Random Musings

Young Turks (Turkish: Jön Türkler, from French: Les Jeunes Turcs) was a political reform movement in the early 20th century that consisted of Ottoman exiles, students, civil servants, and army officers. They favoured the replacement of the Ottoman Empire's absolute monarchy with a constitutional government. Later, their leaders led a rebellion against the absolute rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. With this revolution, the Young Turks helped to establish the Second Constitutional Era in 1908, ushering in an era of multi-party democracy for the first time in the country’s history. Source: Wikipedia Turkey – a melting pot, a country where two continents, two diverse cultures unite. India as a country is not very different. Today we are a blend of Hindu, Mughal and British cultures intertwined in ways that sometimes it is not possible to do an attribution analysis and understand which part of our culture owes its roots to which tradition. No...

Back to blogging after a long time! Past one year has been one of immense vicissitudes for me personally. Working in the Private Banking industry whose fortunes are so closely linked to the performance of the stock-markets is never easy. Especially during times when the markets are going nowhere. From being the toast of every foreign investor, India has suddenly become a pariah. It all started last year with the Radia tapes. And soon "2G" became an indelible component of every informed Indian's psyche. A bevy of scams tumbled out and the equity markets got spooked. The Arab Spring followed, a terrible tsunami hit Japan and the Euro area collapsed. And if all this was not enough for a year, Indian middle class angst found a new messiah: Anna Hazare.  In my 35 years of existence as an Indian, the Indian middle class (IMC) has seldom done anything worthy of respect. At most times, the IMC is content trying hard to make more and more money whether by hook or by crook (not ...