Reflections

I have been reading Amartya Sen’s “The Argumentative Indian” for quite sometime now. While Amartya Sen is a renowned Economist and a Noble Laureate, he is not much of a historian and this book stands testimony to that. The comments on the back of the book claim a lot about this being the best account of Indian history that must be read by every Indian. I beg to disagree. I strongly feel that Dr.Sen should focus on Economics and leave history to historians. The book is supposed to be a collection of essays on Indian culture, History and Identity. However there is a lot of repetition in all the essays and what stands stark clear is Dr.Sen’s limited knowledge of Indian History. All the essays revolve around one or all of the below points though the titles are different: The Bhagavad Gita as an argument between Krishna and Arjuna in the Mahabharatha Javali’s argument with Rama quoted in Ramayana Akbar’s forming Din Illahi as a combination of religions Dr.Sen’s strong views against the BJP ...

12th Jan The conqueror of Mt.Everest is no more. I remember reading in General Knowledge while in school about Edmund Hillary’s feat. Over the years I had not bothered much about Ed but today he had made the headlines and I read about him in the morning Newspaper. Beyond his achievements and the work done by him in Nepal to set up clinics and schools, which the article mentioned, there were 2 points that brought out Ed's humility which really impressed me. Though he was the one who started the expedition and Tenzing Norgay was only his guide, it seems he refused to accept till Tenzing passed away that he was the first man atop Mt.Everest. In spite of being one of the greatest adventurers of the century, he preferred calling himself an “ordinary person with ordinary qualities”. Ed did not have a picture of himself taken on top of the Mt.Everest. The only photo taken was that of Tenzing at the summit, which was taken by Ed himself. It seems Ed remarked later that “As far as I knew, h...

After the second test which was marred with bad Umpiring decisions and the nasty Symonds - Harbhajan incident, the Australlian team is facing a lot of criticism from their home crowd. The Australlian media has been conducting a lot of opinion polls related to this and the captain Ricky Ponting in particular is getting some nasty comments and rave reviews about the way he has led the team. Majority of the people want Ponting to go! All this criticism is inspite of their record 16 wins in tests and an equivalent winning streak in one dayers! Well sometimes being on the winning side alone does not matter, how you win also matters! Ponting claims that he plays cricket hard but fair but in my opinion accusing an Indian of making racist remarks is slightly overboard and this seems to have been made an issue specifically to divert attention from the bad umpiring that changed the result. This is definitely not in the spirit of the game. The Australlian team is solely responsible for having cha...

I have been listening to a lot of music over the last few weekends. There is a saying in Tamil which goes something like “When there is not enough food for the ears, you think of giving some food for the stomach”. A very true statement indeed! This very well summarises my experience over the last few weekends. I have been listening to the doyens of the Carnatic world. Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar , Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer , M.S.Subbulakshmi and M.L.Vasanthakumari . Thanks to the internet and the world of mp3s. I am too small and I know very little of carnatic music to comment on these great people but I must say I am in a totally different world free of tension and I feel so calm and energetic over the last few weekends. I think all this started because of the Margazhi music season and the talks happening around me related to that. I had been to only one concert myself but then I think it drew me towards music after a gap. I don’t need to write much about music. So much has been writte...

I have been thinking of writing about Dada (Sourav Ganguly) for quite sometime. One can only marvel at this man’s grit and determination. What an amazing comeback Dada has made after being dropped from the Indian cricket team and left totally in isolation! If you ask me who my favourite cricketer is, I would say Sachin any day but then I have always admired Dada. Sachin is a genius and there is no cricketer as talented as him but Dada is still special and loveable. How can one forget Dada’s reply to Flintoff when India won the One day at Lords? A cricketer with limitations but with great determination. That is what took Dada through a successful stint as the captain of the Indian team and that is what has made him stage such an excellent comeback after the Chappell issue. The way Saurav is playing he simply seems unstoppable even for Australlia in Australlia. Hope Dada’s excellent form continues and India does well in the remaining matches. After all this umpiring and racism controvers...

“A Promise is a Promise”, said Ratan Tata with pride after he unveiled the Nano or “The People’s car” as it is fondly called. I was really impressed by the man and his words. I don’t know why but I felt proud that I was working for the Tata group. The group which has given a lot to Indian society, with a wide range of products and services touching almost all walks of life and by way of which has become an integral part of this country. Read Tata’s interview and more about the car here. http://www.tatapeoplescar.com/tatamotors I have read a lot of articles on the Nano over the past few days in various places. It is definitely a great piece of innovation. I was surprised to read that Engineers who designed this have spent so much time on coming up with innovative designs to reduce cost , even for reducing $10. After all it is no mean feat, coming up with a car for $2500. An interesting article from NY times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/business/worldbusiness/08indiacar.html?pagewan...

03rd January 2008 I had mentioned in my earlier post that I am a Frequent flyer with Jet and I travel very often by Jet. I recently travelled by Kingfisher to Bangalore only because the morning Jet flight was fully booked and I had an amazing experience. Kingfisher made a real impact on me, someone so used to Jet, with their excellent service. What a competitive world we live in! While checking in I was told that only middle seats were left. I said I preferred an Aisle seat. After some double checking the attendant got back with a smile saying that there was only one Aisle seat which he would give me. At this point I was not very surprised because almost all Airlines do this. Only thing a bit different was that the seat number was in single digits and I had an economy class ticket. I told myself that it might be an ATR flight. However when I entered the flight I was really surprised. I had been given a business class seat. This was too good to be true and that too early in the New Year...