Child is Father of the Man

Once you turn fifty, somehow the focus of your immediate family and friends shifts to your children. Nobody seems to be bothered whether you’re a vice-president or a senior vice-president. They all want to know the status of your children. If you have a decent reply [engineering, medicine, studying abroad,….], you are admired for good parenting. Otherwise, you become an object of pity and hence a source of sadistic pleasure for the gathering.
I know of some friends who have dropped out of social get-togethers dreading this uncomfortable probe.
“The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children”-Clarence Darrow

Increased Clockspeed

Time is indeed of the essence.
For a good decade, I had resigned to wasting about an hour in the bank to withdraw cash. When the Teller system got introduced I was delighted. 30 minutes felt like a breeze. Then came the ATM and my joy knew no bounds.
Yesterday, I caught myself fuming at a customer who was fumbling through the process inside the ATM booth. The 2 min wait wore like hours on my patience!

The Auburn Haired

I have always been intrigued by human nature that praises the dead and derides the living. May be because we are dead sure that the praise will not be of any benefit to the departed!
Be that as it may.
It tickles my funny bone when I read the obit of a notorious rogue that carries some chosen quotes from the Gita to signify that he in life was indeed an evolved and noble soul!

“When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn” -Mark Twain

“Monkeys will never let go of the garlands” – a Tamil saying

The proposed education reform marks the highest grade of ignorance of real issues.
While Kapil Sibal’s thesis is at best an uneducated drivel, the media debates reflect illuminating illiteracy.
The core issue of inadequate seats in colleges can not be wished away by changing the valuation from marks to grades. Till then, whatever criteria that the populist stream may advocate, the intelligent and hard working children will find a way of staying in the front of the queue.
The good news is that the Indian polity has not still found a way of usurping the intelligence genes from the minority haves and distributing them free thru quotas to the majority have-nots!

Greek Tragedy

It’s almost a year since I blogged!
The metro bridge collapse in Delhi triggered the fuse.
I had, in an earlier post, shared my friend Karupp’s angst at the quota system for teaching jobs.
The flawed reservation logic has led to infusion of incompetent people into the Government bureaucracy and the country is now paying the price. The system’s output quality has to necessarily reflect the quality of its components.
The bridge collapse is symbolic of the heavy burden that the Government system bears owing to the weight of incompetence.
It is a Greek Tragedy that will play its full course.