It was early January when I traveled to Vijayawada to participate in the World Atheist Conference and while returning, I thought to travel to Hyderabad too to meet friends. My dear friend Sujatha Surepally told me that I could stay at the office of Desidasa, the magazine, Usaa Sambasiva Rao garu had started and which she has been the editor.[Read More...]
Orientation From the macro to the micro When it comes to stereotypes of the masses of revolutionary people, the masses have built barricades that look like forts which they hide behind, armed with guns. But if we trace the behavior of masses back far enough to pre-revolutionary situations, masses become groups. In order to understand how masses of people become[Read More...]
Auto rickshaws are a dominated transportation of Kolkata. According to a record of 2018, about a half lakh registered auto rickshaw (and a few thousand unregistered) used to ferry a few lakh passengers daily in different routes of the city before the lockdown. From unlock 1.0, government has been allowed to play auto rickshaw with some strict rules. i.e. regular[Read More...]
Covid-19 did the impossible: it changed the concept of time as a finite resource. Type A individuals, like me, were faced with the realisation that we had time on our hands. Therefore, we just had to make it as productive as possible. It sounded like good news. Gone were the dreadful Mondays that spoiled all our Sundays, and along with[Read More...]
This morning when I pulled opened the curtains to my dining room window overlooking the neighborhood park, I spotted one of my neighbors (let me call her Lillete) is power walking in the park. She looked radiant and chic in her joggers outfit. She appeared much energized. Looking back a few months ago, I remembered last year’s Halloween night (October[Read More...]
When life hasn’t got a swing anymore, people may give in to obsessive oniomanic compulsions, in as much as they are going out of their way to construct a flamboyant life style and change their identity from “don’t- need” to “must-have” consumers, so as to satisfy their gripping buying desire. Erike Pevernagie Man is a creature of instincts, desires, feelings,[Read More...]
Do you feel you’re passing through hard times? We may be facing a new health, financial, or relational problems, but more frequently, our hard times arise from our mind. Mental hard time is mostly a wounded ego. In such times, all we need is a shift in our thinking, the way we see and that life. Here are five tips[Read More...]
Can you interview an online site? You can’t. So, I did the next best thing. I interviewed Binu Mathew, the man behind the award-winning million readers a month or three million-page views a month online journal, Countercurrents. Mathew claims this is not a big thing except that his journal is based on ideology and openness. He calls it a “people’s journal”[Read More...]
Egyptian actor Omar Sharif poses for a photograph in 2009. Photo: Reuters. He passed away on July 10, 2015 Egyptian born debonair actor Omar Sharif’s passing on July 10th marks the end of an era. After hearing the sad news, I immediately sent a text to my best friend Maryam (a diehard fan of Omar Sharif). She immediately texted me[Read More...]
Cell phones are so convenient that they’re an inconvenience. Haruki Murakami Technology, as we know, has transformed our life. It has made things easy for us. It has lessened the humdrum of our day to day life through its entertaining tools and gadgets. Because of technological and communication revolution modern man has become a kind of post-human (a person or[Read More...]
