Month: January 2008

Snails Are Faster Than Snail Mail

Heh.

Update: Surendra Malu writes in:

Your latest post reminds me of my personal experience.

I was supposed to receive a congratulatory letter from Maharashtra Govt. for my success in an exam that I took in fourth grade. This letter was sent out at the start of my fifth grade. It reached me when I passed a similar exam for seventh grade i.e. I received it in 8th grade. The letter was sent from Mumbai to my residence in Kolhapur.

In this case, even a snail would have done 10 rounds of Mumbai-Kolhapur distance.

Patriotic?

Salil Tripathi writes in:

Reading about the note on men willing to die for others in the army reminds me of a conversation X [a colleague] had with a general once. (True story; I was around him at the cocktail; we were Y [a newsmagazine] colleagues). So this general berated X and Y, saying journalists are unpatriotic, anti-national, selling the nation’s interests down the drain, not committed to unity, whereas he was patriotic, willing to lay his life for the country. After he finished this dramabazi, X said: General, I am patriotic; you are paid to be patriotic.

Heh.

To Die For

The WTF reportage of the day comes from Rediff:

“Twenty years from now, men will be ready to die for me, but not for you.” This is what a cadet at the National Defence Academy in Khadakvasla, Pune, tells his friends pursuing engineering when they discuss how much money they will make in their careers compared to him.

It is an explosive response for someone who is just 21 but that is not what makes it so staggeringly impressive. It is the belief with which it is said that gives it gravitas.

Staggeringly impressive? Hello? This is staggeringly delusionary, and I feel worried about the man who measures career satisfaction by such a dangerous yardstick. I’m not dissing the armed forces—they keep our borders and engineers safe—but there are better reasons to feel proud of being an army man than the power you have over people’s lives.

The other profession marked out by such lust for power is politics. How staggeringly sad.

I Am Two Japanese Prodigies

Mid Day and HT City both run a an excellent daily comic strip by Rajneesh Kapoor called “This is Our Life”. Today’s strip in Mid-Day, to my surprise, reveals the truth about me. Here it is (click on the image for a bigger picture if it isn’t clear enough):

image

Sigh. Now everyone knows…

(Thanks to Ulrik for informing me that my cover is busted. Pah.)