Twain in India
Mark Twain kept me busy for the last two weeks. Tom Sawyer was a fun read but I found the going hard with Huckleberry Finn. The bulk of the book employed the dialect of the blacks of late 19th century...
View ArticleAgnes Callard and the Socratic Life
Socrates was known for engaging people in conversation and, through a series of probing follow-up questions, exposing flaws in their reasoning. Using what is now called Socratic questioning, he...
View ArticleThe Hebrew Calendar
Today, while watching Shtisel, I learned about the Hebrew calendar. It begins in 3761 BC, a date calculated in the 2nd century CE based on a theological interpretation of the Book of Genesis. Jewish...
View ArticleThe Tragedy of Free Parking
In the beginning the earth was without parking. The planner said, Let there be parking, and there was parking. And the planner saw that it was good. And the planner then said, Let there be off-street...
View ArticleMacbeth
I’ve embarked on a new multi-year project: reading Shakespeare. Over the coming years, I plan to tackle all his 39 plays. I began with Macbeth and it wasn’t too hard to discern why he’s claimed to be...
View ArticleGates’ Source Code
Today, Bill Gates is known more for his sage-like utterings on global development and the groundbreaking work of his foundation than for his technological prowess. But for someone who grew up in the...
View ArticleBaazigars & The Brits
Whatever little Hindi I knew as a child came from the Bollywood movies of the 90s. When SRK’s ‘Baazigar’ came out in ’93, the ten-year-old me learnt a new word which I then thought meant ‘Magician’. It...
View ArticleWhat I Watched – February 2025
Mark Twain: After reading Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, this two-part documentary by Ken Burns helped etch Twain’s life in my mind. The discovery that he travelled extensively within India was the...
View ArticleGauguin and van Gogh’s Ear
The meme below was undoubtedly the funniest one I came across after the assassination attempt on Trump last year. It’s a clever riff on van Gogh’s self-portrait soon after he chopped his ear with a...
View ArticleThe Market-Friendly Dharma of Buddhism
During my previous visit to Dharamshala, an amusing sight that caught my attention was a group of Buddhist monks, red-robed, sporting Nike sneakers, sipping cappuccinos and completely immersed in their...
View Article