Ever since the beginning of civilization, humans have been trying to devise ways in which they can store the results of their hard work for the future. For a hunter-gatherer, since he dealt with perishables such as fruits or meat, the options were limited. His best bet was to share what he got with others […]
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Perpetration of Blame
We live in an age when people become popular by highlighting the failings of others rather than through their own achievements. We have heads of elected governments who care less about governance and more about blaming other leaders of corruption and other crimes. An ordinary person who takes a casual look at the newspaper is […]
Futility of Amassing Wealth – Timeless Wisdom from a Young Prince
There was recently news about a political leader of India, who has most likely amassed great wealth through questionable means (to say the least) and wields the highest level of power in this country, being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. At least at such times, it is good to remember a story from our own […]
A New Generation Mahabharata – Conversation with a Teenager
Yesterday, I had an interesting discussion with a young teenager. After drifting through topics involving movies and television on which his knowledge was impressive, we arrived on the subject of Mahabharata when the curtain raiser of a new television series based on the epic caught our attention. This is when I was introduced to the new […]
Don’t Make Best an Enemy of the Better
Anybody who has ever taken a challenging new year resolution will likely be aware of the psychological ploys employed by the mental weakness that we’re resolved to overcome. One of the most cunning schemes among these is to use our own sense of good against ourselves – by pitting the best against the better. Let’s […]
Should We be Proud of Our Culture?
The first year in college was the first time in life when we were allowed to use a calculator in class and even during exams. Each of us were happy with our own calculator, but also wanted to test its power against those owned by others. Most of these devices were capable of evaluating finite […]
Creating Channels for Right Thought and Action
Among the unusual hobbies that I had as a kid was racing drops of waters against each other on a vertical surface. One of the observations from this activity was that if a drop could follow a path traced out by a predecessor, it did so in most cases except when it was massive enough […]
Katapayadi
Katapayadi is an ancient Indian system, perhaps more heavily used in Kerala, that denotes numbers using letters of the alphabet to form words that can be easily remembered. The table below explains the mapping between digits and letters. In addition to the letters mentioned in this chart, all stand-alone vowels are treated as zero and […]
Scorched Earth Tactics by Kerala Government
Continuing my support for the Government of Kerala in their fight against the illegal, unjustified and counter-productive blockade imposed on the Secretariat by the leftist opposition in Kerala, I am pleasantly surprised to note how well the Government has handled the protest so far. Intimidation – Calling in para-military forces and deploying them in key […]
Supporting Use of Central forces to Defeat an Illegal Siege
In line with the views presented in Egypt – a case study in democracy, I believe that for the success of democracy, it is imperative for all parties to use available non-violent and legitimate options (including legal recourse and no-confidence motion) to achieve their objectives, and not resort to holding the nation to ransom like the […]