Love for Reading Books

A few weeks back, my wife was down in the clubhouse library room adding some newly inducted books to the library shelf (we run a small library in our society). One of the neighbours passed by and remarked something like “Who reads books these days? Our kids study all day at school. You again want to force them to study after coming back home?” For us, books enjoy a status of unquestionable reverence. They mean something good, pure, noble, lofty. Reading books is good. You don’t ask why! And here was someone asking why! This left Shilpi stunned and speechless.

This piece is not to pass a judgement on that lady. For all you know, it may have been just a joke. We know for sure that that lady is a smart person working in a senior role in a reputed multinational company. So, no comments on her intellectual capability either.

The fact is: her remark made us think. Really! Why read books? Information and entertainment are available in other forms too. Then, what's so great about books? I think, it's a valid question begging a serious answer. And this is the reply I would have wished to give her. Not a lecture on the merits of reading habits in general (though I can't claim it has turned out to be something radically different than that), but a very personal account of what books have meant to me all my life. Before I forget, a heartfelt thanks to that neighbour, who made us understand ourselves a little better.

Witness a Beautiful Mind

Books are an embodiment of accumulated knowledge, thoughts, imagination and emotions of the author(s) on a chosen set of topics. It’s an image of a beautiful mind -- the most beautiful thing in nature. Is it the only possible image? Of course not! The beauty of mind can reveal itself in various other forms: a picture, a movie, a play, a sculpture, a speech, an organisation, a product, an idea, a piece of research… I think this list is endless. Even a beautiful human relation is a creation of a beautiful human mind.

Books, or long form writing of any kind, is one such manifestation. It can’t be done by individual, isolated pieces or by mere expertise in a language. The intellectual glue, the overarching theme of the book that binds it together, and how its tiny little parts fit together without being forced, is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed. This phenomenon is what keeps me picking one book after another. It’s not necessarily a thirst for knowledge which is available in other forms too and probably more efficient ones than books. It’s also not for entertainment, which again, is an easily available commodity in many other forms.

Active and Nourishing Entertainment

There’s another reason why reading, especially reading books, is such a unique experience. The magical experience hidden in the books is a gentle and shy creature. It comes and knocks on your mind’s door only once. If you are distracted, if you aren’t attentive, you will miss that. The experience you get in reading is also possible only when you put in the active effort of searching in the words that the book is trying to project on your mind’s screen. This is active entertainment as opposed to passive ones like audio-visual or social media. On the one hand, visual content gives readymade pictures of tangible things, e.g. people, places and events, while reading, we have to conjure them in our head. On the other hand, visual medium can't present anything abstract directly, e.g. emotions and thoughts, and has to take help from their tangible manifestation, e.g. facial expressions, or visual symbols or voiceover narratives. Written words shine at presenting abstract thoughts, because these are just words; the abstract ideas they contain really take form in your head. When you are reading, you aren’t just consuming pre-digested nuggets of information and entertainment, but are actively working on it, processing it to create the experience or outcome you are seeking. This is a fundamentally effortful activity yet is capable of creating a level of relaxation not achievable through most other forms of entertainment. Its analogy in the physical domain is exercising. Of course, it’s strenuous and makes you sweat, yet it may be a more effective way of unwinding after a hectic day than watching a movie or partying hard. Reading, in short, is a co-creation process where you collaborate with the author to create your own entertainment. 

Commune with Great Minds

Many books, especially non-fiction books, have given me an exquisite experience of being in a conversation with the author. Great books don’t merely present content that has to be passively absorbed by the reader. Rather, they are written in a conversational style, goading the reader to think, agree, disagree, challenge, applaud and sometimes say ‘Eureka!’. An intense reading session has often left me with an aftertaste of having conversed with a great mind.

Long Term Assimilation

I have found my mind chewing on the extracts from a book long after I am done reading it; and through years, assimilating ideas from multiple books. This, though not completely unique with books, is definitely the most prevalent in the case of books, and happens much less frequently with, say, movies.

An Elevating Escape from the Mundane

Books are also an escape — from a reality that sometimes tends to get too monotonous and dreary, where sometimes one tends to feel like a prisoner — of ordinary, practical, worldly and socially acceptable ways. You can escape into the world of science fiction or fantasy. You can travel into a Utopian or dystopian future, or deep into the past ages. You can work alongside a detective to investigate a gruesome murder, or you can feel the passions of a lover. On a different, more intellectual, note, you can immerse yourself deep into subjects of science, philosophy and art. This escape, unlike many others, doesn’t intoxicate you, doesn’t create dependence. Instead, it shows you how liberating it is to forget yourself and your ordinary selfish life by immersing yourself into loftier issues and subjects. Such an escape, even if temporary, cleanses you, leaves you perceptive of a reality beyond yourself. This is soul-nourishing.

What is Success?

I think this an ever-pertinent question for all of us. I may have written and spoken about them at various points. Probably, my answer was different everytime. Doesn't matter!

Here's what I said today to one of my colleagues:

'For me, success is walking out of my office into the hallway and meeting some colleagues I genuinely like and in seeing the same feeling on their face.'

You may think why I define it this way. Do I want to make it easy for myself? There are so many other goals which are far more concrete, much more measurable.

Name and fame in the academic world. Publications, citations, promotions, awards, projects etc. these are all almost universally accepted as measures of success for academicians. I don't question their authenticity. I have spent a good portion of my career chasing them, fretting about them. Even now, I don't want to make any tall claim that I don't care about them anymore. Yet, other intangible, immeasurable goals have steadily gained in importance and have clearly surpassed the tangibles in their desirability.

Does it sound that I have chosen an easier goal from for myself? If you look at the number of people who achieve this versus those who achieve the tangibles, you will probably reconsider your opinion. In fact, in any place with people of high capability, genuine goodwill is as rare as pearl in an ocean. What you see are jealousy, unbridled ambition, high stress, conspiracy, secrecy and, at best, fake pleasantries.

These are all offsprings of hypercompetition which is an inevitable result of people desirous of something that's finite, and hence scarce, getting together at the same place. There can only be one director in an institute, one head in a department. If you got a paper selected in a prestigious venue, it's inevitably because your paper prevailed over several others. Each success is accompanied by countless failures, because the lower the probability of success the more desirable that success becomes.

Let me repeat that this alone doesn't make such successes bad. Their difficulty is also related to their inherent value. A director does important service for an institute and nation. An HoD plays an important role in shaping a department. An idea published in an influential venue has the potential of changing the world for the better. The real value of these achievements is in what they give to the world, not inherently in how many people desire for them.

The desirability or popularity is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for inherent value. For example, having sex with an attractive model on Instagram may be a matter of desire for millions. Does that by itself make the attractiveness of that model an inherently valuable thing? I hope you are saying 'no', for that's definitely my answer. Einstein's discoveries may be inaccessible to all but a few in the world. Beyond what's available in popular media, most of us don't know him at all. His being one of the most famous scientists may evoke feeling of awe. Some of us who consider themselves mentally capable may develop aspirations of becoming a legendary scientist or intellectual like him. Yet, the pure beauty of intellectual pursuits is completely hidden from a vast majority of the world population. Does this make Einstein's work unimportant? So, does that convince you that public desire or popularity or high competition may be correlated with inherent value of something, yet it mustn't be mistaken to be analogous with inherent value?

Now, hopefully, you will allow me to argue more fervently in favour of my choice of the goals on the basis of which I intend to define success.

Genuinely liking somebody, especially in a space where you are heavily invested, where bars are implicitly high due to high density of talent making genuine and well-meant compliments and acknowledgement of contribution and talents harder to come by, is also very hard. Competition begets more competition, giving rise to a host of insecurities, jealousies and other forms of negativities. To aspire to experience genuine liking towards a fellow worker, with whom feeling competition and rivalry is much more obvious and is even tacitly encouraged by the prevailing professional atmosphere, is a non-obvious choice, so that's one thing.

There's one simple way to be universally likeable: become a stupid and an utterly useless person. That way, you are no more a threat to anybody. But that rules out the possibility of your being able to add any real value to the world with your existence. That's a choice one may make; but it's not a good one. Earning amicability by bartering the very point of being alive is hardly a good bargain. So, we are closing off this route too.

How do you experience and evoke amicable feelings in others while being busy trying hard to live a truly meaningful life? High performance will inadvertently bring in rewards: money, accolades, praise, power, even if you genuinely don't work for them. You can't stop them from coming, as you can't stop your rivals from noticing this and making you the subject of their jealousy. The only way this can be done is by becoming a cause of a major inner transformation among people who surround you.

In consequence of this transformation, your colleagues will be able to focus on the real, implicit value of your efforts and contribution rather getting consumed with jealousy. Such a fundamental transformation at a social level is unthinkable unless it actually takes root in yourself. It's vain and dishonest to preach a nobility that we ourselves fail to practice.

Therefore, the project of earning yourself a workplace full of genuine camaraderie and positivity is, more than anything else, an exercise in self-transformation and purification. To be able to do this is very hard and even more valuable - and hence a truly monumental success.

Dirt Strips on Our Roads

If you have recently been to one of European or North American countries and land back in Bangalore, the difference in the nature of the traffic is too stark to miss. There, it glides; here, it crawls. There are so many reasons for this. Here are some I can think of:

• There are simply too many vehicles and people in India
• Bad roads, i.e. potholes, uneven road width etc.
• Bad driving
• Lack of useful footpaths causing pedestrians to spill into the thoroughfare
• Hawker carts, taxis and vehicles parked within the edge of the road
• Commercial establishments built too close to the road
• Bad town planning which causes bottlenecks, e.g. ill-planned distribution of human establishments creating hotspots
• Bad traffic management

Many of the above are very difficult problems. We can't do much about our population. Most of the above need major replanning of cities, educating large multitudes of people about traffic sense, setting up surveillance and punitive structures and so on. This is very costly, and if at all possible in India's case, would take years to happen.

Road Dust

This post is not about all the above hard problems. It's about a problem which seems to me a much easier one to solve. It's the dust that accumulates on the edges of our roads. See this:

The light brown strip running along the road is earth settled on the road. Its width is over a metre. I wouldn't be surprised if this accounts for approximately 1/6th of the total road width. This part of the road is unmotorable and un-bicyclable. In short, this part doesn't get used at all, not even by pedestrians. In presence of such traffic woes, this is a colossal wastage of precious road width. They further choke the already woeful traffic, causing delays and accidents. If you are on a two-wheeler or a bicycle, this part has less grip than the rest of the road, making it dangerous. For bicyclists, its unusable because its uneven and rough, making it harder to pedal on them. When it rains, this part becomes slippery making it further dangerous to venture on them. And this is a very common sight on Indian urban roads.

And to the best of my understanding, this problem is nowhere close to as hard as all the above listed problems. With one cleaning operation done, I presume, even in a very dusty environment, it would stay clean for weeks if not months. The benefits are immediate and immense. It would free up that much width of the road, making it faster and safer to ply on. There are these dust sweeping trucks available which municipalities and Gram Panchayats can procure. They can share or rent these if they can't afford to own one. They can contract the task out to private parties. My guess is this won't be all that expensive. They already do this routinely in some of richer areas already.

I am telling something every road user knows well. Often, we don't say such things because we think it's too obvious, or that the authorities don't have the will to do anything about it. This time, I thought, let me just put this out for exchange of thoughts, and possible notice of pertinent authorities. Maybe, it's obvious. But it doesn't hurt anyone saying it anyway.

I request authorities to take notice and take a step. Doing something about it is easy and inexpensive, I think. One more thought (relevant to World Environment Day today). Please remove the dust off these roads and mark that part as cycling tracks. 🚴🚴🚴Automobile drivers are anyway not using this part in many places.

International Men's Day 2024

This is an ordinary member of human species. He is upper caste, belonging to the religious majority. He had a small town lower middle class upbringing and struggled unduly (though not the most) against lack of resources, information and finances to bring himself up in life. But since has spent much of adult life in large Indian cities, enjoying a middle-middle class economic status. He is English educated, digitally enabled. In his organisation, his role by default gives him 'a position of power'.

And he is male.

Ancestors of his caste enjoyed great privilege in society and wreaked unimaginable atrocities on people of lower caste. His country has been drifting towards reinforcing the privileges already enjoyed by the members of his majority religion, in the name of protecting the national heritage against real and imaginary foes out to get them and their glorious past. His digital ability, his access to English and his residence in a teeming metropolis give him much more access to information, collaborators and other resources to further widen the gaps between him and his fellows who may be a little less fortunate than him.

And he is male. Individuals of his type, for millennia, enjoyed incredible privileges, and caused inhuman suffering the other half of the human population. Right from small restrictions at home to political and religious rules, all were bent over time to strengthen this privilege, creating such distances and deep chasm between the two genders than any amount of effort to bridge that today is dwarfed by its enormity and depth.

And yet, he spends most of his waking hours in service. He teaches youngsters all day, not just professional skills, but ethical dispositions, like compassion and empathy. He worries about the havoc humans are wreaking on the planet -- men and women and all alike -- and tries to lead a minimalistic life, with unrealistic hopes but no presumptions that his puny efforts to saving the environment will contribute to reversing all the damage around him. He struggles to understand how women have been subjugated and discriminated against all these millennia when he finds them almost completely similar to men -- in intelligence, capability and of course meanness! In fact, he probably has more female friends and male. His students, his collaborators -- are as many women as man. And he and other well-meaning men like him in his organisation tremble under a not-at-all-imaginary threat of being wrongly implicated by POSH related policies, which, while unavoidable, are regularly weaponised by a section of disgruntled students against their teachers to settle scores. While the number of people who do this may be really tiny, the terror it creates indiscriminately affects almost all, just like rapes, molestation and eve-teasing. So, he and his likes understand what it is to lose the dignity that's earned (the only real earning for many like him) through a lifetime of good conduct, because of a freak accident or by an act of false defamation. In truth, he respects creatures of his and other species (including having voluntarily given up the practice of eating 'definitely sentient' animals early in his life). He is known in his circles to treat all -- men, women, non-humans, English speaking or otherwise, rich or poor, his nationality, religion or caste and others -- with equal respect, compassion and warmth. Quite against the stereotypes, he is not into sports, doesn't enjoy boisterous talk after getting drunk, is not crazy about cars and gadgets. Though he sometimes joins parties, he prizes his solitude. He loves the company of his family and is thoroughly 'domesticated'! He doesn't have specific colour choices, enjoys music, art and literature. He is very sentimental about relations, particularly friendship. Beautiful memories, thoughts, sounds and sights sometimes make his eyes wet.

And yet he is male, though not at all an alpha one. He is just an ordinary human being. And he is not a bad guy!

On this International Men's Day, let's resolve to try and set the statistics aside when interacting with an individual. Let's just try and treat people as people. When you say something mean to one man, e.g. 'Men are aggressive', 'men have fragile ego', 'women are more meticulous/organised/disciplined', 'men dominate in meetings', 'men only care about sex', 'what do men know about being discriminated against?' and hundred other things, are you sure you are not being biased and unfair to an individual, who come in all shapes and sizes; and thus going against exactly the principles of equality you are fighting for? Don't make the mistake of using statistics -- which are very useful but only on populations -- to hurt, dominate, persecute or demonise individuals. Because if we are serious about setting the statistics right, there's only one way that's gonna happen, when we work together as equal allies.

And guys (not all, but most of those I closely know)! You are doing fine. Though you are what you are notwithstanding anything, know that most women love you the way you are. Keep up the good work! Hold your head high. And uphold the values and virtues taught by elders (truth, compassion, mutual respect, fairness, honesty, simplicity, modesty, pursuit of excellence etc.) even higher. They are timeless and genderless.

And Happy International Men's Day!

Related post: Excesses of Feminism

A Harrowing Experience with our Medical Establishments

I will remember the entire former part of 2024 as an extremely busy episode for me. While it was partly caused due to professional commitments, the biggest contributor was my mom's health related issues. During the nearly 3 months she spent with us in Bangalore, we must have been in and out of various hospitals and clinics as many as 30 times. Probably more. This involved general health checkups, dental procedure, cataract surgery and gall bladder removal, all in the midst of an unrelenting professional routine. It left me completely drained.

But what I want to write about here is not the prolonged episode concerning my mom's case, but the brief one that followed it, concerning my wife.

All the necessary treatments and examinations had been done. My mom visibly looked better than when she had joined us in March. I was exhausted, but ready to heave sigh of relief, satisfaction, and even feel slightly proud of myself for having level-headedly handled the process. That's also when I was saying words full of praises about how professional the Narayana health system is: it's expensive, a bit too elaborate. But it instils trust in the heart of the patients and their caregivers.

That's when, one day, Shilpi, my wife, started getting high fever and vomiting accompanied with severe headache. Her BP readings were worryingly low. Our relative, who is a doctor, prescribed some antibiotics and other medicines, but also suggested that we shouldn't wait too long before we visited the hospital, if the BP readings didn't improve.

Our regular place to go in all health-related cases is the Narayana Clinic on Neeladri Road, Electronics City. It was a weekend and Narayana Clinic was closed. By Saturday afternoon, Shilpi's fever showed no signs of abetting, and she was almost screaming and delirious because of headache. It was a panic situation. And we headed off to Cauvery Hospital, a corporate hospital of significant scale and repute. We were taken in the emergency ward.

They put Shilpi on drip and started tracking her vitals. They also were pushing some drugs through IV, likely to bring down her fever and headache. There was a ward doctor handling the case. I still think all this was quite regular and the reasonable course of treatment in the given situation.

While they were still exploring the further course of treatment, we thought it right to mention a particular condition Shilpi had been suffering from for the last couple of months. Her prolactin levels had been found to be higher than normal a month or two before, and she was under medication for that. We shared this piece of information with the doctor in all good faith, assuming that more information is always better than less. However, this piece of information seemed to throw the whole diagnosis and treatment into a completely different direction. Suddenly, all symptoms started indicating a somewhat serious medical condition called prolactinoma - a tumour in the pituitary gland. An immediate MRI was suggested. Against meek and helpless protests from me, within an hour or so, Shilpi was undergoing head MRI scan! I will not easily forget those silent desolate hours I spent all by myself outside the radiology room wondering 'What just happened?'.

We came back home by around 11 pm. Shilpi's fever and headache had come down for now, most likely because of the medicines. The night went by uneventfully. We had our appointment with the hospital's neurologist the next day. So, we visited the hospital the next morning, collected our MRI reports and saw the neurologist. She said that there was nothing worrisome found in the scan. However, she thought, and sounded so confident, that it was migraine. She prescribed some migraine medicines. Great!

As for actions on our side, we were not yet done. Another symptom Shilpi was suffering in the day or two was some difficulty in passing urine. Next day, Monday, we visited our regular family doctor in Narayana Clinic. On hearing the entire story, our doctor ruled out migraine. Because of the urine retention, he suggested undergoing ultrasound scan of stomach. A blood test was also prescribed. Or were these suggested by the neurologist? I realise now that I am losing track of some of the details. However, I do remember the highlights.

The US scan report showed swelling in gall bladder. And some issues with the liver. The doctor said that these add up to a clear diagnosis of urosepsis -- that starts with a urinary tract infection which affects the kidneys, and eventually sends the body's immune system on an overdrive whereby it starts attacking the body itself, another serious medical condition which could turn potentially fatal. The doctor said that we should watch for symptoms like difficulty in breathing and tightness around chest. These would indicate that the condition is worsening. Otherwise, if things went well, the current course of antibiotics (suggested right in the beginning by our doctor relative) was adequate.

That night -- or rather the following early morning around 4 am -- Shilpi woke up saying she was feeling tightness around her chest and some difficulty in breathing. That was a meltdown moment for me! I panicked completely and didn't know what to do. I froze. We didn't do anything. Just slept away the remaining hours of the night.

The next day, we visited the doctor again. I think, by now the blood reports were in. So, the new diagnosis was dengue! We were sent back home with some medicines to help her urine retention and very little instructions. Rest. Check your platelet count every other day. We did that for the next couple of days. The platelet counts held up through the next few days eventually starting to rise. Shilpi had started feeling better, though suffering from acute weakness for a few days. Though, dengue was itself a serious enough medical condition, thankfully, it didn't take us all the way down this time. The worst was behind us!

An ordinary fever/headache to prolactinoma to migraine to urosepsis to dengue! It was a long circuitous route through series of misdiagnoses. But it still left our pockets lighter by thousands of rupees due to an MRI scan which, now I feel, was completely unnecessary. I would say that it was forced on us at a moment of panic and helplessness. And let's not even talk about the extreme anxiety all this caused us.

I don't want to name or shame anyone, especially the doctors involved.  I don't think that there is any question to be raised on the competence of the doctors involved. But I would like to ask them if all this was done right. Is this how our modern medical system is supposed to help patients? Is the extreme and protracted episode of anxiety that we tolerated unavoidable? Why so many misdiagnoses? Retrospectively, we can say many things. But aren't doctors supposed to help us reduce our suffering, instead of merely theorising about them retrospectively, and that too sitting on piles of prohibitively expensive tests?

It was a harrowing experience. I have tremendous respect for the medical profession and doctors. I have seen many times in my life how doctors have gone well beyond their call of duty and acted like angels in moments of suffering, being epitomes of integrity and capability. Yet, this expensive and ineffective process is clearly not a success, and I want to call it out without malice to anyone. I hope, members of the medical community will take heed of my humble appeal. I don't want to make allegations without having adequate proofs. But all this smells heavily of corruption too. Somehow, incentives all all medical establishments are stacked up in favour of pushing patients through expensive treatments. Doctors, though by themselves not corrupt, are probably under pressure from their employers to push for inefficient and unnecessarily expensive examinations and treatments. Anecdotal evidences are in plenty. They all can't be false!

I have nothing to say. It's saddening!

Excesses of Feminism

Why is a feminist publicly correcting me that a word I use -- I swear -- without an intent to be patronising or sexist, but which feminists have (arbitrarily) decided to tag as patronising or sexist, not considered patronising and insulting? You can't argue on logical grounds for a minute why such a rule exists. Yet, you consider it your duty and right to act as a police who enforces this rule on public. Why?

On the one hand, they want us to use gender neutral pronouns (they, zhe) or both versions of pronouns (e.g. he/she). On the other hand, they start using the male version of the word as gender neutral and deprecate the female version of the word as sexist. If both male and female versions of pronouns should be used, why should we deprecate the female version of a noun as sexist?! This is inconsistent, arbitrary and illogical tailormade to psyche logical people out of their wits! The message is clear: You can't use your logical reasoning if you want to sound politically correct. You are at our mercy, because we will set rules at will and you will follow them. Fall in line and endure insults or get called out!

These days, we come across increasingly large number of people who consider themselves the guardians of arbitrary codes of conduct and speech set into force by some feminist intellectuals. In the process, they act like they may correct others anytime on things they consider against their taste. Like many other things, such codes of speech are things people have to follow, not so much because they see any sense in them, but because of the fear of being called out and bullied by the militant factions of feminism.

By all means, let's protect women's rights. They are still raped and abused. Let's stop it. They are discriminated against. Let's stop it. They are killed in their mother's womb, prevented from going to school or taking up a profession. These need to change. And we should all actively fight against these ills.

But stop bullying well-meaning people in their day-to-day functioning by enforcing arbitrary and inconsistent codes of speech which do nothing beyond giving you a false sense of power. In the process, you are pissing off well-meaning and genuinely good people who would be happy allies if you didn't daily insult their common sense. In the long run, you are losing friends and earning enemies. This is going to come back and bite everyone.

Belligerently Virtuous

 

I have spent years and decades (in fact, much of my life) being rather secretive about my ethical stands. Reasons?

• I wanted not scare people off.
• I wanted to come across as modest and approachable.
• I didn't want to be dismissed and persecuted as being prude.
• I didn't want to invite criticism that I am showing off my virtues.
• I didn't want to be misunderstood. For example, in multiple cases, my riding a bicycle to work, or not splurging on clothes has been openly interpreted as my miserliness or even poverty. I don't see anything wrong with being a poor man. But I have problems with something I am doing out of my choice being interpreted as something being done due to circumstances.
• In this world of 'cancel culture', there's a fear that those who choose to feel threatened and offended by you, will someday call out a small perceived slip by you as a weapon to shoot you down. A person who has been open about his good deeds in the past is more vulnerable to cancellation, because on top of whatever charges are levelled against him at the moment, he lays himself open to charges of being a hypocrite owing to his earlier opposite image.

Over time, I have realised that the above line of thought was useless and caused much time in getting wasted? Wasted in what?

• In caring about opinions which don't matter held by people who matter even less.
• In not allowing, to be positively influenced by your actions, many who are open enough to feel inspired by anything good you do, rather than feeling threatened by you.

In summary, I do what I do because I think it's right to do it, not because I want others to praise me or even take to my ways. Having said that, getting praised or becoming a positive influence is acceptable, even desirable. It makes complete sense that, if you do something good with good intentions, you be open about it. And know that in doing so you are not being vain. In fact, those who say so are up to nothing good themselves than pulling down someone behaving well. This world indulges in unbridled voyeurism in lusting over images expressly intended to show off and make others feel deficient on account of money, physical beauty, exclusive attainment of sexual love and so on. And in this, they do not bat their moral eyelid. These buggers have no right to judge you if you are doing something good with your talent and intentions and are generous enough to share it with others.

In the Picture

This Thursday, I chose to travel by public transport bus to Airbus Takeoff. While their high official did a lot of talking about sustainability during the session, I did my little part to help sustainability. I took a bus (and enjoyed the ride) to and from the venue. I carried my own water bottle and refused to pick up the plastic packaged water bottle. A gentleman at the conference even tried to pick me on why I carry a plastic bottle and not a steel bottle.