On March 15, 2013, at the Daikanyama station near Tokyo, a 1200-member workforce in a highly coordinated act (of magic) re-laid a railway track, converting an overground train station to underground station in just 3.5 hours! In the time between the last train in the night and the first train in the next morning, a…
Category: Books
In whose dashboard what metric are you?
“Wouldn’t the world be better if more people didn’t have kids?” asks Nikhil Kamath in his conversation with Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank, in the interview for his People by WTF series. (Youtube). In the engaging conversation marked by meaningful pauses, optimistic vibes, curiosity of questions, clarity of answers, and the humility of…
Musings on our sense of ‘time’, the past, and the future
One of the most thought provoking and insightful piece I have read on our ability to put ‘time in perspective’ is from Tim Urban, a prolific writer. His writings are deeply researched and often an explainer on many topics when one is trying to make sense of this world. Our ability to have a sense…
Why I Write
This was triggered by Charles Assissi’s post and piece on ‘Why I Write?.’ It probably resonated with many people who are professional writers as well as some of us who write once in 12 blue moons. Like the Cycle Agarbathi advertisement says, ‘Everyone has a reason to pray,’ perhaps everyone has a reason to write….
Book: The Price of Time
“Can a history of interest rates really entertain? You bet.. To read this terrific book is to be reacquainted with the bizzaire, Alice-in-Wonderland condition of modern finance” – Marc Sidwell, Sunday Telgraph. [From the blurb on the back cover] I have been reading books on economics of all types for the last many years, as…
Peak Greenwashing: What Green NFTs are all about
(First published in Economic Times Brand Equity) Recently a former colleague and a popular podcast host asked me in a conversation that how much of what we do are really impactful and how much of that is playing to the gallery. And my response to that was most of the things done in the pretext…
‘Age of Information and Age of Choices’
A few days back, in an attempt to reduce the number of times I reach out to the mobile phone involuntarily, I set up a timer for the screen time of WhatsApp. For now, it is working. Most of us have enough anecdotal stories of our attempts to reduce the infinite scrolling and browsing, with…
Of Rabbit Holes and ‘Forked’ Rabbit Holes
Getting lost in a rabbit hole is easier these days. We get introduced to a new concept or subject. And if there is a desire to get to know more about it, there are enough pathways, thanks to the internet. From tweets to short reads, long reads, videos, podcasts, and books itself, it’s all out…
A Death, Cats and Washing Machines, and a Way of Seeing the World
I have never been a religious person, barring the first 15 years or so, though I grew up in a deeply religious and ritualistic family. Since high school, I have moved in the spectrum of agnosticism to atheism, finally settling for the latter. No compulsions or pressures from home also helped my cause. During my…
The Serendipity of Discovering Books
When the famous author Nassim Taleb coined the phrase ‘antilibrary,’ so many of us, across the world, felt a sigh of relief. Felt validated. Legitimised. Liberated from the guilt of buying more books than one could read. Antilibrary refers to the number of books in your personal collection that you have not read. “The library…