Book Review — An Accidental Prime Minister

I heard about — and bought — this book right during the Indian General elections of 2014, at a time when the end of Dr Singh’s administration was almost in sight, Modi’s soaring win was seen as inevitable.

Book Review — Cruising Altitude

Among the many books I have read and reviewed on this blog, I bet the topic of this book is different. This book is about a flight attendant’s account of a career in the air travel industry — part memoir, part tell-all, part tips and tricks on how to make your journey…

Album Review — Bombay Makossa

There is a thing with the term fusion music. The word itself has lent itself to lot of hyper-generalization, abuse and a “catch-all” genre for the music labels and sometimes the musician themselves. I prefer the word collaboration, but that doesn’t really sound like a name of…

Triaging

Everything is high priority is same as saying nothing is high priority. Yet everyone is busy doing something they consider high priority, and no one knows what that is and no one knows who might know what that is.

Book Review — Outliers

I am a sucker for empirical analysis of larger-than-life phenomenon — especially those that make suggestions along the lines of “this is what conventional wisdom suggests…but here’s the REAL reason”.

TV journalism in India

I glimpsed upon a handful of political debates, talk shows and celebrity interviews during the Indian elections in May 2014. While not new to me, certain things stuck me as issues plaguing the quality of journalism in India, especially TV journalism. While the majority of the common…

Book Review — A Southern Music

I first started writing a review for this book in the form of a letter to the author, and later changed my mind. In the letter version are many questions I had written as I read the book, hoping to pose them to the author some day. I am still hopeful.

Book Review — An Uncertain Glory

I begin this review with the authors’ quote of Shobhaa De, a political commentator.

The India we are lauding forms but a microcosm of this vast land. It is the India of the elite, the privileged, the affluent. The only India we want the rest of…

NSA — Who pays for it all?

I have mentioned in my blog before the justification for NSA to collect, store, analyze large-scale data should not just be based on constitutionality or its ethics or even its outcome. The question people should ask and a government funded by people should certainly ask is — is…