In a lift one person, an old 70-75 year or so, looks at the other, smiles and thinks – New guy in the building! Looks educated ‘I can talk to him’. He asks – What is your name? Other person responds – Pravin Old man – Pravin what? 2nd person – Pravin is my name. 2nd person looks at the old man with a question mark on face, what does that mean? Old man – Read more
I am not an admirer of the caste system of Indian society. The special love affair for that (aversion) goes to the Lingayats (disclaimer – I am a born Lingayat). I am going to write a series (on and off) of blogs on – against – the caste system of India (include black skin for other parts of the world). Here is the first such blog. This story is from Chapter 43 of the book Read more
I met Professor Arun Ramanathan a few months back (precisely in April). He taught us Corporate Governance and Business Ethics in our MBA. I told him a very practical daily situation I face. Whenever I walk, I am almost running, I notice that I walk very fast that I leave people behind as if there is a kind of competition happening. I am running to – say – win some competition. Why are we doing Read more
Last weekend, I went for a haircut. In the big mirror of the barber, one of the rare things happened. I was staring at myself without my specks in the mirror and was surprised. I had never noticed that between my nose and eyes there is some bulge, which earlier was not there. I look at my face once again and asked myself – “is it me?” When I asked myself this question, I literally Read more
Just imagine, there are only humans on the planet earth! I think that was what happened to the Dinosaurs. Perhaps they started killing other dinosaurs just to capture more land – territory – for their survival. They tried to prove their superiority and eventually got over powered by the universe with some meteoroid. Whatever the reality of dinosaurs was, try to see if there seems to be an analogy. We humans are almost doing what Read more
It was 2004 or earlier, one of my friends – Vijay Sharma, fond of watching Hollywood movies – gave me a CD. He told me – must watch. Being a rental CD I went home watched the movie without delay. This movie was Instinct staring Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr. Anthony Hopkins is playing an anthropologist – Dr Ethan Powell and Cub Gooding a Psychiatrist – Dr. Theo Caulder. Ethan studies Gorillas in Africa and Read more
It takes a lot of time for courts to offer a judgement, there are argument and counter-arguments. Logic and intuition fails if you do not have proof. That’s why Indian courts take 20 years even for high profile cases (e.g. Mumbai bomb blast), small cases are either solved out of court or not at all during the life time of an accused / plaintiff. Galileo died and hundreds of years later (in 1992) Churches exonerated Read more
As usual, this story again comes from – ‘The prayer of the Frog’ by Father Anthony de Mello, S.J. The book has small stories and worth reading one at a time, sleep over the story and think what we can improve in our life? A man took his new hunting dog out on a trial hunt. He shot a duck that fell into the lake. The dog walked over the water, picked the duck up Read more
We, as a community, are too evolved to be simple. We complicate many things which are Simple. One of my friends wrote on Facebook few days back – “Trying to figure out whether the marginal utility of the next shot increases or decreases.” At times this marginal analysis becomes a problem in our life. We think too much about the outcomes and benefits of taking an action rather than taking the action. I believe life Read more
It was a rainy day of 2007. As usual Sachin and I got down from our 7th floor rented apartment to have a ” morning cutting chai”. Cutting Chai in India is a 1/2 cup tea generally preferred over large quantity. Irony is – people drink as much as 8-10 cuttings a day not realizing it. I was to go to office after that small tea time and Sachin, back to get ready for office. Read more