Training at the National Defence Academy has quite a large percentage of time devoted to the physical. This includes PT, swimming, drill, cross country, boxing, various troop games and (strangely) horse riding. One would expect, extrapolating from the movies, that horse riding is great fun –starting with hearty ‘yee haw’,…
Everything I have learnt in life, I learnt from Bollywood!
India produces more than 1500 movies every year and the movies of my era (the born in the sixties generation) influenced me in many ways. They taught me Indian values, culture and racism. Please allow me to elucidate. If you are:- Now wasn’t that a master class on understanding India…
Ah! The sights and smells of the sea – Catspaw
Captain William Bligh of The HMS Bounty (Anthony Hopkins) was relieved of Command by mutineers (led by Mel Gibson) and cast away in the middle of the sea in a boat along with a few loyal sailors. The Captain thereafter, displayed tremendous leadership qualities, excellent knowledge of seamanship and dogged…
Which animal is most human? A parrot of course!
Ever been to those water parks wherein sea lions and dolphins do those amazing feats? Jumping through hoops, dancing and the like – almost human like? While extremely entertaining, these shows also show the remarkable bonds that humans can build with animals. Humans over the past many centuries have trained…
Which is the best time-pass tool? Why, WhatsApp of course!
All sources of media, print, TV and Arnab Goswami, spend humongous amounts of money/energy to bring you the latest news, analysis, and happenings across the globe. But you will agree with me that they all pale into insignificance when compared with, indisputably, the most reliable of them all – WhatsApp…
Where would life be without alcohol? In a life without humour!
The discerning ones amongst you would have noticed that alcohol makes rather frequent appearances in my writings (for example here, well here too, and then again here). But then that’s merely because alcohol has so many wondrous qualities that it is not feasible to cover them all in one piece….
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men What was your most prized purchase once you started earning? Well I can tell you that amongst young naval officers it was a vehicle – which in our case in the late 1980s was a ‘two wheeler’. Aah the freedom that…