Month: March 2026

I’ve never been to Iran. I would have liked to have visited Iran but that was before the mullahs took over.

One of my close friends during my undergrad engineering days in Nagpur was an Iranian named Ibrahim Akbar Shahi from Isfahan. After he finished his engineering degree, he and his Iranian girlfriend continued to stay on in India in Pune. I lost touch with him when I went to the US for my PhD studies at Rutgers University.

I remember one of Ibrahim’s observations. He said that he found Indian Muslims to be rabid and disgustingly intolerant. He was a Muslim of course as most Iranians were, but he said that Iranians were relaxed about their faith. Then the Ayatollahs took over. Continue reading “Iran”

I recently came across a quote on the web that “many of the best investors in the world are really good at doing nothing for long periods of time.”

Doing nothing for long periods of time comes naturally to me. I am definitely not a lazy thinker but when it comes to doing, I am content to avoid any action until it becomes unavoidable. Laziness is an art form. 

I have always been in favor of idleness. See my post from January 2019, In Praise of Idleness, which begins —

It makes good sense for the slave master to persuade his slaves that idleness is a sin and he’s doing god’s work when he flogs the slaves to work harder. The harder the slaves work, the more the master can take for himself. But of course the real motive has to be concealed and clothed in moral raiment.

“Work hard, you b*tches, and stop complaining.” That’s what Mohandas Gandhi meant but put it so very piously by saying, “Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.” See what I mean? Continue reading “Contemplating Investing”