To say that women are equal to men, is like saying a doctor is equal to an engineer. Yes, both are graduates and professionals, but their functions in the society are different. They should just be proud of what they can and should do, and appreciative of what the other is doing. There is no point in […]
Author: raman
Fringe Cases in Democracy and Tyranny
I happened to read an article that compared ‘ostensibly democratic regimes’ with openly tyrannical ones. The author presses the point that there are “genuine differences between explicitly repressive regimes and ‘ostensibly’ democratic ones” and that the latter are still better than the former. I have no complaints so far, and I also share the author’s dislike […]
What Driving Taught Me
Wise men say that there are lessons for us all around, and that we have to keep our eyes and heart open to receive them. It is often when the mind is calmed through the fixing of attention that we become receptive to knowledge from without as well as wisdom from within. Here are some […]
A diatribe against violence as a solution!
As a result of a few unfortunate incidents that happened recently, there are many among my friends who seem to recommend barbarian punishment as a deterrent to inhuman crimes. I don’t understand how so many Indians, well educated and otherwise sane, can be so completely out of their minds as to think that this would […]
A problem much distorted!
Perhaps the most unfortunate outcome of the much-talked-about Delhi incident is that it has become acceptable to pass sweepingly degrading comments about the character of men in general. I saw many articles on the internet, posts on facebook, and even columns in mainstream newspapers that put the blame for the problem on boys not being […]
Rage of the Moment
When I was working in a software development company, while appraising team memebers, we were alerted to the so called “recency” effect, by which we are likely to give more weightage to more recent deeds of employees, while we’re actually expected to evaluate their contribution throughout the appraisal period. A similar effect can be seen […]
A World of “Unbreakables”!
My friend and I were waiting to cross the road, when this particular thought crossed my mind – “What would we do differently, if human body would not be damaged by physical impact?”. The way I imagined it was, if a car were to hit you, you might be thrown off a few metres (following […]
The Chilly Parotta Paradox!
I had dinner from a South Indian restaurant last week and, for a change, I ordered Chilly Parotta. If you haven’t tried it before, I might try to explain it as a very spicy preparation based on Parotta. Parotta itself is unhealthy, and if you can somehow make it more so, that is by transforming it thus! […]
A Lesson in Being Remarkable
It’s a sad story from my school days – early school days, in fact. I was 5 or 6 years old, and I don’t remember many of the things that happened back then. But this one I remember so vividly that I still feel a crushing sorrow as I recollect this story. For us, Saturday […]
Sorry, I’m not your common man!
In spite of the very narrow focus that they had from the beginning, I had hoped that Arvind Kejriwal would bring some freshness to our stale political arena. However, with their vision document, they had already forced me out of that wishful thinking, and now with the party and its name being official, I clearly […]