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FRIENDSHIP OF DURYODHANA AND KARNA

      Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between people. Friendships can be formed at any age level – childhood, teenage, adult, mid-life & old age. It’s a special bond. Like any other relationships, it too goes through its ups and downs. We have seen or read or heard great examples of friendship in literature, films & in our real lives. As a mythology lover, I would like to delve a little into friendships in Hindu mythology.          Hindu mythology has great examples of best friendships like Ram-Sugriva, Krishna-Sudama, Krishna-Draupadi & Krishna-Arjun. The basis of Ram-Sugriva’s friendship was the need for dependence on one another. Sugriva needed Lord Ram’s help in defeating his brother Bali and Ram needed Sugriva’s help in finding Sita & to eventually defeat Ravana’s army in Lanka. But their friendship continued even after the war & years later Sugriva fought for Ram against Ram’s twin sons Luv-Kush....
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IS 10 TEAMS WORLD CUP A BETTER FORMAT OR NOT?

          As we all know, the ICC Cricket World Cup is currently going on in England. It’s the third most popular sport after Football & Olympics in the world. Opinions are divided among cricket fans about ICC’s decision to have a World Cup consisting of only ten teams. After the 1996 World Cup (which had only 9 teams), all the other following World Cups had more than 10 teams. It mostly featured 12 or 14 teams with the 2007 World Cup being the exception as it had 16 teams. So what prompted ICC to take such a decision? What are its pros & cons? Let’s find out.            When I first read the news that ICC had decided to go ahead with a 10 team World Cup, I would be lying if I say I was not disappointed. Instead of globalizing the game, ICC was taking a reverse direction. I understand that having 16 teams in 2007 was a bad decision. How about 14 teams? Is that a high number too?...
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MODI GOVERNMENT'S 5 YEARS PERFORMANCE REVIEW - FINAL CHAPTER (POSITIVES)

                                                  FINAL CHAPTER – POSITIVES           Development is the biggest takeaway from last 5 years of Modi government. Modi has lead from the front. Under his governance, India became the fastest growing economy in the world. Also internationally, India is now seen as a nation which has a strong leader.                      Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Mission) is another great initiative by Modi government on cleanliness & sanitation. It was great to see big celebrities right from Prime Minister Modi to other famous personalities like actors & sportspersons to hold a broom in their hands & sweeping & raising awareness about maintaining cleanliness to the general public. World Health ...
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MODI GOVERNMENT'S 5 YEARS PERFORMANCE REVIEW - CHAPTER 2 (GREY AREAS)

                                                 CHAPTER 2 – GREY AREAS                Demonetization was a bold move & had a great intent behind it. But it was badly planned & poorly executed. It’s a bit understandable as the government had no model blue print or proper road map as demonetization on such a large scale had never happened anywhere in the history of our world. So government & RBI were learning on a day to day basis & were trying to adapt to its innumerable challenges & thus we saw regular updates & changes in the months of November & December of 2016.   With better planning, government should have ensured that RBI manufactured plenty of new cash well in advance of demonetization. That would have helped...
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MODI GOVERNMENT'S 5 YEARS PERFORMANCE REVIEW - CHAPTER 1 (NEGATIVES)

           It’s election season. Biggest democracy in the world is gearing up to or (in some parts) already has geared up to Indian General Election which is scheduled to be held in 7 phases from 11th April to 19th May to constitute the 17th Lok Sabha. Opinion polls are out across all sections of media. Various journalists & political commentators are daily writing about different parties or leaders and their agendas, their manifestos, their chances in upcoming election etc etc. but there is hardly any in depth analysis of Indian Government’s (or more popularly known as Modi Government’s) performance in the last 5 years. I am no political expert but thought of giving it a try as I have been following quite a bit of politics since last 5-6 years. I have divided this into 3 chapters– Negatives, Grey Areas & Positives.                                 ...
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LET US NOT GENERALIZE

          We Indians love generalizing & more often than not it steers towards stereotyping. Few examples of regional stereotyping are – All Punjabis are very loud & love doing Bhangra at the drop of a hat (thanks to Bollywood); all Bengalis are very intellectual; all Gujaratis are always money minded; all Marwaris are misers (Kanjus Marwaris); all Kashmiri Muslims are anti Indians; all South Indians love having curd rice daily and many more. The list is huge.           Well I can see where few of these have originated from. Many of the Gujaratis are businessmen and businessmen have to be money minded. If you are not money minded then you cannot run a very successful business (be it small scale or large scale). Ambanis, Tatas, Birlas, Zuckerbergs, Bezos, Gates all were or are money minded. But not all Gujjus are businessmen & not all Gujjus businessmen are very successful. So th...
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