KISHAN KUMAR GUPTA

 Renowned French philosopher and poet Paul Valery once famously remarked that war is a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who knows each other but don't massacre each other.  On 24th February 2022, when the people woke up, none ran for newspapers to read what happened yesterday rather glued themselves to live news witnessing the unthinkable. Russia had launched a full blown attack on it's neighbour Ukraine. The situation appeared straight out of a typical Hollywood movie where it's always the Russians who attack someone and then USA comes to the rescue of the victim. However, this time it was not reel but real, playing out in open with full military might. For those in their 20s or even early 30s, this was certainly not something very common or should I say completely uncommon.  Similarly, on 7th October 2023, Gaza based Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched a surprise cross-border attack on Israel killing over 1200. What followed...

 These days we are observing the disappearing provisional stores on the corners of our locality, where we had to ask for each product we wanted, one by one and sometimes had to buy whatever is available due to lack of alternatives. Rarely any of us would be going for shopping to traditional garment shops where they show us limited number of clothes that too one by one, and after sometime would simply refuse to show more if they guessed your unwillingness to buy nothing. In both cases we have moved to online stores or to big marts or shopping malls where we get to choose out of so many things without anyone expressing displeasure. We are at liberty to run through hundreds and even thousands of products yet are free not to buy anything.  If you are wondering why there is such a rapid trivialisation of online shopping plateforms or of mega marts. The reason is fairly simple and obvious and that is choice. They offer us to choose what we want. Isn't it human nature to demand more ...

 During an interview two candidates were individually asked that what was the biggest failure in their life so far. While one of them told about what acts of commission or omission were his failures, the other simply refused to consider anything as a failure and said that he prefers to call them experiences.  If one tries to judge both, three different kinds of observations can be drawn about the two candidates. Firstly, one may find the former candidate as a bit negative while the later one as having more positive mindset. Secondly, one may say that the first candidate is more practical to accept his failures while the second one reflects a sense of infallibility. Lastly, a more nuanced approach would be to say that the very idea of failure is different for different people and hence no universal idea should be drawn. But all in all, it do raises the pertinent question of what failure actually is, so let us try to answer that. If we want to reflect on the meta narrative of fa...

 In 2015, after my 12th was over, I was all set to leave for Kota for IIT JEE preparations, something which was a fait accompli in a typical middle class family. Yet, there was a certain degree of apprehension about me going out of home that far and for that long. There was no such doubt when my elder brother went just two years back, then why in my case. And I found the answer when my grandfather asked me that how will I manage on my own away from home when I don't even make friends.  Though it was a fact that I was not really good at being someone's friend and never really tried to be one. Such was my condition that not even one friend visited my home till the second half of class 12th and I certainly didn't go to anyone's home either. Even my younger siblings used to have their friends regularly visiting them but that wasn't the case with me. But I never realised that having friends is so important that my prospects of going out for studies also was contingent up...

I am surprised and laughing as well while writing this blog because I couldn't think of a good beginning on a term so common in our life called family. I mean my own existence is owed to it, yet I couldn't and it's laughable. Then I remember the words of noted Hindi writer Shailesh Lodha, better identified as Tarak Mehta. He once said that there are few words in this world which are overused and highly undervalued, he called friendship as that word and I would add the word family also to it. Most widely used, more common than any other word in any language, yet I wonder how many of us actually understands its value and true meaning including me. If we go into the etymology of the word family, it comes from Latin word 'familia', which translates to servants or even worse, slaves. Oh God !, which poor English scholar thought that, it's better we don't know. I doubt even one of you would agree to it, considering what importance it has in our life.  The day we o...

 There are two sayings. First, every expert was once a beginner and second is that you don't need to be an expert to begin, you begin to become an expert. So, today marks the beginning of an enthusiastic learner who believes to be an expert some day. So why all of a sudden do I feel a need to write blogs and especially someone like me whom hardly even 50 people knows and I mean it. Recently I registered my first activity on LinkedIn and it barely managed to get two likes that too from two most unexpected people. So, why this urge. And I would say there are many reasons to it. First, writing blogs makes you appear an intellectual. Though today it has become quite common. Yet it presents you as someone who got something new to say, maybe an idea or some vision. And trust me those are very lofty words for me. Another reason for writing maybe that you love writing and good thoughts and ideas can come to your mind anytime. But since you can't carry pen paper everywhere, so you do, w...