Th_ink

Three short poems taken out of archives. At least for me, these look even more relevant now than fifteen years back when I composed them.

Delicate in, tough out,  Easily ruffled, Mostly in single colour,  In shades of black and silver grey, Obsolete, irrelevant  After a short prime, Laden with a drive,  That drives nothing now. Who am I? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am the a: drive!

A Sachin has to leave the field For others, After two-hundred test centuries. Sachins are role-models, Ultra successful, Front-pagers, Gods. Millions of non-Sachins, Must quit on a muted pitch, Having lived by singles And ducks And hopes and despairs in between, But no sixes. I feel like embracing each of them - The non-Sachins, Who has played a fair game Without longing for a century, And celebrate a failure In his moment of quitting.

This article was published in the Indian Journal of Public Administration. Ref: Pandey, Manoj. IJPA, vol. LIX, no.2 (April-June 2013) SOCIAL MEDIA: ARE GOVERNMENTS USING ITS POTENTIAL FOR CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT? by Manoj Pandey* Summary: Media has traditionally been helpful in government communication, but has mostly remained one-directional. Social media, with its limitless possibilities of engagement with people, can transcend communication barriers and help governments bring in transparency in administration, reach people, elicit their participation and deliver services. Constraints such as poor literacy and low internet penetration in developing countries can be overcome, provided governments change their mindset from one-way communication to engaging citizens as valuable stake-holders. In democratic systems of governance, media enjoys a very high status because of its role as a watchdog over the three pillars of democracy – the legislature, the

An old poem, pasted on a hostel wall-paper 30 years ago, suddenly came alive in my memory. Does the dreamy heart-ache make sense today? हे प्रिय, तू मेरे अंतर में बस जाना हिम-कण बन के, तब मेरे उर में उमड़ेंगे प्रेम-पाग दो घन सावन के. 

I was discussing with a friend how some officers always seem to be in good books of bosses and get good confidential report entries year after year. Here I am expanding upon the wisdom that I derived from the discussion so that others may benefit from it. Let me beforehand declare that this piece is not meant to hurt those who are bosses’ darlings despite not following the wisdom. 1.         Bosses continue to lose the capacity to judge others’ characters, and this incapacitation occurs in exponential terms when a boss  becomes big boss and then the top boss. Keep this always in mind in dealing with the boss. 2.         Behave like his / her best chamcha in the world. Gifts are OK but don’t ignore greeting gestures. For example, male subordinates in Delhi can try bending their body at the waist (even if back pain) and pretending  to touch male boss’s  knee. In UP, Bihar and nearby states, it helps to say pranam instead of namaste or good morning. Never use hi, hello or similar o

God created a donkey. Quite satisfied with his creation he sent one copy to the jungle and retained another in his workshop to work further on it.  When God found free time, He removed the animal’s hoofs, gave him a flexible palm and topped it with jointed fingers. The moment God released the animal, he climbed the nearest fruit tree and threw a half-eaten fruit on God’s head. God realized his mistake but as per his self-imposed protocol, he could not have taken the privilege back from the animal. So he cajoled him to climb down and sit before him.  The moment the animal sat there, God pounced upon him and gave him a strong shot of anesthesia  To teach him a lesson, God cut his ears and to disable his power to climb trees, cut his tail. But God didn't want to waste these organs, and so he stuffed these into the animal’s head. He removed a few bones from the animal’s spine and a few muscles from his belly, plucked some hair from his neck and made him recline against the tree. N

                       Forest alone

 A homo was sighted by a blogger in his Delhi house mirror, but the catch was, it disappeared the moment he moved his gaze away.   W ell, this is not a story on a news-entertainment channel with a morphed video and commentary of doomsday arriving with the sighting of Halloween images on clouds. It is a true sighting, and could have been captured if the reporter had a camera at that time.   T he blogger says, he cannot claim to have been the first; in fact, such sightings are supposed to have been in millions over the ages, but are seldom reported in this clear manner. And for this courage, this report may give the blogger the coveted ‘blogger of the year’ award, and the report may go viral on social media. When contacted, the blogger said he was busy typing a blog post on the subject.    W hat is a homo? Right question, though slightly wrong in placement. The blogger says, it has nothing gay in it. Then what? The expression was used in the 19th century to describe certain types of

Swimmers

Immensions

I was provoked to write this small piece on design… Provoked by the discussion on an advertisement I was witness to this week.  I just draw your attention to four aspects that we are likely to ignore:  First, the space. You cannot fill all the space of a page layout or an advertisement, thinking that you are able to say more in the same amount spent. If that were the case, the Google homepage would not be that clean but be cluttered with advertisements, if not other content!  Second, the flow of lines. Don’t the lines going up and to the right denote growth vis-à-vis those in opposite direction? Plants grow tall, children grow ‘up’, sun rises, charts depict higher values up and right… Then, why do we place arrows going from right to left and steps going down when in an ad graphic we try to depict growth?  Third, colour. No lecture on the theory of colours. Let me just let you imagine what looks vibrant to you. Don’t we find flowers and freshly rain-soaked leaves more lively tha

3rd January, 2357 This page of my diary is going to be very different from others. It is on this day last month that I had seen the face of my grandfather the last time and I have been missing him all along. So depressed had I been that I did not write my ‘daily’ diary for a full month. I won’t be able to forget grandpa even if all my organs are changed, including my brain. Let me mention here that concepts about humans are changing fast after the first full brain transplant two years ago. We have long achieved sort of immortality thanks to in-situ cloning of organs, organ transplants and what not. The concept of being a grandfather, even a father, has almost lost its meaning. Yet, only if you had suffered the loss of your grandfather – or grandmother if you were lucky to have seen one – would you realize their value in your lives. Till the last moment of his life, grandpa was active like a child. Part of this energy, I am sure, he had regained from our child Coxy. H

India has perhaps the largest number of news channels, airing news, entertainment and 'entertaining news' day and night. The print media has also been in good shape in India, as against the global trend. To add to this information regime, various forms of new media have arisen, some changing the very concept of 'the press' or 'mass media'.  Questions have often been raised about media's accountability. In the paper reproduced below, I have tried to analyse how much accountable does the present day media is and should be, and for whom.

How much do the beneficiaries of various developmental / welfare schemes know about these schemes? Even if they know about them, is the information relevant and actionable?  My argument is that if we weave communication in developmental and welfare schemes, we'll get greater  public participation and better implementation of these schemes. My article written sometime back in a popular mag emphasises this.

I welcome the new year with this painting:  Mirth