Love, Life and Happiness

" Breaking News- Two sisters who had been target of verbal physical abuse teach the abuser lesson. The real woman empowerment which is need for an hour today. Stay tuned for the complete story on the Fighter sisters."   It is not very uncommon to stay on a channel when one comes across such a story, while switching through the channels. In itself, such a story of women being brave, emancipated and empowered is a liberating story- the kind India need to know more about! Now let's go deeper into the story. Story is about two beautiful sisters of a traditional family who are happily married. Both sisters have been to their home town for a short vacation where the local goon eyes on them. The local goon who is habituated to attain everything he likes by hook or crook feels instant lust looking at two sisters. The Goon follows them and approaches the elder sister and proposes her for marriage. The elder sister calmly denies the proposal stating that she is happily married an

  "Before mass leaders seize the power to fit realities to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it."                        - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism As Delhi descends into the breathless chamber of smoke and dust another year, Delhi CM releases another tranche of full-page advertisements, and some would say, using them, buys the headlines of the newspapers in which those advertisements appear. The air quality hovers between bad and worse, as the silly anti-Deepavali order of Supreme Courts mock the powers-that-be, as Deepawali still is a month ahead. When I looked at the Hindustan Times today (NCR Edition, 18.10,2020), I am reminded of the above quote by Hannah Arendt.  An unscrupulous politician like Arvind Kejriwal is defined in the quote above, a politician who stood behind Tahir Hussain, a man charged with conspiring to c

  Before I get down to reviewing this book- A New Idea of India - by Hash Madhusudan and Rajeev Mantri , I must confess that I stopped reading intellectual books claiming to have the recipe of success for the individual, the society, the nation and the world at large, long time back. The intellectuals intimidate me, their theories bore me. Most of the thinkers appear to me like mercenaries waiting and watching the successful trend to adopt them. They will pick already successful cases, build a theory around them and then trot it around as if they were themselves responsible for those successes. That said, I picked this book with a sense of old intimidation. A serious book on contemporary politics, society and economics with recommendatory and laudatory notes from almost ten leading intellectuals from both sides of ideological divide with a hard cover- the book came to me courtesy Indic Academy . It is a general refrain that one should not judge a book by its cover. Now, here is one