Since day before yesterday, the media and large sections of the public is having a gala time over Swami Nithyananda’s bedroom antics with a Tamil actress. Everybody is outraged. “Shocked,” “devastated,” “how can he do this?” “betrayal of trust,” “Fake Gurus,” is the typical reaction from what we call the “layman.” But here’s the thing: [...]

An Introduction of Sorts
Question: What’s common between Nicolas Sarkozy, Taslima Nasrin, free speech, and the Indian media?
Answer: The Burqa, the veil, the headscarf, the chador, the purdah, which is regarded by various people variously as “dignified,” “protective,” “secure,” and “comfortable.”
Those who hold any view that opposes these positive connotations are given a taste of what [...]

Swapan Dasgupta, a writer I’ve admired for long writes in the Wall Street Journal about the BJP’s chance of making a fresh start under Nitin Gadkari. It’s really an OK piece compared to Swapan’s more incisive articles. No new insight or food for thought and not quite blog-worthy except for this.

Since it lost power in [...]

Stumbled upon this gem of a verse from Bhartruhari’s Nitishataka yesterday. Very compelling and relevant for all times. Rough translation is mine.
Boddharo matsaragrastaah prabhavaah smayadooshitaah|
Abodhaapahataschaanye jeernamange subhashitam||
Consumed with jealousy are the teachers and scholars, repositories of knowledge and wisdom,
Polluted by arrogance are the rulers, enforcers of justice, character, and conduct,
Beaten by their own ignorance are [...]

Pune is just the name of another city where the blasts occurred. A welcome gift on the eve of Valentines Day to reassure our hearts pining for terror-love that we were so used to during UPA Ver 1.0. And the difference between Shivraj Patil and Chidambaram is probably nothing more than name, education, and taste [...]

Writing about the recently-concluded Hampi festival, the SpIndian Express boldly asks:
Who’s the Charioteer?
The Hampi festival is an annual cultural extravaganza that began 15 years ago with the Hampi Ustav in 1995. This year’s festival holds a special significance because it marks the 500th year of Sri Krishnadevaraya’s coronation in 1509-10. But the festival per se [...]

What do we do today when we want to counter and/or curb corruption? We pass laws and hope that somebody “clean” will enforce them. But we know how that goes. And for all our pompous breast-beating about the hoary Indian culture, it remains a fact that today we’re one of the most corrupt nations in [...]

It’s been about 10 years since I started this blog and this post is a personal stock-taking of sorts. This blog started as a space for personal rants/ruminations that made sense perhaps only to me. At a level, it still remains that way. But I’ll spare you those details. The point is it did take [...]

Two fine posts, the first, a well-crafted crafted response to Vir Sanghvi’s mention of a mysterious Blogging Elite and the other, a gentle but firm rap on the media’s superiority complex represented again by Vir Sanghvi and Sagarika Ghose (whose choice of words in her tweet is quite heartwarming).
So here’s an FAQ of sorts that [...]

So when I read this email exchange between a certain Professor Ashley Tellis and Nitin earlier this evening, I merely smiled. I attributed the Professor’s venomous tirade to either of these: uncontrollable blood pressure that blasted through his keyboard, or a naive assumption that Nitin is his student. And such venom on a really trivial [...]