Wit Wisdom and Whoop

Incidents have happened, there is blowback and only time will tell how this will end in the short run and in the long run. The long run is what is more troubling, and it is not about what happens to Israel/ Palestine/ Gaza/ Iran/ Lebanon, but how the incidents that have unfolded will impact global security and even life. Again, rewinding to early 2001, my first trip to USA. Landing late at New York airport I ran like a maniac trying to catch my connecting flight, jumping, dodging. Later during the same trip, hopelessly lost in Washington DC, I managed to reach Dulles airport literally minutes before my flight was to depart. Once again, I ran, jumped, dodged and literally entered the aircraft even as the flight attendant was closing the door. Everybody, including the flight attendant were either sympathetic to my run or at best mildly irritated. 4 months later, September 9/11 happened and life as we know it changed. In a post 9/11 era, I would have been shot dead within seconds in b...

First, lets rewind to 1985-87 and what happened to the Indian army on its “Peace Mission” in Sri Lanka (termed as India’s Vietnam) as the Indian Peace Keeping Force. For the only time in its long history, they got “clobbered” and returned with a bloody nose, they failed, no peace was achieved. The army deployed close to 100,000 soldiers which was far more than what they deployed in the Kargil war. India officially lost 1,165 soldiers, 3,009 wounded and the body count of LTTE, never known. What is however known is that about 5,000 Sri Lankan’s were killed. The balance sheet reads as 4,174 – 5,000. This would be unacceptable to any army anywhere globally. The strategy of LTTE was to have a large group of women and children in front as they confronted the Indian army and it is common knowledge that the Indian army was ordered to fight with one hand tied behind its back so to speak. Read this account by a senior commander who was in the operations to know how churches, temples, children,...

Ratan Tata – Man Extraordinary Reams have been written and spoken by many, and most are based on their interactions with this great man – so I, who have never met him, can add little except for what I call the WiFi connect with the person and what his name meant. The closest I came to meet him but failed to do so was at the wedding of a friend’s son in December 2015. The Tata group, 156 years old, was established in 1868, by Jamsetji Tata. It remained a clutch of businesses till 1917 when Tata Sons was created. While Jamsetji and his brother Dorabji were Chairman of the “group” for 36 yrs and 28 yrs respectively, the Tata name became a real group only around 1917. JRD Tata created the Tata group in the real sense, consolidated it over 53 years and when he died in 1991, it was still a sum of various parts and a group at the same time. During that period, it was essentially Indian, and Tata was not a “brand” in the classical sense. It was more a personal name with Jamsetji & later a ...