chaotic order

The year 2012 has ended on a melancholy note for us. Democracy in India is now in the crossroads of world polity. The jubilation that we once had on achieving our independence has now become a faint memory. The greatest experiment of Parliamentary democracy anytime in history is now showing signs of septicemic decay ; which if left to rot may lead to disastrous consequences for generations that ye t to come. The founding fathers of our nation were men and women with uplifted vision and dreams in their eyes ; and when they to came to debate and codify the constitution : they did so with immense faith and belief in India and its inhabitants. They were optimistic that we as people of this country would be a beacon of light to other emerging nations on how a society that has roots that stretch long time backwards can adapt themselves to modern ideas, and be supple enough to accommodate new thoughts streams without forfeiting the basic rights and dignity of an individual which is the prima

Chess : Stray thoughts on a lazy Sunday evening: An quote from G.M Hartston's monograph on the Czech opening in the game of Chess " Chess doesn't drive people mad, it keeps mad people sane" A rather interesting thought crossed my mind yesterday as i sat musing with an old faded chess book in my balcony. NIIT's Brand ambassador is the legendary Chess wizard Vishwanathan Anand - a child prodigy whose supre macy in this game has virtually remained unchallenged for close to three decades now. In an age when products and services have come to be promoted by voluptuous curves of nubile ladies , six pack abs of moronic looking hunks or ludicrously juvenile pranks of aging Bollywood actors and sportsmen - the image of a young Anand showcasing "intellect" reinstates ones inherent belief in the sanity of selling an idea. Anand may not be in the league of the most sought after icons , but there is an element of composure and poise he brings to NIIT as a brand; whi

The hanging of a convicted terrorist - My opinion.  Death penalty is legalized crime. One of the fundamentals principles of Justice is that, no man, however malicious his acts may have been, can be committed to death by law in a democratic polity : unless it is the “rarest of the rare cases”. Around one hundred and ninety countries across the globe have abolished execution as a form a punishme nt. Since 1995, there have been only four instances when Death penalty has been imposed in India. Ironically, the last two sentences were carried out in a matter of last few months; of Kasab, and now Afzal Guru. I have no doubt in my mind that we cannot tolerate communal violence in any form, more so in the name of religious or racial fundamentalism and its scary manifestation: terrorism. We have to deal with these ugly weeds with appropriate measures of strength and justice. But the question that remains unanswered in me is this: Can a “hanging” moot out the cause of this psychological decay? M

Dark Zero thirty - the ramifications of 9/11 and the ugly globalization of torture.  What happened in those fateful moments between 8.30 and 10.00 A.M on eleventh of September 2001 , as the twin towers disintegrated ever so slowly into earth, with almost a billion people across the globe watching with disbelief the collapse of the symbol of financial power - will forever remain etched in hist ory, as the day when the political polarization of the globe was irrevocably and in many ways irredeemably changed and rewritten. America stood dumbfounded at this audacious act of terrorism. The collective psyche of its people were badly shaken out their reverie of being the most impregnable nation in the world. Amidst the ruins of the twin towers and innocent corpses, the nation found their identity rattled. And out of this cauldron of insult, embarrassment and deep wound, they unleashed upon the world a witch hunt for Al Qaeda and its various tributaries. The hunt for Obama bin Laden had began

The Union Budget - the heart beat of an economy. A few stray thoughts and reminiscences. I remember vividly sitting in the back rows of a packed lecture hall in Chennai a couple of decades ago, waiting for the arrival of Nani A Palkivala , the eminent lawyer, Jurist, ex ambassador to the USA - to deliver his yearly talks on the budget. I had just then read his remarkable book " We, the peopl e". a compendium of his speeches and writings on a wide range of topics of national interest; more importantly : the ones on the yearly Union budget. Nani walked in exactly at 6.30 P.M. A few minutes later, he started speaking extempore. His opening lines still resonate in my ears. Nani began  " This is not a budget to make you deliriously happy or to drive you to the verge of suicidal despair. It may be regarded as a good budget in bad times, though it might have ranked as a bad budget in good times ". So he went for nearly two hours; dissecting the budget, unraveling the hid

‎ "The Book thief" by Markus Zusak - review of a fascinating work of fiction  The years between 1930-45 have been the subject of a lot many stories and interpretations. Numerous writers have presented their view of those horrendous years with stunning clarity and insight. Almost every form of art has borrowed heavily from the leitmotifs of those cataclysmic years molding our understanding of the evil that men committed in the name of race and religion. But no book in my opinion has had the temerity to look at those melancholy times through the innocent eyes of a young adult. Markus Zusak does just that. The period of Nazi occupation is brilliantly captured in translucent prose through Liesel - a young girl, who lives as a foster child in the home of a German family. Internally torn by a strange sense of estrangement : outwardly , the world around her transforming itself into a mire of insecurity and deep fear ; witnessing the physical and moral consequences of non conformanc

Sept 1988 - Ramgopal Verma, the maverick director captured Sridevi in his Telegu celluloid fantasy named "Kshana Kshanam". She was by then the intoxicating queen of every masculine psyche. Her very presence aroused impulses that acted as a catharsis for those juvenile beginnings of adolescent pangs ; whose reverberating strains still linger in time as a quintessential idea of feminine grace and ch arm to many of us of that generation. Ram gopal verma had captured Sridevi as no one had ever done before (with possibly the exception of Yash chopra in Chandni). She effused sensuality in every frame. Her long journey as an actor reached a climax in this movie where she blended her penetrating acting with a voluptuousness that lifted one into a rarefied air of pure enchantment. She was a sorceress whose bewitching laughter and gaiety would linger long after the her celluloid presence would fade into twilight zone of our consciousness. To me this film represented the apotheosis of