Diasporas are always conservative. It’s a small provincial community, the people who had enough money to move to America, and they’re cut off from the rest of India. They circle their wagons, hold onto a few old ideas and don’t let go.
Category: post
Book Tag
A friend tagged me to share top 10 books that influenced me (early in life). Didn’t dwell long enough to come up with a definitive top-10, but here’s the quick recall top-8:
- Discovery of India – Introduction to the history of India, different from what the textbooks covered. Also helped me further question the usefulness of modern religion.
- Rama series – first, and probably last, sci fi series I ever read. My dreams (both sleeping and awake) for the next few years involved aliens, and me being one of them (or chosen by them).
- Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged – capitalist, individualist thoughts for a young mind. I left extremish Rand-capitalism behind at some time. Individualism stayed.
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad – money management. Read it quite late in life (post engineering, I think). Cursed myself for not reading it earlier. Gave a copy to my sister and cousins, begging them to read it. No one did :(
- India Today – Grew up reading this regularly. From as early as I can remember. Most of my political, economic and international geo-politics knowledge foundation was formed there. Might also explain why I was so sad about their falling standards in the late 90s, and beyond.
- Readers’ Digest – My only source of ‘international non-comicbook fiction’ early on. Again, remember reading it regularly from earliest days. Stopped some time around 8th or 9th standard.
- Mills & Boons – I once came upon one of them left behind by a british aunt (she’s just 10 years elder). All my early wet dreams were versions of events in it. Till the internet came along, and I had a far wider variety of acts to choose from ;)
- Jack Welch, Straight from the gut – One of the first business autobiographies I read, and the one I was most influenced by. It helped that I was still going through my Rand phase, so Neutron Jack seemed more a hero than a darkish grey character. Still, learnt a lot about business, decision making, and hard nose politics from this one.
Anyone reading this may pick up the tag and share it forward.
Aún Aprendo
Defn.
I’m still learning.
(Alt) I’m always learning.
Author: Francisco de Goya
Carrots > Sticks
Iraq offers the carrot of access to oil. A big juicy carrot. US keeps sending troops in every time.
Syria offered the threat of chemical weapons and/or a jihadist takeover. Too small a stick. US & Europe didn’t bother even arming the non-jihadist opposition.
The finish line
World’s most football mad country made to protest *against* hosting the biggest celebration of football there is. That’s how good (evil) FIFA is!
FIFA – Making even Brazil hate football, since 2014.
Black is the new black.
Really brings out the colours, doesn’t it?
Empty
Slept late. Woke up (relatively) early.
Realised didn’t have any business cards left for today’s meeting. Sat down and coded a simple, QR-code based, mobile-first web page to use as business card. Satisfactory result, but late for appointments.
Sent a few documents to print, to the home office printer. Error: out of ink. Running out of time, run upstairs, replace cartridges, send print job again. Successful, but should’ve used a better quality paper. Don’t have any of that at home. Running late, so this’ll have to do.
Take the dangerous, heavy traffic A-road into town, to try and make up some time.
Reach in super quick time, to realise I’ve missed the train by 1 min. 16 min wait for the next one.
Take cab inside London to make up time. Reach just in time. Anxious, but glad.
3 missed calls from mom. Can’t talk to her.
2 prospects at top of my list disappoint. Another is too busy to properly connect. 1 high priority one, and 4 medium priority ones turn out good. Really good. Make the rush worth it. Even though I wasn’t at my best.
Walk through Brick lane, and Spitalfields market. Been a while since I visited these parts. Take a bus back to Waterloo. Best way to see these parts of London.
Long wait for the bus. I’m tired. Sleepy.
Get on the bus, and it starts pouring outside. Lucky.
Pick up a coffee, and splurge on a chocolate muffin for the train ride back.
Catch up with twitter on the train ride. Turns out it’s mother’s day in rest of the world. That explains those missed calls.
Back home. Play sessions with Chewie to drain out any remaining energy from the body.
Get to know that someone very close has been diagnosed with a tumour in the prostate. It’s very early stage, and I’m assured nothing serious. Knocks my heart out.
Doze off midway through replay of Women’s tour highlights.
Partner wakes me up just as Vos & Bronzini sprint to the line.
Can’t sleep now. Even if at very early stage, it’s still a tumour. I can’t afford to lose this person.
Not just another day
Snapped at boy after he went barking due to some neighbourhood activity at crazy o’clock. He got the message and came licked me clean, hugged and slept off.
I didn’t (couldn’t). Carried the day on 2 hours of sleep.
Spent more time driving around Guildford to drop off the boy at his day care, than the train took to get from Guildford to London.
Knocked up Brompton, heavy legs after last evening’s run intervals, and wicked wind didn’t help with ride to old street.
Attended 3 really good sessions with Campus Edu.
Met 2 new prospects at Campus London.
Sister got a job after an year relaxing at home.
Giro started.
Marianne Vos won the stage and overall lead at Women’s Tour.
Partner was delighted to discover that her pension is managed by Friends Life, sponsors of the Women’s Tour.
Sister’s job is in London. I’ll get to meet her more frequently. Theoretically. Hopefully.
About to eat pulled pork nachos.
Knackered. Happy. Excited.
It wasn’t just another day.
Kashmir.
My cab driver yesterday was South Asian, and we’d been conversing in our mother tongues – a mix of Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi.
As is the custom amongst fellow desis, once we were a bit comfortable, he asked me where in India I came from. I gave him the usual answer.
I asked him whether he was from India or Pakistan. He replied, nonchalantly, Kashmir.
Those familiar with South Asian geopolitics will understand, that this statement of origin says a lot.