I’ve always looked at voting in the elections with disdain. Who’s going to take the trouble of standing in a long slow-moving queue just to press a button at the end of it? But there has been enough noise created in the last couple of years to make me feel guilty about this standoffish stance. …
In India, no one bats an eyelid at forking up money to get a job done. Need a license? Pay the tout and escape the line. Need your passport fast tracked? There are rates and systems in place. It works far more efficiently than the official one. One of the reasons that corruption has taken …
A whole village can starve without water and nothing will be done for decades. In Peepli Live, a politician gifts a family a worthless water pump, that occupies pride of place in the house and is merely a way to deflect attention. But when a business needs it to survive, you can be a hundred …
On 25th March, I lost the one person in the world who thought I was perfect. She belonged to a generation that lived for their children, seeing no faults, prepared to sacrifice everything so that their progeny could have everything that they denied themselves. My mother did not have a refrigerator, ever. Her proudest possessions …
How do you get people to eat more carrots? Keep telling them they are healthy or sell them like junk food? A company in the US is doing just that. Packaging, promoting and selling carrots as the next thing to crunch instead of burgers or chips. And people just seem to be lapping it up. What does …
When personal space is encroached upon, we get acutely sensitive. Sitting on a train, a bus or an airplane, we devise our own ways to keep the crowds out. We bury our heads in the newspaper or a book. Plug our ears into music and tune the world out. Elbow digs into ribs are ignored, …
Starting March 28th, The New York Times is going to go behind a paywall, again – with a lot of caveats. Free access every month for the first 20 articles, videos or interactive features. An experiment in 2005, Times Select, where you could read all the articles, except the Op-ed, was abandoned in 2007. Since then, …
Only a few have the ability to express themselves economically. People meander, testing the patience of their listeners who are mentally pleading, “Get to the point” This could be anyone from lecturers in class to bosses who try and impress subordinates. When asked for an opinion, most people provide streams of rambling thought. Media savvy …
Being surrounded by books is a lot nicer than just seeing them displayed on a screen. There’s a physical feeling of being in the middle of thoughts and ideas that have emerged from obscurity and seen the light. And behind every book, there is a story – one that never gets out. The rows and …
It’s fine to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ within the confines of home or the office but to use it on screen or in a public performance, you have to fork out money to the Warner Music group. A ditty converted from ‘Good Morning to All’ has provided revenue since 1935 and the copyright will remain in …
