Musings

Having recently been through the experience of choosing a name for my daughter, my thoughts went to the identity formed by a name. There have been careers built around the spelling to be used in name – ask the numerologists. In the traditional South Indian tradition, the sound or the syllable that the new born baby’s name should start with, is decided by the way the stars align at the time of birth. It is not uncommon for parents in this part of the world to look for names that begin with “Re”, “La”, “Shi” or “Tha”after a baby is born. The English translation of some of these syllables is intriguing. As made popular in the movie “Chupke Chupke” about 30 years back, why are “go” and “to” pronounced so differently in English? An exact pronunciation of a Sanskrit word in English is not easy. Nowadays, more visible than ever before is the change in the spelling of the name

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I begin with a search for an item. I log into my favorite website, click a few times, search, narrow the search down a little further. In the time that the search engine at the website narrows down the selection, my fingers move to open a new tab – another website opens, more items are listed and the same operation continues. I revert to the main tab – this time, I spend some time looking at the items there. Hmmm. Maybe I should look at what others looking for this item also bought. I might find something I (don’t) need? Click on that item. Switch back to the other tab. Scroll through the entire list. Naw! Not what I want. This site sucks anyway. I should try this another website. Maybe they have something that I missed the last time. They must have updated their stocks by now! Surely, if they are serious about doing their business, they must! Hours can

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  So the General Elections 2014 for electing the Members to the Parliament are over. As things turned out, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a simple majority in the Lok Sabha. The interesting aspect of the elections and one that I imagine will be part of future documentaries and analysis was the campaign by the BJP. The Prime Minister elect was nominated by the party well in advance and their campaign was centered around the man, Narendra Modi. There were ads on the TV, in the print media and in the social media. If you were in India during the months of March through May this year, it was near impossible to miss seeing his face or hearing his name being spoken about. There have been references in the media to how this might have been a highly well planned effort by an agency to promote his and the party’s agenda to maximize their chances of success. If true,

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I watched the movie – The Great Debaters (released in 2007), directed by and starring Denzel Washington. In my opinion, he is one of the best actors in the world at the moment. The movie is inspired by a true story that took place in the year 1935 when a small school in Marshall, Texas broke new ground in debating against the top white colleges of the time and won. Like most Denzel Washington movies, the movie was excellent. The actors and the depiction of the time – 1935, is supreme. In the movie, the character Melvin Tolson narrates a story about the origin of the word “lynching”. He says, “Anybody know who Willie Lynch was? Anybody? Raise your hand. No one? He was a vicious slave owner in the West Indies. The slave-masters in the colony of Virginia were having trouble controlling their slaves, so they sent for Mr. Lynch to teach them his methods. The word “lynching” came from his

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We have hired a cook who comes in every day. His value to our livelihood is immense – he ensures that the primary requirement in every day life is resolved by cooking our food. He has his quirks, we all do. He goes around to 12 other houses in a single day, repeating the task in a seemingly tireless way. He works hard. He is up from 6:00 a.m in the morning, reporting to his first house at 6:45 a.m, returning home for lunch and a nap in the afternoon before another bout of cooking across multiple houses resumes in the evening. He finishes the day at 10:30 p.m, returning home for dinner and a night’s sleep. He forms part of a large migrant community that moves from a smaller town to a big city in search of opportunities and a better livelihood than the one that they experience back home. The blueprint has remained the same through centuries and

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