Think Tank

Our company has an online bulletin board on which people can post ads and messages for a host of things. Buy and sale for items, flat on rent, any event being organized - colleagues are allowed to share the message with others. At times some very touching messages appear there. Like one that appeared today. [...]

‘India from Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond’
By Shashi Tharoor
Penguin 
This is my first read from Shashi Tharoor’s. There are many books written on India, all from different viewpoints and capturing India’s different phases in history or different shades of life, but this book “India: from midnight to the millennium and beyond”, has its own honorable [...]

Donating old clothes and some usable items like toys and utensils is a very good idea. Often we have the will but don’t find the opportunity. There are many NGOs who specialize in facilitating in that. I knew of a very good NGO which ran a campaign to collect old clothes in cities and then [...]

‘Show Business: A Novel’
By Shashi Tharoor
Penguin 
‘Show Business’ is the story of life in Mumbai’s film industry, called Bollywood. It’s the story of a young talented man Ashok who went on to become a superstar. On his way, he misses a lot of genuine friends, goes through a lot of corrupting experiences and I think he [...]

‘How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and other Stories’
By Sudha Murty
Puffin Books 
I am a Sudha Murti fan. I have never left a chance to read her books. So far I have read her (1) Gently Falls the Bakula, (2) Dollar Bahu, (3) Mahashweta, (4) Old Man And His God, (5) Wise & Otherwise, and [...]

Writing in a very quick story, but it means a lot. It is complete fiction, out of my mind:  
It is the story of a girl and a boy. They married after felling in love with each other. After marriage, the girl realises that she was only a means for the boy’s ego satisfaction, only a [...]

 
‘Games Indians Play: Why we are the way we are’
By V. Raghunathan
(Forward by N.R. Narayana Murthy)Penguin Portfolio
Dr. V. Raghunathan is a man of many credits. He has been a professor of finance at IIM Ahmedabad from 1982-2001; then worked as President of ING Vysya Bank and later as MD of GMR Industries. He is author [...]

Mamata Banerjee has been called ‘Railway Minister for West Bengal’, because of her ‘Rail Budgets’ showered disproportionately higher largesse on her home state West Bengal alone. In 2009-10 budget, she started 19 new trains for WB alone, shifted some proposed factories from Bihar to WB (revenge on Lalu Prasad), and also announced a mega power [...]

A friend asked: “Why do we worship Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Ganesha together on a Diwali night?” Or for that matter, on any other day. I understood that in her opinion there was absolutely no reason why Goddess of wealth, Lakshmi couldn’t be worshipped alone as a single deity. She also wanted to know if [...]

Within a month after weddings in India, some kind of feedback flows from sasural to mayake. These feedbacks can come as one-offs or can come regularly. Some in-laws follow this custom almost religiously with utmost sincerely. Not that the bride’s parents don’t know these facts about their own daughter, but the in-laws consider it their [...]

During MBA, our communications teacher had shown us a movie called “12 Angry Men”. We were asked to observe and analyse the communication skills and patterns of all the major characters in the movie and later submit a report. It was a good learning and we enjoyed doing it. Some days back I watched a [...]

A PTI report tells that Government of India has lowered its estimate of GDP growth, from around 9% to 8% now. Pranab Mukherjee says this is due to high oil prices and higher rates of interest done to curb inflation. “If oil prices continue to rise, it would be difficult to achieve higher GDP. GDP [...]

You must have watched Pepsodent’s ad featuring Shah Rukh Khan as a father, who encourages his son to brush his teeth along with him. It is called “Pappu and Papa” campaign.  
Pepsodent is a Unilever brand; just like Surf detergent which features many commercials surrounding family and children. The idea I think is to make the [...]

There are lots of prevalent confusions about Hindu gods and goddesses. A majority of those are confusions because absurd interpretations have been repeated for centuries now; while the corrections are few and muted. The righteous becomes introvert; while the empty-vessels keep making sounds – is one eternal law of nature. And when we have had [...]

How we keep some prejudices and how they affect us, can be seen in an experience I had recently.  
I had lost my driving license (wallet got stolen in the office) and wanted to file a police report to reissue it. Now I had a feeling that police were corrupt and were better to be avoided. [...]

Watched the movie ‘Up in the Air’ starring George Clooney. His character is a free man who doesn’t believe in marriage or any social commitment. He lives like that for years, dating women whenever he found interest in, and just travelling around the world which was part of his job. At one stage his sister’s [...]

Today, I tweeted at my Twitter site: 
Anyone who claims to be an “atheist”; is in fact a “believer”. - Rahul 
Someone asked me “how?” Here was my explanation: 
If we think, atheism is also a “belief”. The person, who takes care not to believe in the conventional religions or wisdom which are at the end a “pattern”, [...]

“The Inheritance of Loss”
By Kiran Desai
Penguin Books 
‘The Inheritance of Loss’ is Kiran Desai’s second novel, which had won her ‘Man Booker Prize, 2006’.  
The story is set in a small North East Indian town at the border of Nepal. The characters are a retired judge Jemubhai Patel, his dog Mutt, his cook (and the cook’s son [...]

Got this wonderful forwarded email from a friend:  
Professor began his class by holding up a glass with some water in it. He held it up for all to see & asked the students “How much do you think this glass weighs?” 
‘50gms!’ ….. ‘100gms!’ …..’125gms’ …the students answered. 
“I really don’t know unless I weigh it,” said [...]

I recently attended the Art of Living (AOL)’s Yes+ course. YES+ stands for Youth Empowerment and Skills Seminar. I had heard about AOL a long time back when I was in my engineering college. AOL representatives had come to our college and had given a very nice talk. But at that time I had not [...]