Reaching There

Himalayan Blunder by John Parashuram Dalvi History repeats itself, the true embodiment of this concept revealed itself during the May of 2020. On May 5 - 6, v iolent clash between Indian and Chinese patrols on the northern bank of Ladakh’s Pangong Tso lake. Soldiers exchange blows, throw stones at each other and Chinese troops attack Indian soldiers with nail-studded clubs. A timeline of series of events until end of June are available on Hindustan Times here . As a nation we need to retrospect and look at the series of events that culminated in the Indo-China war of 1962. A lot of blame has been placed on then Prime Minister of India, Jawaher Lal Nehru, and his Defence Minister, V. K. Krishna Menon. Political historians will debate for decades whether the above duo insulted and ignored then Army Chief, General KS Thimayya. Brigadier John Parashuram Dalvi's fair account in his book, Himalayan Blunder: The Curtain Raiser of Sino-Indian War of 1962 , gives a fair and factual acc...

India as an ancient maritime power is a theme I was not aware of until I read the book 'The Ocean of Churn' by Sanjeev Sanyal. India has over 7000 kilometers of the maritime border that it shares with Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the Maldives. If you look at these countries at the history of these modern countries you can see the impact of inter-trade of Southeast Asia that was connected through trade routes. The Ocean of Churn The book brings to light the history of India that's largely ignored by norther Indian readers. And it's not because of a made-up Aryan-Dravidian divide (by the way the whole Aryan Invasion/Migration or origination of pastoral activities from Steppes have been proven incorrect in 2019!) but because our history books never talked about Nandivarman, Kharavela, Kaundinya and others who ruled over various parts of India during different time periods and also confronted the foreign invaders from the w...

As a kid, I was fascinated by the section on Indus Valley Civilization in my history book at school. To imagine an ancient India where the cities were laid out in a Manhattan-like grid, with an upper and a lower city, an advanced drainage system, and ports from where traders traveled as far as ancient Sumeria or Egypt. It's just a captivating part of our country's ancient history. I let my imagination run far with some help from the pictures of Mohenjo-daro, Harappa or Dholavira but I'm unable to relate to these ancient ancestors that traversed the same land where I was born thousands of millennia later. Seal from Indus Valley Civilization Living Modern History And then I have the modern history of India when the entire concept of India was formed from scratch. It was in the time of Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale,  Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Motilal Nehru, Mahatama Gandhi and other leaders of modern India spent decades of their lives to build th...

Most of us are all too familiar with the daily grind of a workplace. All the workplaces are alike although the culture may differ slightly.  We know the pain of going through excruciating meetings that manage to belabour a simple thing to gigantic proportions of absurdity (similar to this sentence, I must say)! "Meetings are poisonous"; they kill productivity. Oddly enough (or is it?) Outlook cannot show a 15 minute meeting, it works in a step size of 30 minutes.  Sorry, 15 minutes = 30 minutes, huh? This would be my mantra; try to make meetings as short as possible. To make it simple; I liked the book and the SMS-like advices it gave.  I don't have much to write so I'll let some of the highlights from the book to speak for itself. As you would deduce, these are the things I liked in the book. Learn to say no - it's a rare trait to learn! One of my favorites - teaching sincerely goes a long way to earn a loyal customer  My ...

A while back I wrote about so many books  ( so little time ) on my list. Another point of view - so many revelations waiting to be revealed to the ignorant me, lying on my desk gathering dust. So here are the two books I've on my March 2013 list: Crisis Economics - A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by Nouriel Roubini I'm still reading it! I was curious about the financial crisis of 2008. It is perhaps the biggest event of my life. It has affected millions of my generation in a way no other single event has. Subprime, derivatives, CDOs and whole other "soup of alphabets" came into the life of ordinary men and women.  It was interesting to read how regularization and de-regularization throughout this century has brought us into this mess. Is there a single right way? Why did some of the best minds in economics screwed up (maybe the greed overcame everything else)? I hope I've an answer when I'm able to finish going through this crisis. It...