Browsing through the various shops of life that the sculpted modern civilisation presents every day — school, work, conference, columns, stories, managing, meeting and so on — finding peace has become elusive.

So elusive, in fact, that the business of providing it through books, CDs and other mediums run by self-appointed gurus has become a full fledged multi-billion-dollar industry. [Read more]

In October 1990, as part of a young band, we gave our last rock concert at Siri Fort auditorium in New Delhi. We didn’t know that then, of course, and were planning a life of music. But within no time, pressures of subsistence and the financial insecurity around music pushed down hard and within months, the band split up. [Read more]

Why do celebrations mean noise? What is this need in the urban Indian that makes him want to show that he’s having a good time? Can a good time be had in silence? [Read more]

Behold, a new era of state enterpreneurism. Labour pains have begun but even before the baby has been born, a new paper dissects an emerging phenomenon that’s been staring us in the face ever since September 15, when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and the world fell of an economic cliff. [Read more]

And eight core values, 10 broad directions, 50 semi-specifics, 67 clauses of intent, 23 pages and 9,254 words later, what we have from the world’s biggest ever clubbing exercise of the world’s 19 most powerful countries and EU is a score of 5.3 out of 10. This score at the Pittsburgh Summit of the Group of 20 (G20) got on its September 25 communique is lesser than the 6.4 the same group got in the London Summit. [Read more]