Category Archives: Musings without a muse

Dumbification of humanity

Back in Feb 2023 when ChatGPT hype was at its peak, I was asked about what I thought about this thing called artificial intelligence. My immediate response was that this is the beginning of dumbification of humanity. As AI continues to make inroads into our lives, my opinion on this has gotten stronger over the… Read More »

Our Enemy’s Best Friend

Published in 1999 I have always wondered – why does India not make progress like the rest of the world? Almost all nations in the world started off at the same or similar level after WWII. Given India’s rich history and knowledge we should have leapfrogged the world and should have been one of the leading super-powers… Read More »

theLie Llama

“The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step,” said Lao Tzu. It took me almost a decade from the time I had the idea of ‘theLie Llama’ and it took my co-host, Gunjan, and I about six months of deliberations to take the first step. Then it took us about four months… Read More »

Conflicted

I believe it was Ayn Rand who said that contradictions do not exist. It was an ‘a-ha’ moment for me when I first read this quote. This was also the principle behind my R-Quadrant. More recently, I have been pondering over the contradictions and the conflicted life we all live. Why is it that we… Read More »

The tree that would not be a tree

During one of our treks in Nagarahole jungle, I came across a sight I had not seen earlier in my life. A tree that was twisted line a vine! The first thought that came to my mind was – here’s a tree that seems to be wanting to be a vine. Then I noticed a cluster of trees around… Read More »

Lessons learned.. or not!

The story, if it can be called such, was very poignant. It goes like this – A couple moved into a house that had the forest as its backyard. One day the man went for a walk in the forest and saw a branch full of chrysalis ready to metamorphosize into butterflies. He had read… Read More »

Hindsight is 2020

The year 2020 did not only put pause to the-world-as-we-knew-it but it also put a pause to my writing. Not that anybody reads what I write but lack of audience has never deterred me earlier… after all, I specialize in writing books that no one buys! I stopped making resolutions many years ago, when I… Read More »

Our enemy’s best friend

Decades ago, when I wrote an article with the same title for a (now defunct) e-zine, my focus was the immaturity and gullibility of Indian society; especially the youth. Growing up, I would see mobs of youth going on rampage at slightest provocation by religion, politics, social causes they believed in or to protest against… Read More »