Bad luck or bad behavior
There are two ways to get sick. You get sick because of bad luck or bad behavior. Healthcare doesn’t really make a distinction between the two, for it aims to cure a patient, no matter the cause of the...
View ArticleRussian Real Estate
The Fall of the Berlin Wall triggered the biggest loss of territory in the history of the Soviet Union, to the extent that it ceased to exist as such. It was not the first Russian real estate...
View ArticleImpromptu response
Two kinds of topics fill the agenda of an elected official: party politics and spontaneous issues. The party politics are usually the result of careful deliberation and think thank research, drafted as...
View ArticleIndian roulette
It was only after living in Delhi for a while that I noticed its existence. Whether you stay indoors or spend an afternoon strolling Janpath, every day you take a gamble. Call it Indian roulette. Your...
View ArticleIndian elephant
His cappuccinos started of with just frothed milk on plain coffee, but soon enough his creativity took over. Now, Mahendar (‘Munna’) experiments with a myriad of shapes, transforming hot poured milk...
View ArticleStating the obvious
Hearing something you already know is often put aside as irrelevant. Your mind goes from ‘I knew that’ to ‘What else is new?’ or even ‘Duhh’. As if what you already know is less appreciated, especially...
View ArticleSaturday morning baseball
So I became a coach for the New Delhi Little League of Baseball. Practice is every Saturday morning, on Leo Flannigan field, a regular size baseball ground within the perimeters of the US Embassy....
View ArticleDomestic
Domestic is a rather opaque qualification in a country where a trainride from Dibrugarh, Assam in the Northeast to Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, the bordering the Indian Ocean, takes five days. Literally,...
View ArticleCandid & Blunt
The American and Russian Presidents met in the corridors of the G20 summit in China. If Barack Obama describes a tête-à-tête with his the Russian counterpart as ‘candid’ and ‘blunt’, you can imagine...
View ArticleFour consecutive days
Next weekend we are trekking with a group of five families in the foothills of the Himalayas, six hours eastwards by local bus from Mussoorie. No WIFI, no electricity, no running water, basically...
View ArticleEvolving friendship
Like many things in life, friendships age over time. They evolve, like a river finding its course. A friendship is characterizes by the number of transitions it went through, finding its way forward....
View ArticleMurphy inverted
Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong, will. Murphy usually strikes at a time when you least expect it and could certainly do without. From empirical experience, I haven’t been able to...
View ArticleBaseball versus football
An American friend of mine once mocked about football that most matches only produce one or two goals (“How dull is that?”). And he could not get over the fact that a match could end in a goalless...
View ArticleOn consistency
My golf score has been persistently mediocre for years. At first I thought that it was all about practice. If I would play more, my scores would improve. So I played more, but nothing happened. They...
View ArticleVault of heaven
Delhi air feels hot in April, blistering hot in May. India is counting down the days until its pregnant clouds tear and deliver their load. Change comes in June as tension gradually mounts in the sky....
View ArticlePrêt-à-Porter
Haridwar Junction Railway Station has no secrets for me. I know the schedule by heart, the daily choice of meal for every train that comes and goes. Tell me your seat number and destination and I will...
View ArticleApple in Italian
Our youngest champ has discovered an app that teaches him words in several languages. He loves to play with it and is generous with his observations. “Did you know that the word for ‘apple’ in Italian...
View ArticleDistinctive features
Now here is a question for you. When you are in the company of someone who has distinctively different features than you, do you look more like yourself or more like the other? Are your stronger...
View ArticleHardened tastebuds
From Punjabi tandoori chicken to Kerala style seabass, and from Gujarati chana masala to Bengali flavored fish curry, India offers a wide range of delicious dishes. I consider an occasional Delhi belli...
View ArticleHistory of Exits
Algeria left the European Economic Community when it declared itself independent from France in 1962. Greenland followed suit in 1985. The most recent ‘exit’ was by the island of Saint-Barthélemy, part...
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