Musings Own Thoughts

  One of the important things I have realised in the last few years is the concept of Tissue banking. The very concept of using tissues and banking them comes from the assumption that after we die the body is simply an inanimate mass of flesh and we need not have any relation or attachment to it. However over the years the attachment to the body has been a part of the culture of different generations. The mummification of bodies in the Egyptian tradition is one extreme from which different religions and traditions have made their customs and rituals accordingly. While we can go on and on about the reasons and evolution of the methods of disposal of dead bodies, one thing is clear that all of us living in this world cling to dear life and are mostly attached to our physical bodies. So as in life when death occurs we tend to not want to let go of the physical presence of our loved ones and miss them enormously. Most of us want to see the body and pay our respects to the body of our l...

Any organisation especially an old one has its ups and downs and that is true of century old institutions. The important factor of stability of leadership can create a glue or an intangible asset called culture. However, this is becoming increasingly difficult to define and implement and all discussions on the same end up in sporadic inspirational talks about the past without a clear direction and tangible action in the future.  We fall into a trap of gathering knowledge and thinking that ultimately we will implement the ideas which we learn. However, the game of daily fire fighting existence, survival and routine bogs one down and this crucial aspect of cultural transformation takes a back seat. As one embarks on this difficult task the pressure to show results again tend to put the driver of cultural change on the back foot as the organization which is struggling for survival has all its energy focused on the immediate task to get short term gain and advantage. The long term pict...

 At the turn of the millennium in 1999 on Christmas eve an Indian aircraft flying from Kathmandu to Delhi was hijacked. I recollect this story very well and the abiding memory till today is on of the bungling state and monumental incompetence in handling the problem at hand.The problem of partition and Hindu Muslim communal divide has been responsible for so much violence, loss of life, livelihood and economic strife for almost over 175 years. While I have failed to understand why people think in this way, I recall this story of an author Aanchan Malhotra and her book about the Partition stories through material memories. We have always found it difficult to differentiate between the abstract and the concrete. There is an in built biased thinking among many of us about Muslims and the Muslims maybe harbouring the same for Hindus. In her book on her visit to Lahore she was in a typical social gathering where Indians in general and Hindus in particular were othered and abused. But th...

 In the context of the gruesome murder of the young doctor in R G Kar Hospital in Kolkata I will make my observations and say a few things. There is no doubt in my mind that nothing can justify or explain such crimes which men seem to commit on a regular basis. Human beings are considered to be on earth the most evolved living creatures based on an evolutionary cycle of millions of years. So we have what other creatures below us in evolutionary cycle do not have. That is the entity known as intellect. Now again Intellect is the power of the human being to reason out and know the difference between right and wrong. Today the majority of us are living in a noisy world full of distractions, attractions and disturbances at physical, emotional and intellectual levels. In this battle for attention we let our mind become our enemy and allow it to overpower our ability to discriminate and choose right from the wrong. The problem is that every action which leads us to choose the wrong over ...