Category: People
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It’s the thought that counts
How many times have you narrowed in on home-cooked food for the cause of falling sick? Look back and see. It’s really the thought that counts. I’ve eaten in the best of restaurants, where attention to hygiene is paid to the minutest detail. And I have eaten in homes, where resources limit expenses on preparation…
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The Paradox of Our Time in History
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge,…
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Greater than Hiroshima Nagasaki?
Two days ago, when the diplomacy started sharing news that there was risk of a nuclear meltdown in Japan after the tsunami, something stirred inside me. If things were under control, such sparks would already have been smothered. While social media rose to offer technology that people could use to “facetime” with loved ones, using…
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Stock market answering to Tsunamis
A two-feet high tsunami hit the eastern coast of Japan today. While the toll of human lives remains to be calculated, the extent of destruction is estimated to be huge. 8.9 on the richter scale, this earthquake is greater in magnitude than what man can remember in the past many years. Not to mention, the…
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Unemployed and Employable
13,000,000 new people join the workforce in India each year. Skilled and unskilled, educated and uneducated, literate and illiterate. Most people will take up a job not because they want to do something, but because they need money to survive first, and afford the basic necessities of life. Moving on, many would graduate to the…
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Forgotten ideas, apples to bananas
Banana Republic. A term pejorative in modern political sciences, but coined for the purpose of exploitation of large scale plantation agriculture. It’s precisely the way language can twist our perception of being. If I have an apple, and you have an apple, and we both exchange apples; then you and I would still have one…
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Corrosion, Not dents
1945. August 9th. Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, the Americans had struck once again, to bomb the Japanese city of Nagasaki. On the 15th of August, two years before India rose to independence, Japan surrendered to the allied powers bringing an end to the second world war at the horrific loss of more…
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Change Geography, Create History
Changing geography to create history is not a science that can be called social. While we struggle to find thought leadership that can help India rise to and sustain the status of a global super power, we must start with generating ideas that can help create a geo-political environment complete with values of peace and…
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My father taught me how to smoke
A 7-year old boy was caught while asking the local rickshaw man for a match to light up his half-smoked beedi. While refusing to hand over the country-made cigarette, the lad claimed that his own father had taught him to smoke, and that he was sure that there was nothing in the books that he reads…
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The Barber under a Tree
Imagine life without the local barber under a tree. For a sum of money, typically between 10 and 50 cents, such craftsmen provide service more popular and effective than the “Shave India Movement” organized by Gillette. As opposed to millions spent on advertising campaigns, the local barber helps keep the faces of Indian men shaven,…