Random notes

With due apologies to H.G.Wells, I used his time machine to go 10 years in the future and being the ultimate armchair analyst, went to the virtual world first. I came across and interesting investigative report on a worrying situation in politics. The report is reproduced here. Since I am publishing it in their past, there are no troubling copyright issues. Incidentally, the author name is same as mine.   Politics faces Brain-drain New Delhi, 28 th Feb 2024 A surprising trend has been noticed in the political circles; the political parties are not finding enough candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections. Confirming this trend, our source in a national party said, “It is quite surprising, in fact shocking. Till last elections we used to have thousands of hopefuls standing in a queue for the party ticket to parliamentary elections. They would use all means possible, ethical or unethical, legal or illegal, democratic or fascist to impress, bribe, threaten ...

Most of us would have heard or read this story before but its relevance to the current situation makes a retelling necessary. A sword smith came to the King’s durbar (any King, let’s be secular) and declared that he had the world’s best sword. It was so good & sharp that it could pierce any shield, repeat any shield in the world.  The claim was tested on the few shields available and when found to be true, the King became happy, and as usually happens in such stories, gave a lot of gold and other jewels to the smith and sent him off. A year or two later, the smith came to the King’s court again, this time brandishing a shield which, he claimed, no sword in the world could pierce. The people were simple in those days and he was believed.  The King was about to be relieved of some more gold and gems but then, one smart Ram Singh remembered the sword that the smith had sold earlier. He got up and reminded the king of the impossibility of both claims being true and a...