Insight

The next part of Guha’s book helps us understand the events post independence, gives us a glimpse on the pain that partition inflicted on the country. Guha also delves on the efforts taken by Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar to define a unified, secular and democratic country. The Idea of India The partition left the country divided on religious lines. Hindus from Pakistan were forced to relocate to India, and the Muslims from India prepared to relocate to Pakistan. The newly formed governments of both countries were ill equipped to handle the violence or handle the scale of migration. Punjab, Bengal, and Delhi were the states that were most affected by the violence. While the Hindus of Bengal took the West and the Muslims took the east (now Bangladesh), it was not straightforward in Punjab as the state had a strong Hindu, Muslim and Sikh population. The most violent clashes took place in Punjab. Gandhi believed that if he could help quell the unrest in Bengal, then he would be able to cont...

India celebrated its 74th independence day on the 15th of August 2020. We have come a long way since then. India is seen by the rest of the world, as a stable democracy, as a secular and a diverse country, and as a country with great human capital and market share that can reshape the global economy. This is exactly the kind of environment that can attract FDI, and can bring about good fortunes for the country and its people. Yet somehow we haven’t made quite made it yet. While shiny malls, large multiplexes, and urban parks light up the cities, there are several fundamental issues still to be addressed in the Country. Poverty is still rife, access to fundamental rights such as education, health still are limited to many. No one wants to be held responsible for the state of things, yet they have found a multitude of reasons to shift the blame to. Largely, the rhetoric seems to be one of the two things. It is Either that we have floundered the ways of Ancient India or that the the ...

My last post on running was on March 2018. That was over two years ago! I would hate for anyone to think that i had given up on my goal to run a half marathon in 2 hours and 15 minutes. Since that original post, Eluid Kipchoge has ran the full marathon (twice the distance) in under 2 hours. That goal does seem pretty trivial right, but 3 years later I do know now for sure that i am not a speed devil. I am not one of those runners, who can lace up and run a flat out 6-7 minute mile. I now also know enough to not even bother about comparing the times with the Olympic marathoners. It is ridiculous that they can sustain a 4 and a 1/2 minute pace for 26.2 miles. I can only be amazed at the elites achievements and have learned to live in peace with what i can do. I have run 3 more half marathons and my fastest one so far has been clocked at 2.29 (20 minutes off the first one, 15 more minutes to go to get to goal target #1). I do not get to play tennis as much as i used to, but I do seem ...

On May 31st 2020 Doug and Bob, two astronauts from NASA, set foot on the International Space station. They were welcomed by Chris Cassidy and his crew . What made this event truly special was that they made the journey in the Dragon space shuttle, designed by SpaceX a private firm. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX is considered by many to be the real life Tony Stark. What his firm has done is truly a remarkable feat of engineering. The Falcon-X rocket that powered the space capsule landed back on a drone ship named of course, i still love you . The sheer ingenuity of the team to pull this off deserves kudos. The fact that i was able to watch their journey (bits and pieces) live from the comfort of my living room made this a truly wonderful personal experience. It was so exciting to watch the liftoff, and I was mind blown by the sheer precision and the maneuvers the NASA SpaceX team had to resort to put them safely on board the space station. I guess there is a space geek inside of me somew...

In Jan 2020, when i first read a few reports on the COVID-19 Virus in Wuhan, I was not immediately concerned. I mean, this is the 21st century, surely the scientists of today can come up with something to counter the virus, right. Well, now i know how incorrect my original assessment was. The disease has spread across the globe and gone on to become one of the deadliest pandemics in the modern century. COVID-19 has reshaped the way the world lives, breathes and moves. As the reports of the outbreak started to make news headlines in Feb, the general public mostly remained oblivious to the dangers of the virus. Most of us probably treated this as fiction. People shared snapshots of novels that seemingly had predicted this outbreak in 1980, people shared video clips that indicated that the virus was made in a lab and so forth. The Virus is believed to have originated from the live animal markets in Wuhan, China. As there were reports of increased infections and deaths, China forced the ci...

I would like to believe that I am a self made man. Don’t get me wrong, I know very well that I have not rewritten history, I am not a influencer or a trend setter in any way. I work for a living, and absolutely will need to do so in order to build a stable environment for my family. But I would like to think that I have come a long way from growing up in Tamil Nadu to some guy in Houston, Texas. I want to be clear here. I am not implying that living in the USA is making me a better person than somebody who lives in India. I am talking about measure of progress in the journey of life. I do genuinely think that the effort I have put in to make myself better is the primary reason that I am what I am today. I went to a school near home. I absolutely had no idea of what the world beyond school looked like. I was a studious kid and all, I played a few sports and hung out with other 15 year olds doing stuff that only 15 year olds can. Yet, when it mattered, I was able to pull away from the c...