Ultra Marathon Man

Just finished reading "Ultra Marathon Man - Confessions of an All-Night Runner" by Dean Karnazes - an absorbing and overwhelming story of his early athletic prowess, loss of his sister to accident, his subsequent forays away from running for 15 years and rediscovery of running to running ultra marathons to running crazy distances and impossible feats like running the south pole marathon, running 199 miles non stop etc. His heroic attempt at running the Western States 100 miler and succeeding first time and the Badwater Marathon and failing first time have been very poignantly told. A very nice inspirational story with dollops of quotable quotes for keeping in one's mirror or desktop. The paperback edition has given details of his training plan, nutrition, strategy etc. at the end so that helps in people who are planning to run short distances like the marathon instead of crazy distances like ultra marathon and beyond. A must read for all running addicts. 

The Accidental Billionaires

Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook – A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal (2009) is a literary cocktail of intrigue and ambition, a heady narrative that chronicles the messy yet meteoric genesis of a platform that would irreversibly transform human connectivity in the 21st century. Written with the velocity of a thriller and the colour of a novel, it reconstructs the birth pangs of Facebook amidst a swirling vortex of camaraderie, rivalry, litigation, and the irresistible temptations of fortune and fame.

Mezrich eschews the dispassionate sobriety of orthodox reportage in favour of novelistic dramatization. His reliance on extensive interviews—most notably with Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder turned aggrieved financier—renders the account both vivid and partial. Zuckerberg’s refusal to participate ensures that the narrative leans heavily toward Saverin’s vantage point, lending it emotional immediacy even as it compromises objectivity. Dialogue is reconstructed, interiorities are imagined, and events are rendered with the verve of a potboiler rather than the precision of history.

The saga commences in Harvard’s hallowed halls of the early 2000s, a milieu of privilege, pedigree, and exclusionary clubs. Here emerges Mark Zuckerberg, depicted as a socially maladroit but algorithmically gifted wunderkind; Eduardo Saverin, the convivial confidant and initial financier; and the Winklevoss twins, embodiments of patrician entitlement nursing a grievance. Mezrich dramatizes the embryonic “TheFacebook,” its wildfire propagation across campuses, and the eventual rupture between Zuckerberg and Saverin as Silicon Valley’s siren call beckoned the company into uncharted realms of hyper-capitalized success.

At its core, the book is a morality play of betrayal. Saverin—the erstwhile benefactor—finds himself unceremoniously edged out, his equity diluted as Zuckerberg aligns with Sean Parker, Napster’s flamboyant enfant terrible. Mezrich sketches Zuckerberg as coldly utilitarian, Parker as rakishly visionary yet reckless, and Saverin as the sacrificial lamb immolated on the altar of technological destiny. The emotional fulcrum lies in the disintegration of friendship: a study in how differing ambitions—Zuckerberg’s obsessive compulsion to build, Saverin’s pursuit of financial and social legitimacy, and Parker’s hunger for notoriety—collided and combusted.

Beyond the personal, the book juxtaposes the cloistered traditions of Harvard’s East Coast elitism with the anarchic, disruptive ethos of Silicon Valley. In Mezrich’s telling, Zuckerberg’s genius is presented as a Faustian bargain: brilliance purchased at the expense of empathy, trust, and loyalty.

The prose is propulsive, making the work eminently readable even for those indifferent to the intricacies of technology. It encapsulates the zeitgeist of the nascent 2000s, when social media shimmered with utopian promise before metastasizing into a global behemoth. Its subsequent cinematic adaptation—Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010)—distilled Mezrich’s account into an Oscar-winning modern parable, immortalizing Zuckerberg as the archetypal ruthless antihero of the digital age.

Ultimately, The Accidental Billionaires is less an unimpeachable chronicle of Facebook’s founding than a dramatized fable—an allegory of ambition, avarice, and betrayal. It enthralls, it provokes, and it reminds us that in the theatre of success, friendship is too often the first casualty. Goodreads 5/5

Non resident guarantee for non fund based facilities between two resident entities

Hitherto RBI had allowed a resident entity to make payment to a non resident entity who had given guarantee on a ECB loan on the invocation of the guaranty. Now it has extended this facility further by allowing the same even for non-fund based facilities between two resident entities in India (i.e. letter of credit/ guarantees/ letter of undertaking/ letter of comfort). The provisions of FEMA will become applicable only when the guaranty is invoked so when that happens the non resident guarantor will satisfy the guaranty to the resident lender in India and the principal debtor in India will then make the necessary arrangements to repatriate the funds to the non resident guarantor.

http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=7531&Mode=0

Hedging facilities for QFIs

Hedging facilities have been made available to Qualified Financial Institutions to hedge their currency risk on account of their permissible investments in India. QFIs have been allowed to invest in rupee denominated units of domestic mutual funds and listed equity shares and to purchase debt securities on repatriation basis. Contents of the RBI circular allowing this can be found at http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=7537&Mode=0