I Me Myself

There is room for concern,           There is no room for paranoia. There is room for doubt,           There is no room for ignorance. There is room for pride,           There is no room for vanity. There is room for patriotism,           There is no room for zealotry. There is room for ambition,           There is no room for greed. There is room for wealth,           There is no room for hoarding. There is an extra room for science,           There is not even a closet for quackery. There is room for God, maybe           But intolerance is definitely out of the door. 

December 21, 2012 is gone and we are still here. Time for conspiracy theories people, here is mine. The Mayans were trying to predict the end, not of "the" world but of “their” world – meaning “their” civilization – by this date. Now as a person who does economic modeling and predictions for a living, I can tell how horribly wrong we can be in predicting. The Mayans were predicting the end of “their” world – how ambitious – and of course, how horribly wrong they turned out to be. I am sure they had a solid set of assumptions on their population growth, cultivable land and how their bankers will run wild when entrusted with self-regulation.  But, as Naseem Taleb would chuckle, the Mayans couldn’t have seen the barbarian-European black swans swimming down the ocean. But why in Lord’s name would someone try to predict the end of their own civilization? I think – as part of my conspiracy theory – they believed that every civilization has a full-stop. The old way of living...

REGAL is a better word than LARGE. I'm just sayin' ... It occurred to me while in yet another unremarkable commute back from work. To ease the pain of spending 20 minutes with mostly unfamiliar faces, the upgraded metro trains, running between Jersey City and New York, have video screens airing mostly infomercials. Alas, more often than not, they exacerbate the commuter boredom. Things I like about it are weather forecasts, celebrity trivia (mostly to know who is hot these days) and anagrams. I am usually buried in my phone during the commute, trying to connect with distant knowns than dealing with nearer unknowns. But when I am not, I do look up to the screens and try my luck with anagrams. Yesterday, I saw 'ARELG' flash on the screen and instantly chemical juices in my head started to flow. I can never tell why I can solve one anagram and not the other. But I was hoping to solve this one. Just a split second before the screen revealed the answer, REGAL flashed in my h...

I cannot therefore It is. I am forced to refer God as “It” as a creator who balanced the two sexes so skillfully cannot belong to a particular sex. My limitations proves the existence of “It”, nothing else. I cannot explain even my own existence, let alone understand the world or the universe. Yet everywhere I look, there are patterns and laws. Something or someone designed them. Who or what? Humans, other species of animals or plants, rocks, oceans, or other planets? Probably not. There is something or someone beyond what the mind has understood or can understand. Such reasoning proves “It” exists. Why exists and why not existed? Of course, the creator could have created the laws and the patterns, and simply ceased to exist. My reason cannot answer this question for me. Faith rescues me here. My faith makes “It” alive. My God exists!!! “It” exists because I cannot understand everything. Even if I understood everything, I cannot create anything beyond what “It” allowed to be created. ...

Plato in the Republic says that a good constitution is only possible when the ruler does not want to rule; where men contend for power, where they have not learnt to distinguish between the art of getting hold of the helm of state and the art of steering, which alone is statesmanship, true politics is impossible. The minute I read these lines, two images appeared in my mind – Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Notwithstanding the countless failures that people attribute to Nehru during his tenure as prime minister of India, I believe he had a vision to “steer India”. Indira Gandhi, on the other hand, apparently strove for “holding the helm of affairs” – both in the Congress party and India. Nehru then according to Plato would be a statesman – Agreed. But then what can be said of Indira Gandhi? Deductively she was not a true politician. But was she bad because she understood concept of democracy well, but not “managed” democracy? I have always been intrigued by this word – dem...

500 B.C. Tao Te Ching (Classic text) - Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power. Confucious (philosopher) - Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. [which is power] 30 B.C. Horace (poet) - Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant. 1830 A.D. Honoré de Balzac (Writer) - Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true. 1850 A.D. Benjamin Disraeli (politician) - Nothing can withstand the power of the human will if it is willing to stake its very existence to the extent of its purpose. 1900 A.D. Andrew Carnegie (Industrialist) - Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs. 1930 A.D. Harry Emerson Fosdick (religious teacher) - Our power is not so much in us as through us. 1970 A.D. Sathya Sai Baba (religious teacher) - Some say knowledge is power, but that is not true. Character is pow...