Quo Vadis?

(Image courtesy: Google Images) Little kids can be so amusing or annoying, especially the wailing types. The small crowd that was wandering around the church fair observed with some amusement at 6 year old Tina who was loudly asking her mother for some ear rings on display at the counter. After much discussion Tina’s father got her the ear rings despite the apparent exasperation of her mother. The big smile on Tina’s face was so contagious that the other shoppers smiled and went back to their shopping. Tina was walking around with her new ear rings tightly clasped when she saw another girl sobbing profusely. Her parents were trying to console her but failing miserably. By now the other shoppers started showing signs of annoyance wagging their heads at the wailing child and her helpless parents who could not control her. Tina looked at the little girl went up to her and gave her the ear rings, said “Merry Christmas!” and walked away. The crying girl looked at the ear ring...

There is a team in Chennai that does a very commendable project in connecting blood donors and those in need.  Blood is a very precious donation that can be easily done by everyone subject to certain physical and health requirements but the mismatch between requirement and supply can be high and that is why Team Bleed and others like them are great and deserve every bit of support they get. This topic is however not just about blood donation but about how blood must ideally be segregated in our country after donation. Today at present blood is segregated by O+/-, A+/-, B+/- and AB+/- (hope I got them all) but in doing so they are forgetting one important thing; the provenance of the blood. How can the blood not be tagged with the caste of the donor in this caste mad country? How can the sacrilegious act of transfusing the blood of a lower caste person to a pure higher class person be permitted? How can a doctor from a lower caste operate upon someone from a higher caste? ...

(Image Courtesy Google images article ) When the Prime Minister  threw that googly to the billions on unsuspecting people on November 8 th I was as puzzled as many others but since we live in a highly polarized country where the crazed fanatics bully every other point of view other than their own I kept my peace. Today after Chennai was left shaken but not stirred by the cyclone Vardah I think it is time to speak out against the way this demonitization has been done. One of the four metros in the country from a highly developed and progressive state is now on its knees not because of the cyclone but what its after effects combined with this bitter pill called demonitization has done. Since the floods of last year the citizens of Chennai have discovered that they are a better people and they care for each other. They are also resilient to face up to what has been thrown at them. Vardah left behind a trail of destruction that included uprooted trees, fallen cables (pow...

What makes a person obey someone? The recent events in Chennai when we paid our last respects to the Chief Minister are fresh on all our minds.  The fact that the much feared violence and riots did not happen made me wonder if the riots of earlier were not the real expressions of grief no matter how incongruous it may seem to others. It also leads to a sneaky doubt that there was no requirement to give an order for these kind of actions. At this moment I wonder when we vilify a leader we find that many of the actions attributed to him or her are actually done by the followers. For instance Adolf Hitler;  we demonize him and accuse him of killing countless Jews in the Second World War but the persons who actually committed the acts were normal human beings like you and I. The use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima & Nagasaki was not an act of terror because it was done by the victors; even though it may have been sanctioned by the US President there was a long cha...