Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw

{Followup to part 1.}

Nov 6th, the first day of TiE-ISB Connect 2008 had a packed schedule. The final panel, “Taking India Forward”, was the most memorable for me.
Continue reading “About the ISB Event — Part 2”

These days power availability has deteriorated significantly in Pune. Where I live, power is not available for about seven hours every day, including Sundays. The peak power shortage robs people of an essential resource during the most productive part of the day. If this is the situation in a major metro city like Pune, it is easy to imagine how hard life must be in most of India, especially for the 800 million who have to subsist on less than $2 a day, most of whom live in rural India.
Continue reading “About the TiE-ISB Event”

Sandeep seriously considers why the Pope gets Gandhi’s message wrong:

Benedict’s interpretation of Gandhi’s message of non-violence is false. Gandhi’s non-violence doesn’t stand for a cowardly acceptance of injustice and unprovoked violence. Gandhi viewed proselytisation as cultural invasion and a hindrance to peace.

Andrew Sullivan writing for The Atlantic on why he blogs.

From the first few days of using the form, I was hooked. The simple experience of being able to directly broadcast my own words to readers was an exhilarating literary liberation. Unlike the current generation of writers, who have only ever blogged, I knew firsthand what the alternative meant. I’d edited a weekly print magazine, The New Republic, for five years, and written countless columns and essays for a variety of traditional outlets. And in all this, I’d often chafed, as most writers do, at the endless delays, revisions, office politics, editorial fights, and last-minute cuts for space that dead-tree publishing entails. Blogging—even to an audience of a few hundred in the early days—was intoxicatingly free in comparison. Like taking a narcotic.

I heard from several people in response to my 30th October post on Mr Raj Thackeray. A close friend wrote to me thus:

You have previously argued that one has to obey the law of the land or suffer the consequences. That is a sound position.

But I got a feeling that you let Raj Thackeray off too lightly from this yardstick. So okay, I agree Blue Turban is a bastard, but RajT is a violent goon. Goons belong in jail.

He felt that I was being inconsistent. I replied saying I do not ever want to suggest that Raj T should not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and that it should be done ASAP, if not sooner. I explained that what I meant was that his emergence is not the least unexpected or shocking to a population which has grown accustomed to much greater criminals. He is merely following the path blazed forth by the more daring and more innovative.

So that there is no confusion on where I stand, I am not defending Raj Thackeray at all. Anyone who incites violence against others must be locked up — period. I just want that those who are doing the locking up should be themselves scrutinized to see if they are guilty of greater or similar crimes. It’s the brazen hypocrisy of those who are protesting Raj Thackeray’s hate campaign against “the other” that makes me feel a little sick.

Are we there yet? Not really. The airlines and travel industry have miles to go before arriving at systems that are not obviously deficient. The e-ticket I printed out last evening listed my Mumbai-Hyderabad flight 163 on Kingfisher airlines as departing at 10:40 AM today. At the check-in counter at 10 AM, I was told that the flight was closed. Why? Because the flight departs at 10:10 AM.
Continue reading “Hi from the ISB”