UPSC – A history Official UPSC website has a brief history and it is clearly seen that genesis of civil servants in India has colonial hangover like many other government systems. Initially, the board of directors of East India Company nominated the candidates and they were trained in Haileybury College in London. Later after Lord Macaulay’s report merit based modern Civil Service in India was introduced in 1854. For a long time exams were conducted only in London and eligible…
History of Twin Cities Belarus and Minsk has been in the news due to widespread unrest due the re-election of Alexander Lukashenko who has been the President of the country from the day the position was instated about 26 years ago on 20th July 1994. Lukashenko is sometimes called Last Dictator of Europe by many european journalists due to his authoritarian rule. Minsk being the Capital city was also in the news recently. Minsk was in the back of my…
1918 Pandemic Great Influenza 1918 was the year of the great influenza which spread all over the world leading to estimated death of 50 million people worldwide and of this the country that was most affected was India that had alteast one-fifth of this death toll. In the history of world of pandemics there are only two which have taken more lives than this pandemic. The plague of Justinian that lasted for fifty years around AD 542 killed 100 million…
Toy Industry Mattel owns Fisher Price and if you go to a toy shop or online the products are mostly from this company if one needs a good quality options. All others are kind of knock off of the product from there and its very easy to see a quality difference. Whatever the quality of product all products are mostly “Made In China” probably 95% of them. Are these really complicated ones and does it need lot of R&D, the…
Covid-19 has been declared pandemic by WHO quite sometime back. The problem with Covid-19 is it’s easy spread from person to person transmission. The so called Patient 31 of South Korea is a most potent example of this kind transmission. The person who is said to be 60 year old without any history of travel to China got flu like symptoms and was advised for Corona virus test. She seems to have denied going to test for few days and…
The Incident Picture this. You are in a completely new country for a week and went out to a barbeque restaurant to eat some food. You get a table squeezed in a corner. On another table complete strangers from Germany, Japan and US are having their food. One of them just starts a conversation and basic usual stuff of introductions, where and how. About half an hour later these folks on the table start leaving and one of them just…
There are many life skills that are important and one that is normally not on the top of mind is personal finance. It is sometimes considered “cool” if you are not very sure about your personal finance and one saves on very last day of investment deadline. This post is reflection of what I feel is right way getting started with managing your personal finance. There are lot of young folks who start making money through their salaries and are…
Part 1: October 2009 It was way back in 2010 that I had booked tickets for the play Bikhre Bimb. One of our friends had suggested that we go for a play. I don’t really remember that if that was the first time I was going for a play but it was Vikalp who asked me to book tickets. I have been very always very bad with the roads and that day I had my brother’s bike with me and…
Carpooling in Bangalore and problem of traffic
The alarm goes at 6 am in the morning and Rahul wakes up snoozes the alarm and it again fires up in another 10 mins. But this time he reluctantly gets up. Every weekday morning was more or less the same. Rahul quickly brushes and glances outside his balcony to get a feel of the traffic. The road outside the balcony get clogged in the morning many times and he can’t take his vehicle out from the parking itself. This…
How I got my first bike? I lived in a small town called Boleng tucked away in Arunachal Pradesh where I learnt cycling on a patch of road of less than 500m which was not going up and down like every other road did. My dad taught me riding a bike when I was in 9th standard. When I came to Bangalore after college I was very keen to get a bike and was planning to buy Bajaj Avenger due…
Becoming a father is humbling experience and I realized it first hand when Ira, our daughter came to our life about 4 months ago. A lot of people have told me that becoming father is a experience of a lifetime and changes your life forever. Now this is true for sure as it is nature’s law that all living organisms would like their Genes to be transferred to future generations and mostly written in our genetic program. This article is…
I remember, in the year of 1998 while going to Miao to visit some family friends while passing Margherita there was a board calling out Stilwell Road. From that point of time it remained on the back of my mind. The Books Recently I was reading a travel book “Land of Dawnlit Mountains” by Antonia Bolingbroke Kent, a British journalist who went on to solo bike trip on Hero Impulse throughout Arunachal Pradesh. It brought my memories fresh and pushed…
Disclaimer I don’t proclaim to be a investment guru and this write-up is based on my little knowledge that I have garnered based on my experience and readings. So errors and ommisions are expected. American index fund market is more matured and Vanguard was pioneer to start the concept. The basic idea is to replicate the underlying index blindly without any human intervention. Hence companies that offer such services don’t have to pay finance wizards a huge sum of money…
Indian society is somewhat different from societies around the world and a lot goes unspoken in families. Parents normally don’t want to hear anything which is considered “bad” about their children. Mostly young people lead lives of split personality, one which is tuned to what parents want to see and one which is the reality. This story is about me and how my parents caught me red handed with something which is considered not so good by most of the…