Words are Weariness

Why do Indian cricketers make 'faithful husbands' ? Because they perform well only at home!!   courtsey :  The Dawn , Pakistani daily.

It is 'midsumma' in Melbourne. It is so hot here that it could give Chennai an inferiority complex. It makes me feel nostalgic , however. It is very much like the scorching heat during the summer holidays of my childhood back in Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu when the you could see through the beams of light of an approaching car, whatever moisture in the soil at the time of sunset rise in faint streams of vapour against the black background of the tarred road. Even after sundown, the heat is oppressive owing to radiation from the surrounding concrete. The residential units are not designed to handle this aberration in the weather this time of the year. Sooner, summer will give way to cooler times. There is no air conditioner in most homes though room heaters are invariably present. Day light extends past 9 p.m. The women wear shorts or skirts with hemlines exposing much of their legs like polished wood. Melbourne was founded as recently as 1835. One enterpr...

If you have attended team building / leadership exercises that corporate training departments conduct frequently, you would have come across the 'Lost at Sea exercise' . The trainer normally splits the participants into two or more teams. You are asked to come up with your own answers individually first and then discuss it within your group to reason and re-order them. The idea is to show how much your original solution changes once more people put their heads around the problem and additional voices are heard. You require a similar list of ranked items for surviving the first week when you land in a distant country on a work permit with your wife in tow. With all the rush till the last minute running around for all the approvals, signing Service Agreements, returning library books , taking back up and depositing your laptop, collecting forex, winding down your own domestic establishment, you will not be able to prevent your travel department from booking a flight tha...

f you had studied economics as an undergraduate you would have certainly come across ' 'Gresham's law'. A reigning queen of England of the victorian times distressed as she was that her subjects were using debased and mutilated coins, ordered fresh supply from the mint. But shw saw no change in the preference of her subjects. A nobleman and financier in her court by the name Lord Gresham proferred an explanation thus “Bad coins drive good coins out of circulation”. People simply hoarded the newly minted coins and used only the debased ones. This observation of Lord Gresham came to be known as ' Gresham's Law'. Most 'Laws of economics' , being merely codified common sense, find applicability in other areas. For example, often during water-cooler conversations in IT companies, you will get to hear Project Managers distressing over not being able to find right-skilled associates for their Project. This is in spite of thousands being recruited...

The other day, in a TV debate between Mani Shankar Iyer and Swapan Dasgupta, a question was raised from the audience about why employment focus was missing in today's economic policies Iyer, true to his credentials as a Nehru family acolyte , said   something about how pre-1990, before 'economic reforms' were unleashed, small industry was nurtured precisely for this reason and how unfortunately the current discourse on economic reforms is bereft of such humane considerations. The audience were young people who were unaware of what passed off as economic policy & planning, the ill effect of which we are still suffering from , with about 700 million people barely eking out a living. There is plenty of statistics to prove that the growth that we are seeing in the last decade is not job-less as leftists and their apologists would claim.   There is for the first time in the history of India, the poor and the unorganized have had a semblance of economic justice and partic...

It is customary for me to receive requests for Certificates of Character and Credentials of Boys working in my organization   . It is always for the prospective grooms and never for the brides. Somebody who is in some way related to a friend or relative of mine will forward a lead like this , 'the name is Kartik and he works in your branch in Chennai'.    Looking for a 'Kartik' in Chennai in any IT company   would be something akin to looking for   moustachioed in Mallu land or   Pardanashin in Peshawar.      In any of these big Indian IT companies, associates come together, often in virtual teams, for a particular Project and then dissolve into its vastness. It is possible to be working closely with somebody for months but without having as much as a glimpse of his/her face.   I baulk at the idea of giving opinion anyways. Is it not better in these times to allow the parties concerned meet and work it out over a period of courts...