मैं पीड़ा का राजकुँवर हूँ, तुम शहजादी रूपनगर की
हो भी गया प्रेम हम में तो, बोलो मिलन कहाँ पर होगा..?

मेरा कुर्ता सिला दुखों ने,
बदनामी ने काज निकाले,
तुम जो आँचल ओढ़े उसमें
अम्बर ने खुद जड़े सितारे
मैं केवल पानी ही पानी, तुम केवल मदिरा ही मदिरा
मिट भी गया भेद तन का तो, मन का हवन कहाँ पर होगा

मैं जन्मा इसलिये कि,
थोड़ी उम्र आँसुओं की बढ़ जाए
तुम आई इस हेतु कि मेंहदी
रोज नए कंगन बनवाए,
तुम उदयाचल, मैं अस्ताचल, तुम सुखांतकी, मैं दुखांतकी
मिल भी गए अंक अपने तो रस अवतरण कहाँ पर होगा?

मीलों जहाँ न पता खुशी का,
मै उस आँगन का इकलौता,
तुम उस घर की कली जहाँ
नित होंठ करें गीतों का न्यौता
मेरी उमर अमावस काली और तुम्हारी पूनम गोरी
मिल भी गई राशि अपनी तो बोलो लगन कहाँ पर होगा?

इतना दानी नही समय कि
हर गमले में फूल खिला दे
इतनी भावुक नही जिंदगी
हर खत का उत्तर भिजवा दे
मिलना अपना सरल नहीं पर फिर भी ये सोचा करता हूँ,
जब ना आदमी प्यार करेगा जाने भुवन कहाँ पर होगा..?

हो भी गया प्रेम हम में तो, बोलो मिलन कहाँ पर होगा?

“The highs and the lows, the best and the worst of Hindi cinema” in the first decade of the new millenium from The Hindu.

The categories are interesting: best films, films that got too much attention,  films so bad that they are good, films that did not get their due,  unforgettable onscreen moments, top  filmmakers, and indie films you must watch.

All such lists exclude some of the deserving ones (type 1 error) and include some undeserving ones (type 2 error). Yet this seems to be a reasonable and interesting catalogue.

हम ही ठहरे सज़ावार, और खता कुछ भी नहीं

तू क्या समझता है, तेरे बाद हुआ कुछ भी नहीं

याद जब तेरी आई याद रहा कुछ भी नहीं

दिल ने बस आह भरी और कहा कुछ भी नहीं

वक़्त की तरह ये सांसें भी रवां हैं अब तक

इक बस अश्क थमा, और रुका कुछ भी नहीं

काश वो मुझसे कह दे अचानक आकर

कि तेरे बाद ज़िन्दगी में बचा कुछ भी नहीं

Government of Gujarat recently passed a legislation making voting compulsory for local body elections in the state.  This is a rare act of Narendra Modi that has Lalu Yadav’s support. Lalu is worried about the increasing apathy of voters and wants compulsory voting in Assembly and Parliamentary elections too.

When I read the news, my first concern was parochial: what about absentee voters like me. I am registered to vote in Muzaffarpur. But I have not voted in last several elections as I have been away from home since 1999. I want to, but we do not have postal ballots in India. I wonder if a compulsory voting system could be enforced without postal ballots. If voting is made compulsory even for migrant workers and NRIs, it will impose heavy cost on them. If it is not, then too many will use it as an excuse.

The second thing that struck me about this legislation was the total lack of public debate on this issue before it became a law, at least in the many English newspapers, magazines and websites that I regularly follow.  It is true that democratically elected governments are entitled to act on behalf of people. We do not want a California like system of referendum to decide every thing. Yet compulsory voting is too big a change–it changes the way we aggregate individual preferences in our democracy– not to have a serious public debate around it.

Finally, here is an excellent article by Pratap Bhanu Mehta highlighting some of the most important issues of principle related to compulsory voting.

Paul Krugman highlights 8 seminal insights of Paul Samuelson in this article. Excellent summarization but full of jargons for people who have not studied economics.

Poincare conjecture, posed in 1904, was regarded as one of the most important and difficult open problems in mathematics until it was solved by Russian mathematician Grisha Perelman. Perelman was awarded Fields Medal for his achievement. But he did not accept the award. His rejection of the Field Medal made him  more famous among the lay people than the proof itself.

Here is an old article from New Yorker magazine on the proof of Poincare conjecture. The article is long but really interesting even if you do not care about manifolds and their properties. This is an old article; the battle has been resolved in favor of Perelman.

Avinash Dixit. Thanks Rahul!

Subramanian Swamy, the maverick of India’s politics is also Samuelson’s student and one time co-author.

Paul Samuelson, arguably the greatest economist of post-war era, is no more. Here is the best obituary I have read thus far.

Samuelson’s genius is stuff of myths among economists. I have had teachers who were his students and colleagues at MIT. They all swore by breadth of his genius, his amazing memory and his insights into almost every sub-field of economics. He built world’s best economics department at MIT. He was a student of Schumpeter and Leontief at Harvard. Story goes that after his thesis defense, Schumpeter turned to Leontief and asked: so have we passed Mr. Leontief? He changed the way economics is done with his thesis, humbly titled: Foundations of Economic Analysis. He won Nobel Prize in 1970 for his this work, the first of many Americans to win the Prize.

Kenneth Arrow, another great economist of this era, was related to him by marriage. Samuelson’s brother, Robert Summers was married Ken Arrow’s sister, Anita. Both Robert and Anita are also economist and so is their famous son: Larry Summers. Both paternal (Samuelson) and maternal (Arrow) uncles of Summers won Nobel Prize for their PhD thesis. I have heard Summers really took a long time to finish his. He was under pressure to deliver a masterpiece. It took him six years; he was already an assistant professor for three years when he submitted his thesis.

Barack Obama’s foreign policy has disappointed many. His speech on Afghanistan was disappointing and disingenuous, to say the least. We Indians are obviously unhappy. But so are his neighbors in Latin America, for very different regions. Indians are unhappy because he declared his intent to start moving out of Afghanistan in 18 months and also because he is sucking up to China.

Latin Americans are disappointed because the Nobel Peace Laureate’s administration recognized a government formed after a coup followed by an illegal election in Honduras that everyone else has refused to recognize. Here is the whole story from the New Yorker.

A long but interesting article on foreign land acquisitions in Africa in recent years. The article is based mainly on author’s fieldwork in Ethiopia. However, it does talk about examples from other African countries too.