A blog beginning

    THE UPSC DREAM ?   Dream!!!! Isn’t that the only thing for which the mere mortals among us go through their entire lives.   Chasing a dream, right from the time they are born and till that inevitable end. Chasing a dream, a dream, that appears to be just beyond their outstretched fingertips. But close and enticing enough, to push themselves, extending the physiological and psychological boundaries, with each passing minute. In our country, the one endeavour that perhaps symbolizes this constant chase is the Civil Services Examination. It’s like a world cup final, comes once in a while, a few are crowned champions and the rest, they are just participants. In this case, application forms personified. The numbers are astounding with lakhs of candidates filling forms for the coveted job and the ultimate winners, very few in numbers. In the completed exams of 2019-20, around 11 Lakhs had filled the form, half of them had appeared for the preliminary test and fin...

    CHINA AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER The year 2020 had started off on a cautious note, with various cities across the world going into lockdowns due to a respiratory virus i.e. the novel corona virus. . Be it London, New York , Sydney, all of them were coming to terms to with the new paradigm in life, where facial masks would be the accepted normal, big gathering a faint memory and free movement, well, restricted.   World events like the French open and the Tokyo Olympics were forced to be postponed; sporting leagues around the world were under the shadows of an invisible enemy. As the situation started getting lethal by the day, with no assessment of the degree to which the world was hit and the potential of it in the coming days, weeks, months or even years, the global community had started to be more assertive on the seeming origin of it all, the meat markets of Wuhan in china. The global power play spiralled pretty quickly as the American president termed the coron...

  THE SYDNEY DEFIANCE As the voice of cricket, Harsha Bhogle, so eloquently put it, “India had built a palace out of rubble”. And if I had to pick a moment that could really be compared with this tour down under, then the only one that could actually stand its ground would be, when the Australian team had come to India in 2001, led by the ever gritty, Steven Rogers Waugh and a juggernaut of 16 continuous test wins, was halted by India, the final frontier. It’s been a few days since the famed Gabbatoire was breached, after 33 long years, by a group of inexperienced but passionate youngsters. Teams have come to Brisbane every year and have mostly been smashed around, punch after punch, by the high flying Gabba ghost. Sure, it can never be said with certainty but things might not have been too different this time around as well, had it not been for the previous test match at the Sydney cricket ground. After the Adelaide debacle and then the inspirational turn around at Melbourne...