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Continue reading →: The Kingdom of Poyais and the ‘new normal’.
All this talk of the ‘new normal’ reminds me of the Kingdom of Poyais from circa 1822
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Continue reading →: First make people laugh and then make them think.
I am a huge fan of the Ig Nobel Prize. For the uninitiated, Ig Nobel Prize is a satiric award awarded to the top 10 unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research and its stated aim is to honor achievements that ‘first make people laugh and then make them think‘…
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Continue reading →: Waiting for ‘Aal Izz Well’
Immediately after that fateful November in 2008, security and police vigilance were visibly stepped up across the country. Bombay’s famed night life was put on hold, multilayered security in public places reminded you of the attack; now called 26/11. Fear gnawed inside us as armored police vans patrolled the streets…
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Continue reading →: Eighteenth Century FOMO
In eighteenth-century Europe, potatoes were considered a leprosy inducing invention of the devil and this belief was particularly pernicious in France, so no one ate them. The humble tuber might not have attained its preeminent status in European cuisine, if not for a French pharmacist named Antoine-Augustin Parmentier. As a…
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Continue reading →: The perils of the Piyush Pandey we think is hidden inside us.
Harry Baals – and, yes, it is pronounced as “Balls”, remember this, it is important to the story – was the mayor of Fort Wayne from 1932 to 1947 and again from 1951 until his demise in 1954. During his tenure, Mayor Harry Baals upgraded city equipment and services, consolidated…
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Continue reading →: What headphone personality type are you?
Walk into any airport and you will be surprised with the number of people wearing headphones. That number seems to have increased in recent years. Perhaps airports are getting increasingly noisier and crowded and as humans, we want to carve out a chunk of personal space and demonstrate some control…















