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COCKROACHES RULE

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  Cockroaches are in news, they are gloating in their celebrity status, after all no less than the Chief Justice of India has compared them to the youth of our country, later clarified as fake degree holder unemployed ones. As though ‘rose by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet’, so cockroach by any distinction will cease to be what the species is. Youth of our great nation are our hope for the future, they are the ‘dividend’ portion of the demographic equity that we the people have so painstakingly accumulated, generated and reproduced over the last nearly eight odd decades. Now comparison with cockroaches can be perceived as a compliment as we all are aware, their main characteristic is ‘survival’. They predate even dinosaurs, and will survive the nuclear holocaust too, God forbid but should that ever be perpetuated on us by some maniacs. Cockroaches have another very useful trait, the feminine gender of homo sapiens is by and large mighty scared of them. Males of the homo sap...
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MELODY CHOCOLATEE DIPLOMACY

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So a newspaper in Norway has published a cartoon with Modi as a snake charmer playing the harp   to entice the oil suppliers, which has naturally irked   many of us Indians. For the Westerners, the image of a snake charmer is synonymous with poor, backward, primitive, superstitious Indians. The colonialists had a field day in lampooning the uncivilised barbarians, who have no business to aspire to the higher table, which is traditionally reserved for the ‘gora saab’. What’s new about this stereotyping of Indians, Peter Sellers’s depiction of an Indian in Hollywood movies, Mind Your Language, the British sitcom, Churchill have all been guilty of the same crime against the one of the oldest civilisations of the world. Some years ago, when India’s Mars mission was hugely successful, the NewYork Times published this highly distasteful cartoon. Obviously this kind of denigration is a sign of envy. Onida TV which some of us old timers would recall had an advertisement going with ...
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THUCYDIDE'S TRAP

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  “Thucydide’s trap” was bandied about during the recent summit between Xi and Trump. The mere mention of a trap sent the advisors scurrying for cover, as none of them had ever heard of such a term. They were only aware of the ‘honeytrap’ especially of the Epstein variety. Google or may be even Chatgpt would have come to their rescue and they would have realised this was a lesson from ancient Greek history and related to the contest between  the challenger to the throne and the incumbent power in the world order. I read about this sometime in the last decade while studying US-China relations and how and when would this phenomenon be applicable in the emerging global geopolitical scenario. The trap essentially describes that a conflict is bound to ensue with the rise of a new power, as was witnessed between Athens and Sparta about two millennia ago, after their victory over Persia. Be that as it may, Xi Jin Ping trumped hapless Trump with such unpronounceable tongue twisters wi...
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INDIGO MESS

  ‘Indi-No-go’, reminded me of the time when my daughter Ananya was scheduled to travel by Go Air and the flight kept getting delayed, after almost three-four hours when her patience wore thin, she called to say that she has christened the airline “Go Last”, instead of Go First as they claimed. Indigo too took pride in ensuring punctuality of their arrivals which we all have experienced, but now that too is not something you can take for granted. None had expected the situation to touch its nadir, the way this  shemozzle  was unleashed on the hapless passengers, it was just shameful.  The 6E has lost its sex appeal but Indian aviation passengers do not have much of a choice, with 61% market share, they rule the Indian skies literally. No wonder, Indigo is ‘indig-nant’ and chose to follow this path to make DGCA eat a humble pie and roll back the instructions or put it in abeyance temporarily. Incidentally the word Indigo traces its roots from the Latin word ‘Indicum’,...
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RELIGION IN THE ARMED FORCES

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  Lieutenant Samuel Kamalesan was recently in the news, as his petition against his dismissal from the army was rejected by the Supreme Court. Being a veteran, we have attended countless services in the temples, gurudwaras, churches and mosques over the four odd decades, while one was in the service of the nation. Frankly as a youngster in the unit, all these religious parades, as they were referred to, was not something one looked forward to eagerly, barring the gurudwara, where the attraction was the ‘kadha prasad’, (the mouthwatering ghee dripping ‘halwa’), and sure enough some of us would even volunteer to help in the distribution as at the end, there was a chance that we would be rewarded with an extra helping. Fresh out of the academies, most of us had just about bid farewell to the teenage, still adolescents at heart and many of our immature actions left our seniors in no doubt about that. While sports fields were fun, the religious worship routines were not, especially if i...
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BANGLADESH IMBROGLIO

  The recent events in Bangladesh are not just a cause for concern but I think, it is now bordering as a threat in being. Ironically within a century, the lighthouse of Indian civilisation, undivided Bengal has turned into such a morass that no one could have imagined. It is difficult to imagine that this was the land of Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam, which even the British had to finally surrender to, when they revoked the 1905 division of Bengal. This abyss that both Bengals find themselves in today, can be traced back to the seeds of radicalisation sowed in the pre-partition era. The riots and violence which was unleashed on the minorities in the predominantly Muslim East Bengal those days was not an aberration. The overt bon-homie between the  communities could not paper over the deep divide within, like a powder keg, just waiting for any trigger to explode. Humanity itself was disgraced and ashamed by the horrendous acts of mindless violence that arsonists indulged in...
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HOW MANY RAFALES DOWN?

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  How many Rafales down? The question is now playing like a stuck record and reminds one of the song, “Who let the dogs out?” Rafales are aerial platforms which are state of the art systems and are meant to be utilised in case of hostilities. OP SINDOOR is a military operation where India and Pak have dug into their respective inventories to inflict damage on the adversary. The Operation is currently paused, as declared by the Govt of India. There have been claims that India has lost some aircrafts in this four day skirmish. Although the question when posed to Air Marshal Bharti on 10th May during the debriefing itself, he did respond tongue in cheek that in any such military offensive action there are bound to be losses, but the pilots are safe. The CDS Gen Chauhan too responded to a similar query recently in Singapore, mentioning that it is not important as to how many went down, what was remarkable was to drive the lessons home and execute operations immediately after that. It i...
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