Rajendra Chola, the chap who constructed the magnificent Gangaikonda Cholapuram and the son of Rajaraja Chola (immortalized in Ponniyan Selvan) ruled just about seventy years before Mohammed Ghori’s Somnath raids in the 12th century. I found this fact quite mind-boggling since I’ve never been able to visualize contemporaries of historic figures reigning simultaneously in different … Continue reading Random List of Contemporaries
The only thing I knew about Shahnaz Habib’s ‘Airplane Mode’ was that it was a book on travel that had garnered a decent amount of attention. Within a few pages, to my delight, I discovered that the Brooklyn-based writer dissecting her anxieties of traveling off the beaten track in Rumi’s Konya and Istanbul was a … Continue reading Shahnaz Habib’s ‘Airplane Mode’
An apocryphal story has it that Confucius once became separated from his students in a strange city. They were searching for him when a local informed them that he’d seen a man who appeared ‘crestfallen, like a homeless wandering dog’. This clue led them to their master. When they told Confucius how the man had … Continue reading Mental Model for Categorizing Intellectuals
Its hard to comprehend the horrors that Europe went through in the early 20th century. The generation that was born in first few years of the century, was the fortunate one. They were too young to fight in the First World War and too old for the Second. Stefan Zweig’s memoir ‘The World of Yesterday’ … Continue reading Zweig’s ‘World of Yesterday’
One of the professional hazards in my line of work is that I’m at times invited to speak on topics that are complex and in which I have limited expertise. Last week, I had to speak on Parametric Insurance for Disaster Risk Management. For the uninitiated, in normal insurance, payouts are made through filing a … Continue reading Parametric Insurance for Disasters
There’s a famous photograph of Robert Capa’s that has been pinned to the bulletin board above my desk for a number of years. It was taken in 1948 on a beach in France, and it shows a smiling young woman dressed in a cotton gown and a large straw hat striding forward across the sands … Continue reading Vivian Gornick on Picasso…
I spent a week in Jakarta last month. The short ride from the airport to the hotel was enough to understand how broken and shambolic India’s urban infrastructure systems are. Not a single Indian city can match up to the quality of built infrastructure that was visible in the city. Drivers there, also know the … Continue reading Jakarta Notes
When King George VI passed away, his daughter and heir Elizabeth was holidaying in Kenya. The manner in which the news of the King’s death was relayed to her in far-away Kenya was captured in an iconic scene in ‘The Crown’. Guarding her treetop hotel where she was spending the night was Jim Corbett. In … Continue reading Corbett’s writings
The SDG Index of India was published last week. If you’re curious about India, the report provides a fascinating peek into the progress that India has made across each goal. The report has an exhaustive breakdown of the various indicators under each goal. Some of the indicators which I didn’t expect to see were: number … Continue reading The SDGs & Best Things First
Each time I visit the Sunday Book Market in Daryaganj, I scan through the National Geographics scattered in various stalls to see if something striking catches my eye. This month, I got lucky and landed myself the issue of September 1983 – the month I was born. Flipping through it, I realized that I’m becoming … Continue reading National Geographic – September 1983
