So I thought

Politics is a profession that is not supposed to provide income. This is a line for social service and not to generate income. However, it is quite surprising that men who are supposed to have regular income to support a family are more into politics. In India, women are generally not income earners and thus financially more in alignment with the political roles but they are so few in this line. This discrepancy is one of the basic causes of corruption as the main bread earner is into something that is not to create profit/income. This has an inbuilt mechanism for subversion and hypocrisy and lots of ills. If politics is to serve the people, women are better suited for this as service and compassion will find a natural home in women than in men. But the truth is that in practice politics is all about upmanship and taking credit for doing nothing and thus men have overrun this field.   If things are to change more women will have to come to politics. This will also improve the ove

I would be quite interested in knowing who has benefitted from consuming the content shown on TV. To create deception these days TVs are being called Smart TV but to me, it is still an idiot box only. Tving strengthens the running away tendencies. It deprives good sleep as our garbage box of mind keeps getting bigger and our minds will keep ruminating.  For someone on the spiritual path, this is surely an issue to be dealt with at the earliest as Tving is the senseless filling of the mind with trash content while the spiritual process is about emptying it from the non-essential. With movie content available so freely, it struck me that such content is so engaging and addictive. I f one is spending time binge-watching of web series, there will be no time left to earn to finance this downhill-taking habit. The inbuilt self-destruction is apparent. There is so much innovation /research in content creation that one can be glued for hours . It is the surest way to destruction. In th

We all have listened to parents /teachers/ role models speak of the normal course of action to achieve success and yet this does not click with many. Why the understanding of normal is not the same for all of us. What is the missing point that it works for some and does not for many? The other day I was listening to a wise person and it sort of held key to this dilemma. Luckily I had missed the trap for most of my life but that was a blessing and not a conscious action now I will be able to break the shackles of unproductivity knowingly.   A classical musician has a different daily schedule- waking up early morning, missing out on cold drinks going to bed at a good time etc. It is his normal which might be viewed as austere or harsh by many other householders but to the musician, it is the only way to act- nothing extraordinary or special about it. A student who wants to top score or clear any top competitive test will be more with books or notebooks and almost no time for chat or ent

In recent past weeks, there has been a lot of coverage of some big actors' movies being boycotted by Indian audiences. And this has been indirectly referenced to the Indian audience waking up to its cultural identity being taken up lightly by such many players in this industry and thus a payback time. Though I have not really gone to any depth about this issue, I certainly do not subscribe to the view that there are people distorting our cultural identities or markers. One of the biggest and unparalleled markers of my culture is the ability to allow freedom of expression and thus we must not define how others can bring life to their imaginations or stories. And my freedom of expression is not as defined in the constitution which is subject to the display of sensitivity. My freedom of expression is also capped by the display of sensitivity but it is not defined by changing times but by a universal understanding of what is right and wrong.  However, it made me wonder why actors are n

I have been a regular reader of articles by Swaminathan S Ankleshwar Aiyar in TOI. This love started from my student days certainly a couple of decades earlier. Earlier it was intellectually stimulating which appealed to my unsure young mind. In later years I found him opinionated and with the BJP government in place securely he seemed to be a bit in unknown waters. Two articles particularly made me feel as if he is reevaluating his prism of seeing things when he apologised for guessing it wrong that the BJP will not come back in 2019 because of UP results not going on expected lines and secondly when he acknowledged being wrong in supporting Medha Patkar.  It dawned upon me it is the mind which is the real culprit in painting a picture which is not there. It creates a prism through which we not only project falsehood but very often do not realise the structural defect in doing so. This creates divisions, animosity and non-reconciable positions in society. Not only that the real people

Now that I think about it, since my childhood, I could not be categorised in a standard way. In fact,  I had this inkling all these years but only a few days back, the whole underlying principle sort of revealed itself.  The process of growing and the environment one is operating into does shape one. This we all have heard, but in what way it precisely impacts and what will be the outcome or possibility, I did not know in an obvious way.  Many years ago when I had started on my work life, a colleague in my office did not know that stamps of particular value needed to put on to an envelope for it to be delivered by Indian postal system. I was surprised as this was as common knowledge to me as it was about wearing a shirt. This did give me an insight that the process of growing had endowed me with certain information, knowledge or skill which many would have had no way to acquire. And this placed me at an advantageous level in many situations which work or life will throw. In all my