Sunday Capsule 1

It seems my grandiose attempt to be regular on the blog does not have the blessings of divine providence. Though most of the times, my blog – negligence is because of internal factors like choosing to watch a movie or spending time randomly instead of writing on topics which interest or concern me and which [...]

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2009 – The top 10 list ?

This is the time of the year when there is a rush for a top ten list for everything- the top events of last year, top ten places to visit, top ten movies to watch, top ten watering holes, top ten restaurants etc etc. However critical we might be of the utility of such a [...]

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What does India stand for?

What does India stand for? I was taking a post snack walk with one my colleagues when this topic came up, though not exactly in this form. We were discussing amongst other things Indian attitude to the caste system, Indian crab mentality, Indian civic sense (or lack of it) and whether we cared about issues [...]

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Leh Ladakh Travelogue

Travelogue – Leh Ladakh The best part about having a blog is that you can share your experiences with a wider audience. I have been missing in action for two weeks now and needed to put some thing up fast. The easiest was to put up my Leh-Ladakh experiences. For a bit of Background -the [...]

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The Indian Juggernaut

The elections in India are over. The dust has settled. For me one of the most enduring images of the elections was a policewoman guarding a locked room where the electronic voting machines were kept. She was one of the two million security personnel whose job was to ensure free and fair elections. We Indians [...]

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Book review-In Spite of the Gods by Edward Luce

In Spite of the Gods. The Strange Rise of Modern India. By Edward Luce.

Don’t get intimidated by the title of the book. It is not a drab, technical documentary on Modern India. It’s almost like a travelogue, absorbing every feeling as you stick your head out of the train window on a tour de India.

Warning – This book is not for the faint hearted Indian who wants to deny the gripping poverty and corruption in India or wants to blame the western media for projecting only India’s wrong side of things. Its not for those who wrote innumerable articles about the ‘ The White tiger ‘ or ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, about how the book and the movie have been meant to titillate the western audience and show India in bad light. There is one diversion thought. Edward Luce, the British journalist, who headed the Financial Times bureau in New Delhi, knows what he is writing. The language is lucid; the facts come out through the numerous interviews he had carried out for the book and the tone extremely insightful, thought irreverent at parts.

What I like best about the book is that the author does not have an agenda. He is not writing the book to win any award, or to score any brownie point with any particular person. The only entity he wants to impress is India, and the many manifestations of this great nation, the cultural diversity, the religious fundamentalism, the tolerance, the yin and the yang (the book also contains a chapter on Indo – China relationship), the bureaucracy, the Nehru – Gandhi legacy, the minorities and the majorities, the modern and ancient, AIDS, the spiritual and the mundane, the slums and the economic liberalization, the bureaucracy and also people like Anura Roy who gave up the esteemed Indian Administrative Services to serve the poor and fight for the right to Information, the US reckless amoralism and the Indian foreign policy, caste system, dalits, the software industry, Bollywood and every thing else that crossed your mind about what makes India tick irrespective of everything that prima facie would signal her downfall.

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The essence of religion

What is the importance of religion in Today’s society? Is religion and myth an important component of today’s society and is it relevant? Is religion the glue which binds the society together? Does society need a religion? What is the difference between faith, religion, cult and spiritualism? Can a society do without religion or as T.S. Eliot quoted “If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin”. And most importantly does a society with economic sufficiency and perfect harmony still need a religion?

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