Restructure the MHA
September 7, 2011And there is one more bomb blast. This time, outside the Delhi High Court. Many are dead, many more are injured. The excuses and accusations have begun. As have the high pitched, almost frenzied, coverage of news channels. Everyone has a…
Reading in Progress – Kissinger On China
September 6, 2011IN OCTOBER 1962, China’s revolutionary leader Mao Zedong summoned his top military and political commanders to meet with him in Beijing. Two thousand miles to the west, in the forbidding and sparsely populated terrain of the Himalayas, Chinese and Indian troops were…
Chomsky on the The Responsibility of Intellectuals
September 6, 2011Chomsky, as always, makes for interesting, yet uncomfortable reading. There are no answers to his questions, I wish I could be an absolutist – but the introspection makes for a revealing experience. On the eve of 9/11 he writes If the responsibility of intellectuals refers to…
Times of India – innuendo as news
September 5, 2011Wikileaks is in the news again. Last Week, Julian Assange threw a hissy fit, and made all the remaining files available freely via his site. Unlike the last time, the cables ‘outed’ this time did not censor the information to hide the…
Aahir Bhairav – Nusrat
September 4, 2011I heard Nusrat in my teens – a set of classical music tapes that a friend from had. For long, I heard his qawwalis – without understanding too much of the language – neither my Urdu nor my Punjabi are much to…
Dad on Anna Hazare
September 3, 2011My father, on the Anna Hazare Saga. My dad worked with the State Trading Corporation for a good part of his life. Childhood memories included being told not to use the phone – the Govt. paid for it – and sending back…
The Luxury Market
September 2, 2011This from India Knowledge at Wharton – India’s Luxury Market: Unlocking Consumers’ Taste for the Finer Things India accounts for only 1% to 2% of the global luxury market, behind countries such as Brazil and Poland. And India is behind China on…
Random Musings
September 1, 2011It is enchanting the way a taste, or a smell or a scene brings back memories of growing up…. A piping hot water bath with chandrika soap brings back memories of growing up in Vile Parle. We lived there till I went…