On My Mind

There are way too many of us humans around. It is only natural that too many of us meet the remaining of us, creating an inter web of connections, and friendships.  Think about it. When you were a kid, you had friends in your neighborhood, class, and maybe cousins you lived nearby. Then you met new people in College, while working at various places and so on. Some of your friends introduced you to their friends and then you knew more. If the sheer number of people you met and made friends with at various stages of your life were to be added, you could have at least won your colony's elections.  But, are you in touch with all of them now? Do you even have any memory with most of them? Or they have just become names, which ring a bell but you don't really know why!  The truth is, we all move on, consciously or unconsciously. The kid who sat next to you in that class, the best friend you played with every evening, or even the neighbor you shared your rooftop with, all fade i...

Some 13 billion years ago, the Big Bang occurred, and the universe started taking its present shape. Brilliant minds of ours and earlier generations have spent a considerable amount of cognitive resources to unravel this mystery. Notwithstanding the appreciable progress made in our understanding, it has been suggested by many a bureaucrat that this wastage of human capacity could have been avoided if someone had neatly prepared an office note on the big bang then. The process of documentation and record-keeping is essential in government, as in any other form of organization that grows beyond the individual. Documenting known facts of any issue, discovering more through inquiry or academic research, and then forming a well-justified conclusion forms the core of any decision that is taken. This entire exercise is colloquially known as the "paperwork". Since the stakeholders aren't just the people making the decisions, it is important that paperwork is done with due diligen...

Buddha said the world is full of suffering, and I have scrolled enough social media to realize that is indeed the case. Heck, it feels like doomsday is around the corner. There is just misery all around. Everyone has got something which needs to be done!   There are problems spanning decades and unresolved issues plaguing generations, and this is without counting the Indian men's cricket team's propensity to lose in knockout matches. Therefore, to no one's surprise, the modern world is looking for problem solvers, people who can deconstruct these multi-layered, nuanced points of contention and arrive at an acceptable solution.   With 29 years of experience at being alive, a few months at an MNC and now 2 odd months in government, I have some ideas that should help a newcomer become the go-to man for any crisis. Like any other success guru, these are not at all well-researched and are purely anecdotal in nature.    Let's start with the primary answer to problems - mon...