10 lb penalty

Another fine, thrilling novel from the pen of Dick Francis.

Ben Julliard wants to become a race jockey. But he is plucked from his promising career by some false allegation and catapulted into helping his father who is contesting a county election.

The problem is that his father has too many enemies who do not hesitate to either injure him in order to scare him to vacate that seat or even kill him. Ben gets in the thick of action by helping his father to win the election.

Once that done, Ben gets off to University to study mathematics and revive his racing career side by side. But the clouds continue to hover over his father who has now become a successful politician and vying for the top leadership of the party.

The same set of people are out to derail him. Ben manages to solve the crime and attempted crime in his amateurish way. Dick continues to enthrall readers with his fast paced novels. Goodreads 5/5

16.07 kms

16.07 kms for the day combined with 7.02 kms yesterday, 23 kms for the weekend. Have a great Sunday folks.

7.02 kms

Easy 7,02 kms for the morning. The cold wave seems to be receding. Have a great day folks.

15.17 kms

15.17 kms today being a public holiday here in India being the Republic Day and 7.25 kms yesterday, rounded off to 22.42 kms for two days, back to back running. Happy Republic Day.

11.73 kms

11.73 kms easy long run for the day. Have a great day folks.

The Khufra Run

A fast paced thriller from the master story teller Jack Higgins, “The Khufra Run” has all the ingredients of a potboiler.

Jack Nelson has retired from the army and now running a plane in Ibiza. His best friend Turkovich or Turk for short has a boat Mary Grant from which he does skin diving for a living.

In comes a naked woman across the jeep which Nelson is driving. Once he rescues her from hoodlums, he goes deep into a treasure hunt which has history, politics and church involved in it. Sister Claire is after a treasure which went down with the plane which was ferrying herself and her father out of Algeria, running away from the army.

The plane is buried in the Khufra marshes which is impossible to navigate and against them are Colonel Taleb of the Algerian army and the ruthless Husa horsemen who come out of nowhere. Non stop action thriller from Jack Higgins. Goodreads 5/5

7.04 kms

7.04 kms easy run for the morning. Have a great day folks.

7.48 kms

Easy 7.48 kms recovery run after Sunday’s half. Have a great day folks.

The Beach Cafe

A heart warming coming of age story of a young girl Evie Flynn who inherits a beach cafe in Cornwall’s rocky coast.

The cafe has everything in splendour — a splendid location off the beach, quaint little village, serene weather, dedicated customers et al. Only that Evie does not know how to run a cafe. She has not done any such thing working as she was in clerical positions in London.

Her aunt leaves the cafe to her name and Evie initially decides to run it from remote location but that proves to be disastrous with the cafe slowly losing its clientele, staff stealing things, grumpy staff not being co-operative.

Evie then decides to focus full time into the cafe and she achieves success through little steps though there were many problems to begin with lack of staff, hostile neighbourhood and myriad little problems. Her personal love life also takes a nose dive with her present beau deciding to leave her while she works in the cafe.

All’s well that end’s well towards the end. Happy do good kinda book. Goodreads 2/5

21.02 kms

First Day, First Show!! 21.02 kms to kick start the new year. Weather was awesome throughout, only slowed towards the end. Happy New Year everyone

The Sentry

A gangland war with international ramifications — this fast page turner from Robert Crais with Joe Pike an ex police officer at the helm of it.

Joe witnesses Dru and her uncle Wilson being beaten up by two thugs, interferes and gets thick into action with Mexicans, Bolivian drug dealers, FBI, getting involved.

Dru and her uncle are not what they seem to be, which adds to the mystery. Elvis Cole helps Joe Pike in unravelling the mystery and so does Cole’s ex who is a lawyer, she gets her firm interrogator. There are loads of money involved and a FBI agent who turns out to be a fake one.

Joe Pike has some feelings for Dru Rayne but that does not help in the end. Too much of body bags later, the mystery is revealed. Goodreads 3/5

central payments fraud information registry

To streamline reporting, enhance efficiency and automate the payments fraud management process, the fraud reporting module is being migrated to DAKSH – Reserve Bank’s Advanced Supervisory Monitoring System. The migration will be effective from January 01, 2023, i.e., entities shall commence reporting of payment frauds in DAKSH from this date. In addition to the existing bulk upload facility to report payment frauds, DAKSH provides additional functionalities, viz. maker-checker facility, online screen-based reporting, option for requesting additional information, facility to issue alerts / advisories, generation of dashboards and reports, etc.

CPFIR – Reporting Guidelines

• All RBI authorised Payment System Operators (PSOs) / providers and payment system participants operating in India are required to report all payment frauds, including attempted incidents, irrespective of value, either reported by their customers or detected by the entities themselves. This reporting was earlier facilitated through Electronic Data Submission Portal (EDSP) and is being migrated to DAKSH.
• The responsibility to submit the reported payment fraud transactions shall be of the issuer bank / PPI issuer / credit card issuing NBFCs, whose issued payment instrument has been used in the fraud.
• Entities are required to validate the payment fraud information reported by the customer in their own systems to ensure the authenticity and completeness, before reporting the same to RBI on individual transaction basis.
• Entities are required to report payment frauds (domestic and international) to CPFIR as per the specified timelines (currently within 7 calendar days from date of reporting by customer / date of detection by the entity).
• Entities may continue to report payment frauds as per the extant reporting format using the bulk upload facility in DAKSH or report individual payment frauds online using the screen-based facility under the Incident Module of the DAKSH platform.
• After go-live of payment fraud reporting in DAKSH effective January 01, 2023, entities shall not be able to report any payment frauds in EDSP. Entities may, however, continue to update and close payment frauds that were reported in EDSP until December 31, 2022. Reserve Bank shall subsequently migrate the historical data from EDSP to DAKSH.
• The reporting format remains unchanged
• Though some elements / fields of the Reporting Format are indicated as ‘Optional’, entities shall strive to include them as part of initial reporting itself and only in exceptional cases be reported as updates.

Rip Tide

Engrossing story of espionage, action, thrills thrown in “Rip Tide” by Stella Rimington, a fast paced spy novel.

Liz Carlyle is a MI5 operative and concerned when Somalian pirates hijack a relief agency ship in which one British Asian is caught. The Briton, Amir Khan, a Pakistani origin Britisher is just one rung of a huge operation which is planning some major hit mission in Britain.

Though they don’t know it at first, meticulous investigation brings forth a sinister design to enlist radicalised British Pakistanis through the devious Athens route, which involves hijacking relief carrying ships with valuable cargo.

Carefully drawn plot by Stella Rimington, the ex head of MI5 in Britain, makes it an entralling novel with lots of action and drama. Goodreads 5/5

Temples & Legends of Maharashtra

This is an excellent book of all the main temples & legends of Maharashtra state in India.

Written by M.S. Mate, first in 1962 and then several editions later, it still resonates with originality and purity. The book gives detailed history including archeological and mythological past of the temples covered by it.

The book covers the Mahalakshmi temple of Kolhapur which is famous, Pandharpur — Vitthal which is another famous shrine and Morgaon Ganesh, Tuljapur Bhavani, Ganagapur — Dattatreya (which is actually in present day Karnataka), Pedhe — Parshurama, Bhimashankar, Tryambakeshwar near Nashik, and Khandoba — Jejuri.

Obviously various other temples are not covered like the famous Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai, Mumbadevi, Babulnath, Mahalakhsmi, Shirdi etc. which have got equal bragging rights. Also the book does not cover the Ashtavinayak circuit of eight temples in and around Pune, which a devotee is supposed to do and visit in a particular order.

Goodreads 5/5

8.69 kms

8.68 kms in early morning, weather is not as chill as to be expected in a December. Have a great day folks.