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Sometime back, I encountered a puzzle posted by a member in a LinkedIn group. It was called a Million Dollar Suitcase . A scenario with a challenge was described and we had to find a solution. It went like this: Three suitcases are all labeled incorrectly, and you must get the labels right in order to find the million dollar suitcase (the one full of hundred dollar bills).  The labels on the suitcases read as follows: $100 Bills $1 Bills Both ($100 & $1 Bills) You are allowed one test. You may remove only one bill from a single suitcase, after which you must make your determination. You can’t peek into the suitcases. Can you find the million dollar suitcase? The Solution I read about it and devised a solution before checking it out on the site. My explanation was: Assuming all of the suitcases are definitely mislabeled - we can safely remove one (i.e. the $100 suitcase) from the game and consider only two suitcases: $1 and Both.  If we select the one ...

Apart from being co-authored by Aravindan anna, which alone is reason enough to read the book, this is a path-breaking book. It brings into the limelight of Indian intellectual discourse the importance of Christian interference and indirect aggression into the sovereignty of India, through the artificially implanted Dravidian and Dalit identity politics. I have just began reading it and currently sailing through Chapter 3: Inventing the Aryan Race. It traces how the discovery of Indian philosophy, culture and science amazed European scholars initially and reached a peak when they began to romanticize India as the cradle of civilizations, praising its language and grammar, art and literature, philosophy and spirituality. This quickly gave raise to the lucrative discipline of Indology and related discourses beginning from late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. However, imperialism backed by Christianity and economic ambitions soon upturned the cart of Indian origin of the wester...

The first time I came across the phrase "Spiritual, but not religious" was as an option for "Religion" when I signed up for Orkut. And I have found this phrase to be quite intriguing since then. As I started adding friends to my profile, I found many of them opting for this option. I doubt if they understood the meaning of this phrase properly. I am trying to understand this phrase too. Like jeans, pizza, coke, google, nuclear weapons, credit cards, gene modification, pollution, communism etc, this is an idea imported from the west. The two operating concepts here are "Religion" and "Spirituality" . And only if we understand what these two concepts really mean, can we understand the phrase "Spiritual, but not religious". When I think of religion these are what spring up in my mind - dogmas & doctrines, rituals & sacrifices, rules & restrictions, faiths & beliefs. These are considered as essential aspects of a rel...