikipedia entry apparently managed to control his or her laughter long enough to continue in this vein: "Despite her patent lack of ability, Jenkins apparently was firmly convinced of her greatness." We learn that "She was aware of her critics, but never let them stand in her way". And she came up with a memorable quote too: "People may say I can't sing," she said, "but no one can ever say I didn't sing."

After staring at the Wiki page for a long time and debating if it was wise, I finally summoned up the courage to click on the audio link - and got to hear the famously incompetent lady attempting Der Hölle Rache. It's only 23 seconds long, but it's ghastly beyond words and has made me a lifelong fan of Florence Foster Jenkins.

Permissible inducements

Today's Times of India carries, on an inner page, a fascinating article titled "How Shukla saved Rao govt in '92". Mr V.C. Shukla was parliamentary affairs minister in the Congress government of the early 1990's, and by his own recent admission to the press, he managed to help this government narrowly survive a no-confidence vote. As they were just one vote short of a majority, Mr Shukla located a member of parliament from a different party who could be induced to vote in favour of the ruling party.

His account of the inducement is what makes the story fascinating. "I promised him chairmanship of parliamentary committee, foreign trips. I used permissible inducements [italics mine]... no money was discussed." So that's alright then? I rather think not. A bribe is defined as "money or any other valuable consideration given or promised with a view to corrupting the behavior of a person". Chairmanship of a high-profile committee, with all the power that brings, as well as foreign trips, certainly count as "valuable consideration". So Mr Shukla bribed an MP on behalf of his party, and he feels this is quite acceptable to admit today just because the bribe was not paid in cash. The journalist breathlessly reporting this tale (Akshaya Mukul by name) also seems unaware of anything morally out of place.

Courts of law in India are fortunately not so literal-minded. When dowry is demanded and paid, it doesn't become OK just because it was paid in motorcycles and TV sets rather than cash. People have gone to jail for just such actions. But then, motorcycles and cash certainly have an interchangeable nature. Foreign trips, and chairmanships, are not saleable or tradeable. Could that be why Mr Shukla considered them permissible inducements?

In this connection I must trot out one more of my "keen" observations about public service, whether rendered by politicians towards their constituents or academics towards their underlings, and the collateral that gets skimmed off without anyone noticing. The following photo helps illustrate my point:

An elected representative has, evidently, sanctioned money from a fund (that originates with the taxpayer) to repair a building in Bombay. Why have the tenants spent their own money to put up a notice thanking him? Does he deserve public thanks in the first place, for doing what he was elected to do and with money that's not his own? It's clear the prominent banner will boost his profile, which may in turn favourably impact him at the next elections. And perhaps that's not a totally bad thing in today's environment, where performance is rarely considered when it comes to re-electing politicians. 

But now let's turn the spotlight a little closer, to the community within which I (and many of my readers) exist: the academic community. I can do no better than quote some lines from a talk I presented a few days ago at an Ethics workshop in Delhi. I spoke of a type of academic, frequently found in administrative positions, who can be described as:

“Mister 10%”: skims off benefit to self in exchange for professional actions, e.g. Head of Department gives a promotion or financial allocation in exchange for loyalty or co-authorship.

I suspect many of my readers are aware how common this is. But I only understood its pervasive and universal nature after I became head of my department two years ago. All of a sudden I found it my pleasant duty to disburse a certain quantum of funds for computational equipment, and conference travel, to the faculty members, post-doctoral fellows and students of my department. All taxpayer's money, of course. I'm sure I haven't done a perfect job, but have tried to follow a sensible combination of rules, procedures and common (including scientific) sense. And more than half the time, I've received such effusive thanks - sometimes a virtual threat of being embraced - that it's led me to wonder. Is there any "cashable value" in such thanks? Can I selectively manipulate the people who are grateful to me in order to serve my own agenda? 

The thought still fascinates me. Now if only I can put together an actual agenda, before my "gratitude miles" expire....

Bizarre attack on constitutional freedom

Rarely have I been so stung by a piece of political idiocy than I have by the arrest and remand to custody of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi this weekend. The Government of India has always specialised in the easygoing, relaxed approach towards people I regard as serious criminals (those responsible for instigating murderous riots, or those who incite hatred towards religious or linguistic communities, or on a much smaller scale those rich kids whose drunk driving takes several lives). But it comes down heavily on those who, however misguided, challenge the prevailing orthodoxy because they are sincere about wanting social change. This includes Indian Maoists for example. However I don't like to rush into print defending Maoists because I have a fundamental problem with their ideology of violence against the state. Perhaps there are some Maoists who don't believe in or practice violence, but with a given person I can't necessarily be sure (Binayak Sen was an exception whose personal non-violence was fairly evident to me).

The case of Aseem Trivedi is a lot simpler. His cartoons are generic sarcastic attacks on politicians, for which reason I find them a shade simplistic. Then again he doesn't work for me, so who am I to approve or not! He works for himself and for various publications and for organisations such as Cartoonists Against Corruption. Under the Indian Constitution he has every right to say what he has been saying and draw what he's been drawing. There is nothing remotely seditious (or even offensive) about what he's drawn, unless it could be argued that making Indian politicians generically look bad is harmful to the country. I would dearly love to read the text of such an argument if it was ever made, and if I could stop laughing while reading it.

One example of Aseem's cartoons, which can still be found on his Facebook page, is about the award of an Oscar to the Indian Parliament, in the form of a "Lifetime Achievement Award for a hundred years of सजीव अभिनय " (which I believe translates as "play-acting"). The cartoons that seem to have led to his arrest (as of now, they are easily found on the web) are a little more blunt. One shows the national emblem of India with the three lions replaced by wolves, their fangs dripping blood, and the motto सत्यमेव जयते (the truth alone triumphs) by भ्रष्टमेव जयते (corruption alone triumphs). Another depicts the "gang rape of Mother India" with a politician and a bureaucrat holding her and saying "come on... hurry up..." while a devil figure labelled "Corruption" prepares for the assault. Mother India is fully clothed so there is no case of obscenity in the very literal Indian (i.e. Victorian) sense of nudity. She is also looking extremely angry. All in all there is no insult to the country, even someone with the most distorted literalist mindset can see that.

I'm not quite sure how things are supposed to go now. It's certain that any Indian court above a certain level will let him off and pass strictures against the government, the police and the magistrate who put him behind bars. By that time he will have spent some days in jail and the purpose of this abusive action by the authorities will have been served: to frighten off anyone else who dares to lampoon politicians. My concern is that this sets the bar for what is permissible (to the police/government) very very very low. The three "very" 's are intentional. Some day we supporters of freedom of expression may have to address a case where a very hard-hitting, explicit or even repulsive drawing needs to be defended under the Constitution of India. If Aseem's mild, harmless work is the benchmark then there is no hope.

A final thought: could I also be subjected to a one-week free stay at government expense, just for blogging about this case and linking to relevant material including Aseem's Facebook page? Could you go behind bars for following my links? It's worth thinking about.

Little dictators and academia

Today is the 36th death anniversary of my father and, as I've done before, I'd like to write down some thoughts inspired by him. One thing I learned from him (and also from my mother) was to admire ideas, objects and achievements, but not to overly admire individuals. They both saw individuals, very correctly, as mere instruments in the making of these ideas, objects and achievements. A logical corollary is that both were spiritual people but didn't find it important to bring God into the picture.

In this view, one admires General Relativity rather than Einstein, Rashtrapati Bhavan rather than Lutyens, Gitanjali rather than Tagore. I don't for a moment pretend that my parents were entirely free of admiration towards people, but it was not a fetish for them. In the same way, I've deeply admired the musician Pandit Kumar Gandharva for several decades but my admiration has always been focused more on his works (of which I have an enormous collection) than on himself. And recently I surprised myself by writing on someone's Facebook page that I was tired of hearing stories about Richard Feynman, for whose science I have of course the deepest respect.

In India, at least among the middle class, this approach is uncommon to say the least. For some reason we Indians fawn on people and spend all our time elevating them to absurd heights. Sooner or later they fall from these heights and then we want to trample them in the dirt. It is an anger born from disappointed admiration. This explains, for me, our absurd relationship with politicians. Bring a politician in front of middle-class Indians and they will grovel at his feet. And yet, in private the same people will profess complete contempt for all politicians and for politics itself. Their contempt is the flip side of admiration, and the deeper the admiration, the louder the contempt. This helps me understand why we keep paradoxically voting for the same people and then (but only in private) showering abuse on them.

Despite everything I've said, I did learn from my father that there are a few people worth admiring, and these are people with a wide and well-integrated range of admirable qualities. I also learned that there is one class of person never to be admired: the larger-than-life dictator figure. In our family we all considered fascism to be a total abomination because it went against principles of natural justice, which we greatly respected. Importantly, we understood that the fascist impulse is not confined to the political world. For every globally powerful figure like Hitler or Mussolini, there are thousands of little dictators whom one encounters in one's life: people who are all-powerful within an organisation, a social grouping, a family, an academic institution. And around each such dictator there are dozens or hundreds of fawning admirers for whom the dictator can do no wrong.

I'd like to connect this with some observations from my long experience in academia. Most of my scientist colleagues are vocal in their opposition to dictatorship and fascism, which they rightly view as antithetical to democracy and justice. They support a liberal democratic system for the country, the state, the city in which they live. But shrink the circle further to cover only their academic institution, and a truly surprising love of dictatorship surfaces. It is coupled with a complete distate, even contempt, for democracy of any sort. My antennae quiver when someone in my institute, or elsewhere in academia, says something like: "democracy is no good as a principle for running a scientific institution". That may be true enough if you idiotically imagine democracy to mean gathering everyone and asking them to vote on everything. In fact that would not be democracy but majoritarianism, which is quite different. Democracy is defined by Wikipedia as "a form of government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives". Clearly, a lot hinges on the meaning of "having a say". One can transport this definition to academia (I won't try to actually do it here) by adding words like "participatory", "transparent" etc. In short, democracy is an excellent thing for academia but, like the larger version for a city or country, it can be functional or dysfunctional. That depends on the the quality of the leaders as well as the quality of the people they lead.

So, what about those colleagues who have a distaste for democracy in academia? What is their preferred system? We don't have to look very far to find out. India has a surprising profusion of institutions each associated to a single person. In fact, institutions are often said to be "given" to a person, as in "he got a new institution from the Department of ....". Publicly funded institutions are surely not gifts in a real sense, they are paid for by the taxpayer and belong only to her. But if the leader is a dictator then the distinction is easily blurred. Whenever the head of the institution benevolently allocates some (public) funding to a member, that member must be duly grateful. If the head dislikes someone in their institution, that person's career is effectively over. As with any fascist system, the blame lies as much with supporters falling over themselves to comply. And there is constant fawning: "oh wonderful leader, oh strong leader, show us the way forward in your great wisdom". Two central features of fascism are seen here. As per good old Wikipedia, "fascists seek elevation of their nation based on commitment to an organic national community where its individuals are united together as one people through national identity". And one of their aims is to "promote the rule of people deemed innately superior while seeking to purge society of people deemed innately inferior". Sadly, one is seeing these kinds of principles being de facto approved and followed by people who are leading researchers in science, even as they rail against analogous dictators in national politics.

Unfortunately I can't get to chat about this with my father, but I can easily guess what advice he would have given: others may do what they will, but you should never support dictatorship in any shape or form.

Don't tell anyone

One of my bugbears these days, and really since the beginning of my life, is secrecy. I don't trust people who keep secrets. Of course, if they keep secrets then they don't trust me either. So it's mutual.

Secrecy is not the same as confidentiality. When something is to be kept confidential, it's pretty clear what the harm would be if the information came out. In my professional life, it could be a reference letter in which a scientist evaluates the work of another. In personal matters it could be someone's love life. There is in fact a right to privacy and it needs to be respected.

But secrecy is a way for the powerful to remain powerful, and to protect abuse of power. Secrecy of this kind is for some people a way of life, a culture, a cult. Those who subscribe to it know exactly when to keep their mouths shut, and follow their instinct firmly even when their actions are both morally repugnant and risky. Some of the plainest examples are of priests in the Catholic church who were known to have sexually abused children. On all too many occasions, the first impulse of their seniors in the church was to cover up. The list of such cases is incredibly long and without cover-ups it would have been a lot shorter.

Outside the church, Penn State football coach Joe Paterno covered up repeated acts of molestation by his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. In the end the latter was caught and punished, and the former disgraced in consequence. As the Wikipedia entry points out, "while Paterno did not violate any laws, anyone with knowledge of possible sexual abuse against minors had a "moral responsibility" to notify police. Despite the gravity of allegations against Sandusky, Paterno did not notify state police." And here's the key point: Paterno was not himself a molester. He would have lost nothing, and gained a lot of glory, besides doing the morally correct thing, had he blown the whistle on his assistant as soon as he came to know about it. From this perspective, his action (or rather lack of it) is more inexplicable than that of Sandusky.

At work, I've found myself constantly at war with the culture of secrecy. In the 1980's, as a very junior faculty member in TIFR I was in charge of coordinating graduate courses. But decisions, including those affecting these courses, were taken by the faculty of which I was not a member - because until 2004 (yes that recently!) junior faculty at TIFR could not be called "faculty" or attend faculty meetings. What terrible state secrets would they have stumbled on, one wonders? The result was that as course coordinator I had no input into faculty decisions, and whenever they made a decision that affected my functioning they didn't even have the decency to inform me. This is not a formula for creating a healthy working system, so the system remained dysfunctional for a long time. That however did not seem to bother anyone. The important thing in this case, as in so many others, was that secrecy was more important than a functioning system.

In the good old days Indian Airlines would carefully hide information from passengers. The departure time of a flight might have long passed but the notice board would stubbornly show "on time". No one was ever told what to expect next. Things are not that much better today, since some genius invented the winning line "the flight is delayed due to late arrival of the incoming aircraft" as though that explains anything at all.

Even within my extended family, secrecy has taken on a primary role these days. Not wanting to reveal family secrets to the public (oh now I'm doing it!) I can only mention that senior people are refusing to part with a simple piece of information even though releasing it would spare themselves from accusations of wrongdoing. The natural presumption in such a situation is that the concerned persons are covering up something. And while they might well be, it's also possible that they're not. Perhaps the reason they won't release information is that they are devout followers of the secrecy cult and they understand that once you start revealing things then, really, there's no end, is there? A guilty conscience is more powerful than actual guilt.

When the Right to Information act was passed in India a mere seven years ago, I was very happy about it and I still feel that way. Despite the comments I hear all the time about its potential for abuse, it is brilliant because it offers every Indian citizen the right to know what public institutions are up to. This has struck deep into the culture of abuse of power in our country. If that culture is not yet dead it's only because it's a monster with many heads and Terminator-like powers of regeneration. So secrecy remains the default. I'm reminded of a joke told about a leading organisation of the Indian government: the head of the institution calls his assistant and whispers "I've received an Office Order from the Central Vigilance Commission that we are required to have a Transparency Officer. But don't tell anyone!"

Paper is for sad souls

In the early 1990's, I took a bet with the Chairman of my department that by the year 2000, printing on paper would become obsolete and people would take to reading on their computer screens. I lost the bet, but was merely a little ahead of my time. Yesterday it was announced that in the UK, sales of Kindle e-books have overtaken print books: 114 of the former were sold for every 100 of the latter.

Now Kindle is not the only way to read e-books. One can download over 40,000 e-books for free, in pretty much any format you like, from the Project Gutenberg website. For those sad souls (and I know quite a few) who think everything downloaded for free is illegal, these books are all completely legal and are free simply because their copyright has expired. The website maintains a list of the most popular downloads on a daily basis, and my readers will be delighted to know that number four on the list is the Kamasutra of Vatsyayana, where one can pick up fascinating recommendations such as: "At all times when kissing and such like things are begun, the woman should give a reply with a hissing sound."

If you are done with ROTFL, let's go back to Kindle. A lot of people think this is a device you need to buy and carry around, and indeed there's a whole range of these e-readers. They have particularly good screen resolutions so you may want to try one of them if you feel computer screens don't do it for you. I prefer to download and install the free Kindle software on my Macbook Air, my iPad and my Android phone.

Once you're done with that, a wonderful new life awaits you. Assuming you have a free amazon.com account (and are not one of those sad souls who refuses to use their credit card over the internet) you can register your credit card once and turn on "1-click ordering". Thereafter you browse the online Kindle store, locate a book you want, order it with - as promised - one click, and immediately download it to your device. Kindle books are reasonably priced, I haven't spent more than ten dollars on one so far. What's more, the next time you start up another of your devices you can download the same book there at no extra cost. And now you can do a whole bunch of things that you couldn't even dream of with paper books.

If you're reading a book on an iPad or other tablet, and open the same book later on your phone, it will automatically offer to scroll to the last page you reached on your previous device. So you can seamlessly switch devices. This enables you to continue your reading in a dentist's waiting room instead of browsing his latest issue of "Root Canal Digest". Of course, for all this your Android phone should have an internet connection, a very minimal GPRS that costs 99 rupees a month is more than enough. You can also read your Kindle books on someone else's device or a computer that runs Linux (for which Kindle software is unavailable) by the simple expedient of pointing your browser to the Kindle Cloud and logging in using your amazon.com details. There are all your books, waiting eagerly to be read. You can carry a hundred or ten thousand books with you on your next trip without worrying about the baggage allowance. Your device will remember how far you got with each book, so no need for bookmarks.

And there's more. If you forget where in your novel a certain character originally appeared, just type the name into the search window and you will be directed to all their previous appearances. If you don't know what a word means, just hold your finger over it and a dictionary definition will pop up. If you don't like small print, increase the size of your font. Kindle re-organises your pages automatically so that each page precisely fills the screen of your device whatever the font size. You can make notes on your book and even (this is weird and I disabled it) view comments made by other readers of the same book. 

Of course you might be one of those ever-present sad souls who says (i) I like the feel of a real book in my hands, (ii) I can't possibly read a book on the small screen of a mobile phone, (iii) I don't have an internet connection, or (iv) I don't want to read books on a "device", the word "device" makes me throw up.

If "such like things" are the case with you then all I can say is, you deserve "a reply with a hissing sound".