Positive Overtones

The Library Couple  It was the beginning of my mid-semester break and I had decided to travel to Goa for a short trip. It wasn’t a trip that I decided to take at an instant which meant that I did have a reserved ticket. As I entered my compartment I felt a bit out of place. Unlike my other fellow travellers, I wasn’t dressed in some swanky bright coloured clothes. In fact, since my journey was just a two week visit to home, I did not bother packing much. However, most of the passengers in my compartment looked like they were travelling to Goa to settle there for good. Their bags looked like they had emptied their wardrobe for their trip. I decided to stay silent during the whole journey as I went to my berth without causing much commotion. As I gazed out of the window pondering as to how bad my journey could get, a young couple sat across me. The young lady was dressed in a yellow kurti with floral designs on it and white leggings while the young man was dressed in a blu...

LESSONS I LEARNT FROM A CYBER-BULLY  Though it gives me chills, this account of friendship is quite weird and unique. It was a late summer evening when I had just come back home from my daily jog around Central Park. Ads I entered the house and my FitBit connected to the household Wi-Fi, I received a strange notification on my FriendZone account. It was a friend request from a person name Sally Meyers. This should have been my first clue as I did not know anyone by that name. But, being a socialite by nature, I decided to accept the friend request of this complete stranger. Lesson #1: Never accept a friend request of someone whom you have never spoken to or even seen The following day, I received a message: “Hey! How are you?” I know that being a socialite means that I need to be more outgoing and extroverted. But, this person was definitely swift in her outspokenness (if I may term it that way). Being a simpleton myself, I replied to it almost instantly. L...

The Accidental Prime Minister by Sanjaya Baru The Making and unmaking of Manmohan Singh Book Review Sanjaya Baru’s 2014 account entitled ‘ The Accidental Prime Minister´ describes what he experienced in the UPA-1 when he was Manmohan Singh’s media adviser. Overall the book focuses on three aspects. Firstly, the book describes the events that transpired before Baru’s appointment as chief media adviser. Secondly, the book describes the political issues within the government and the Congress party. And, finally, the book narrates the way the former PM dealt with the foreign policy of the country. Baru’s first series of interactions with Manmohan Singh were quite bitter. Being an editor of a leading newspaper, Baru strongly criticized Singh’s economic policies when the latter was an adviser. The misinterpretations of an interview that was later reported on the newspaper added fuel to the fire. It looked like Baru and Singh had become fierce rivals. However, the events ...

The Pressure Cooker of India:  The Educational System The pressure cooker is one of the most widely used cooking equipment in the kitchen. It is used to make those hard potatoes soft and the delicate tomatoes mushy. Listening to some of the students in schools and colleges and based on my own school experience, I realized that our own educational system has become a brand new pressure cooker. To fix this perpetual problem, the government tried to make it easy for the students but made a bigger mess of it. By letting the students pass, even if they do not meet the required standards, right up to the 10 th grade had seemed like a bright solution to the problem however it ended up producing a bunch of dimwits who take no interest in their studies. Now, I am not fully an enemy to both methods of education but I do feel that we require a little more wisdom. Instead of moving between two extremes, it is better to stick to the point of equivalence, or as Blaise Pascal would...

The Lifeguard's Telepathic Tree It was the 4 th of July when I decided to travel for a short relaxation trip, never knowing that this would become one of those trips that would have a deep impact on me. I had been working tirelessly for the past month that it was time that I had taken a break from work so as to spend some quiet time by myself. And so taking an off from the hectic schedule, I decided to go for a short trip to Kochi. I rented a house owned by my friend to spend the weekend all by myself. The house was beautiful and it had wonderful scenery of the seashore which enhanced its beauty. There I encountered him! I planned for an outing at the beach so that I could bask in the sunshine and enjoy the beauty of the blue waves crush on the golden-brown sand of the seashore. Who knew that I was destined to meet the man who would have a deep impact on my life. He was a life-guard at the beach and so naturally he would spend his time watching out for dangers at sea. H...

The Night Train at Deoli  As narrated by the girl with the basket It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime incidents that one experiences over the course of their life. I used to stay at Deoli when this happened. I was an orphan who lost my parents in an attack by some wild animals, and so I lived with my middle-aged aunty. We had acres of bamboo plantation so we decided to use those canes to make baskets as my aunt was a good weaver. But, then the question arose: Who would buy our hand-made baskets? Deoli was a small town where handmade baskets were quite common. So, I decided to sell these baskets at the one-place I knew (or I thought I knew) people would buy: the solitary railway platform! I was a girl who just hit my adolescence phase so it was quite an experience to go daily to the platform to sell baskets. Before I tell you the things I noticed there, let me give you an introduction as to what comprised the Deoli railway station. There was a mango tree, perha...

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (Book Reiew) Gliding on the success of his previous book, Sapiens , Yuval Noah Harari published yet another eye-opening best-seller entitled Homo Deus. Published in 2016, Harari attempts to reveal the expected future based on events of the past and present. He present the origin, effects and challenges of present day theories like humanism, modernism and liberalism and how it is changing the world we live in. Following the end of the prequel, Harari goes on to say that we are heading towards making our species extinct, just like we did to the other human species, while also paving the way for a new advanced species that could be termed as Homo Deus. At the time when there were many species, we managed to organize ourselves despite having smaller brains and thus we were able to overpower the other species which in truth were much stronger than us. With the dawn of each revolution it seemed like we were heading towards our doom, but we survived...