Corsica

I went to this little explored place in France for attending a Summer School. My room was in the guest house of the Institute and the Institute was on the sea-shore. This was one of the most beautiful places I ever visited. The sound of the waves in the night and small ships with night lights made this visit all the more memorable.

Lindau Nobel Prize Meeting

It has been long since I posted; but the last few months had been pretty engaging. I had been one of the 300 young economists selected from across the world for participating at the 2nd Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Economics. The meeting was set on the beautiful little island of Lindau in the southern part of Germany. As many as ten nobels participated at the four day event that was inaugurated by the German President. John Nash Jr., Sir Douglas North, Sir James Mirlees, Clive Granger, Robert Mundell, Reinhard Selten, Robert Engel, Finn Kydland were the nobels who lectured over those wonderful four days. I really commend the Lindau Council for organising such a grand event. On the final day we were taken to University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) for the final panel session. We then visited the Island of Mainau. The Countess of Mainau is the President of the Lindau Council. She bade us a great grand farewell there and a tour guide guided us through the picturesque island.


With Dr. John Nash, Jr. at the 2nd Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Economics 

Strasbourg and the European Parliament

The trip to Strasbourg (France) was a pleasant experience. The city was a part of Germany for over three hundred years. Now Strasbourg is a French city and river Rhine seperates it from Germany.

When I arrived at Strasbourg on the 1st of May, the whole town was relaxing and the public local transport was not plying on the streets. As I walked on the street in front of the Main Railway Station I noticed that a small shop that sells cakes and choclates was open. After buying some choclates and cakes, I unsuccessfully tried to buy a tram ticket when I discovered that the machine was out of order. I decided to take the taxi to the hotel but there was no taxi in sight. After a long wait, a taxi came in and three of us, one girl who spoke good english, an old lady and me, drove to our destinations.

The best part of Strasbourg (often compared with Boston)is its lively atmosphere. The river Rhine that flows through the city, the Cathedral(biggest in the world till the end of the ninteenth century), the imposing structures of European Parliament and the European Human Rights Commission make Strasbourg a beautiful place worth visiting.

Max Planck India Workshop

Workshop's Website

This is the first major event that I organised in my life. I would love to give the details but to summarize the efforts of three months and then an event of three days is certainly "lot of work"(haha). I enjoyed being responsible for the event and the many twists and turns that result in organising something like this. This conference was organised under the auspices of the Max Planck Society for furthering scientific co-operation between India and Germany. It was a great conference and the wonders of indian cuisine made the event all the more special. I also took all my colleagues to Prashanti Nilayam which is around 150 Kms from Bangalore on the 1st of April.

Though I was in Bangalore and many of my friends live and work there, I could not meet any of them as the program began as early as 8 am in the morning everyday and ended at around 8 pm in the evening leaving me with an intense desire to hit the sack immediately after the dinner in the nights. I would love to meet them given that we formed bonds of brotherly love for each other when we all studied at Prashanti Nilayam, where Sai Baba, a contemporary spiritual legend in India taught us many invaluable lessons of life.

Why I am not posting so often now?

Lets break ice again..

I am beginning to ask about something I am avoiding these days: blogging. I see my own blog many times each day, thanks to it being my homepage; and I wonder how I can live without updating it at all. As I reflect on the many causes, I still do not exactly discern the main reason.

Absolute Freedom?

Do we human beings have a right to absolute freedom? This is a question that only true introspection can answer. Yes we do have this right and yet we dont have this right!

Before explaining why we have this right I will first tell why in my belief we donot have this right. Absolute freedom is a utopian concept and absolute freedom implies infinite restrictions on us because every other human being has the same right and his right unequivocally infringes on ours. Leave alone as a right, it cannot exist even as a concept!

However, we are constantly living in two worlds, both intricately intertwined. An outer world that is accepted as real and an inner world that is convincingly imaginary. This imaginary inner world is possibly the utopian entity where we have absolute freedom. We have undeniably, a right to absolute freedom here.

Freedom of every form in the outer world needs to acquiesce the freedom of others and is a responsiblity than a privilege. Inner freedom is absolute even though it is often constrained by the impressions craved by the outer world. We should accept the irony that we humans can make an effort to realise absolute freedom only in our inner space and not elsewhere.

Dear New Year

Dear New Year,

I write this letter to you on behalf of my fellow human beings. You are someone very special for all of us. I write this to remind you about the many things we did on the new year eve, as we eagerly awaited your arrival. We stayed up late into the night, sang songs and danced to happy tunes. Many of us even played with fireworks wishing fresh hope and renewed joy into the lives of six billion of us.

Trust me, as we waited for you we drafted many resolutions, decided to be different and imagined wild fortunes for ourselves. As we lay in your lap during the next 365 days, fill us with love and peace and harmony and help us grow into bigger and wiser humans. With the passage of time, as you turn old and as we all eagerly wait once again to welcome your sibling make sure we see him as better humans.