Here are some thoughts for the weekend to munch. Before we all get gung ho about the rapid strides Indian economy is making, let us try to be a little objective. I am happy about what is happening in the service sector though in its current form it is only for the UEM (urban, educated, middle class). But, as a lot of commentators have pointed out there is the other India that has been left untouched. Here is an article which throws in a different perspective about the reform process right now.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060105&fname=prashant&sid=1

He talks about the misplaced priorities of our politicians, who in their zeal to open up the economy don't think about the really important and immediate concerns. Talking about misplaced priorities, Chandrababu Naidu comes to mind. The self-proclaimed CEO of Andhra Pradesh, who in his burning desire to project himself to be the most hip of CMs failed to do even the most basic of duties as a CM. This is the guy who was going around to bring the F1 Formula racing to Hyderabad when farmers in his state were committing suicide in the tens of thousands. Probably he didn't realize that the much publicized video conferencing he had with the district collectors was to prevent something like this from happening through faster access t0 and dissemination of information from across the state, instead of showing off infront of the cameras and discussing about the latest Balakrishna movie.

On a lighter note, this is a question that has been nagging me for quite sometime. The question goes something like this. Why is it that among homo sapiens (i.e., us) a fellow being from the opposite sex has to be hot while one from the same sex has to be cool? Is it because we see the physical attributes of the opposite sex, but with the same sex we see the attitude (unless of course you spend most of your time in the closet). But then, why associate hot with body and cool with attitude. can someone throw some light?

Another very interesting thing i came across this week is about Zoroastrianism. We all know about devas and asuras. According to our mythology, devas are the good ones and asuras are the demons. It will be interesting to know that all the stuff in our mythology are not myths after all. Apparently, the people of ancient Persia were called asuras and the people in our side were the suras. And in ancient times, asuras were actually equated with good things just like the devas. But over time, the devas got predominance in the religious scheme of things and asuras were made to be demons. Guess what, the persians had the same idea, but in the other way. In their scheme of things, Ahura ( this is how they call asuras) are the deities and Daevas (devas) are the demons. Talk about perspective.

C Karthikeyan