Society & Culture

We are planning to buy a minivan and last weekend I went to test drive a few. Now, you don't expect a lot of profound thoughts to come from your car salesman...

Sidney Sheldon died earlier this week after a well lived life of 90 years. I am not an expert on his literary works nor his life but I can say that his work...

So if you are flying to Minneapolis, Minnesota - that beautiful city with that greatest monument to the American consumerism, the Mall of America and would be...

Harvest festivals are celebrated all over the world and Thanksgiving Day, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November is one of them. However, there is...

Here is a reality check for all you guys who hold candles at the Wagah border, send out emails containing messages of peace and communal harmony, roam around...

\r\n\r\nLike potholes on the Andheri-Kurla Road during rainy season, suddenly, the western media is full of stories on and from Mumbai. The cover story by Time...

BBC's Soutik Biswas has a superb piece on the flourishing blues tradition in Shillong. A must read.\n\n\n\n\nIt is Friday night in the north-eastern Indian...

So lets say that you are a policeman and you have a warrant for searching the home of a person who is suspected to be a drug dealer. Would you rather go to his...

No matter how much you might hate Microsoft and its products, you cannot help praising its founder, Bill Gates and now, with today's announcement, Bill Gates...

Asok the pernnial favorite gets the stick again!\r\n\r\nAll copyrights - Scott Adams. Please visit http://www.dilbert.com.

\r\n\r\nIn December 2001, Enron – a high and mighty US corporation that was at one point of time, the seventh largest in the country, and whose executives were...

\r\nEvery country’s people have a date with destiny. For modern democracies, that date comes in the form of an election day and probably its mundane and quiet...

\r\n\r\nThere cannot be a better time than this to get hold of the entire DVD set of The West Wing and watch it right from season one. At a time when the US...

One of the very few commentaries that make sense on the issue of illegal immigration was published today in the Washington Post. Robert J. Samuelson makes a...

Remember \"You are doing a heck of a job Brownie?\" Of course you do! Well after Defense Sec. Rumsfield was under attack by a number of Generals, President...

What happens when you bring together five kindred individuals, who have extensively worked on issues related to feminism, violence against women and...

I'd be hard pressed to give you the exact year and age when this life long love affair started, but sometime between the 9th and the 11th grade, I had my first...

\r\n\r\n(Picture courtsey - New York Times)\r\n\r\nThe Dutch Immigration authorities have come up with a new weapon in their ongoing struggle against...

With President Bush's approval ratings in the dumps and the Republicans in Congress in serious danger of losing their majority - their could be a big change of...

One of the many great things about Chicago is the eclectic selection of food available in downtown and near the downtown area. Unlike many other larger...

In my previous post, I wrote about the various ways in which DESIs try to come to terms with an alien culture and in trying to reconcile ourselves with the...

\r\nOne day we arrive - at O’Hare, at Newark, in Detroit, in Atlanta, in San Diego and in San Fransisco; holding our I-20s, H1/H4 papers or other visa...

More than two hundred years ago – the Americans overthrew the rule of their imperial masters with a shot that was heard around the world. Racially and...

Many years ago, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was on the verge of becoming the Prime Minister of India, I read somewhere that he developed cold feet. He felt that...

Happy 26th January.\r\n\r\nAnd thank god that I was not born in China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or in one of the many such intolerant, dictatorial societies...

(click for full size image)\r\nI saw this ad the other day in a newspaper. Two things had my attention immediately:\r\n\r\n \"Worldwide rights for EkDanta held...

Warning for all the infidels (and not the Taliban kind :) ) across the world. Be very careful if you have to cheat.\r\n\r\nA parrot owner was alerted to his...

Today is Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday. If you had asked me about Mr. Franklin about 10 years ago, I would have described him as a scientist who...

Everyone’s favorite star, the big B is now also a farmer. He bought agriculture land in Pune claiming to be a farmer from Jaunpur and yet cannot produce...

Turkey is the only country in the world with less support for evolution than the U.S. (From Nicholas Kristoff’s column in today’s Times).

So what's going on in France? It seems that last night riots spread to other parts of Europe as well.\n

\nThe president and publisher of Parade Publications envisions what Google's home page may look like in 2084 (Courtsey NY Times. You can visit the NYT page...

CK Prahlad is fast becoming one of my favorite columnists/authors along with Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd (the last two of New York Times). There was an...

What a sad day for London indeed.

I am extremely happy that Paris lost its bid for Olympics. I would have been happier had NY City won it but I can live with London hosting the games as well....