Over an year ago, me and hubby were discussing Karwa Chauth. Hubby has banned Karwa Chauth since declaiming it as misogynist. I think, however, that banning Karwa Chauth is just addressing the symptom, not the cause. The basic premise of Karwa Chauth is that the husband's life is very important for a woman. The wife will fast for her husband's long life. This is also the premise of the standard Hindi movie blessing of "sada suhagan raho". Now, folks ask, why do we not see any reciprocal traditions coming from the husband? Is the wife's life not equally important? Does he not love her as much? I think this is not a question of love. It is a question of economics. Without a husband, the Indian woman is fairly dispossessed. Without a wife, the husband is inconvenienced. To begin with, under Indian inheritance laws, the father's wealth is divided among his sons.Until an amendment in 2005, the daughters did not have an equal claim to the wealth division. Soc
I am reading Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance and loving it. Its online at http://www.design.caltech.edu/Misc/pirsig.html . Though I would suggest that you buy the book. You probably would want to read it twice atleast and it will make a good addition to your collection. It is about a motorcycle trip the author takes through US midwest-north and his musings. Goes into philosophy. I finally also got around to buying Guns, Germs & Steel . It made a good read. It propounds a theory that tries to explain current social and economic differences between countries/civilizations by tracing back their roots to when these civilizations discovered farming, artistry, society, war meachanisms. It is a very interesting read. The only gripe I have is that it kind of glosses over two big civilizations - India, China. Also middle east civilizations. Basically, it deals with smaller and older civilizations and leaves it to the reader to apply those conclusions to the larger ones. Well, o
I am picking on IITKanpur in this post just because of a conversation that made me think, but I suppose this can be applied to most Indian institutes. The other day, hubby was talking about the session he attended at IIT-Kanpur's convention on how IIT should be 30 years from now. He said that the panel was so completely out of touch, and so lacked a vision or even a grasp on current. They had employed McKinsey consultants and inspite of that they came up with ridiculous solutions like "We are going to build a new high-tech village near IIT Kanpur because the institute suffers from not being in a big industrialized city" Duh? But there is a basic issue here. Consultants. You cannot and should not outsource 'thinking'. Sure consultants bring a fresh view, but they do not know about your organization. Thinking about your organization or about your problem is an important process in which you learn more about organization, and really take time to step back from the da
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