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Showing posts from March, 2019

Jottings - Slice of life - 280 ( A brutal rape, the police procedural that followed, and “The Delhi crime” - a Netflix crime series.)

Jottings - Slice of life - 280 ( A brutal rape, the police procedural that followed, and “The Delhi crime” - a Netflix crime series.) On the sixteenth of December 2012, on a cold and hazy weekend evening in Delhi - the crowded capital of India - a rape was committed, that unsettled, horrified and paralyzed the moral conscience of a conservative nation. The repercussions of that single night, and the story that subsequently unfolded would forever change the course of legal treatment of rape, and the punishment for those who commit bodily heinous crimes against women. On that fateful winter evening, a young girl of twenty-three, returning from a movie (ironically, a life-affirming movie “Life of PI”) with her boyfriend was brutalized in a moving bus by six young men present in the vehicle. In a male-dominated society such as India, rape against women is not an uncommon assault. It happens frequently and in various shapes and forms. In most cases, such violations remain unreported due

Jottings - Slice of life - 279 ( The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes - the poster girl of the Silicon Valley)

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Jottings - Slice of life - 279 ( The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes - the poster girl of the Silicon Valley) “Some in clandestine companies combine, Erect new stocks to trade beyond the line: With air and empty names beguile the town, And raise new credits first, then dry 'em down: Divide the empty nothing into shares, To set the town together by the ears” Daniel Defoe - “London” The meteoric rise and ignominious fall of young Elizabeth Holmes, the former founder, CEO of Theranos, and a billionaire by the age of thirty-one is nothing short of a fairy tale, with the only twist that from the very beginning the fairy herself was flawed, never clean of intent or truthful of purpose. In his widely read book, “The extraordinary popular delusions and madness of the crowds” written nearly two centuries ago, in 1841, the Scottish writer Charles Mackay records many cases of what he calls “moral epidemics” — an irrational attachment to a crazy idea that starts off as a trickle
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Jottings - Slice of life - 276 ( The disease of envy and its portrayal in “A star is born” and “Abhimaan”) It is not for nothing that envy is listed among the Seven deadly sins. It is a silent killer. It may not visibly intrusive and glaring like some of the other sins, but the impact envy can have on a flowering relationship is similar to a cancerous growth that eats from the inside, slowly and deliberately and with suppurating inner pain. Some amount of envy is inevitable in any relationship, but when the Rubicon of moderation is crossed, and one ventures into that torrid zone filled with inferiority complexes, self flagellatory nightmares , emotional sadism and truckloads of self-pity ; then the end is near; not merely of the relationship; but the integrity of the personality itself. Literature, movies, and drama have captured this psychotic phenomenon of relentless envy in innumerable works. It makes for a great plot and builds enough cathartic and aesthetic tension to keep the