Thoughts In A Wandering Mind

America’s next great achievement should be a country where disagreement leaves dignity intact, a troubled person receives help before reaching for a gun, diplomacy prevents another generation from inheriting a war, and prosperity leaves a habitable planet behind. These are measures of a civilisation’s maturity. Has America reached them? Some changes are substantial and deserve affirmation. Fewer people are being murdered, and cleaner electricity is expanding rapidly. Yet mistrust, gun deaths, military confrontation and climate damage remain enormous burdens. America is changing unevenly, with achievements that invite hope and failures that demand much greater resolve. The first problem is the loss of trust between people. Its scale becomes clear when only 34% of Americans in a 2023–2024 national survey said most people could be trusted. That means confidence in fellow citizens belongs to roughly one person in three. This is a deep social weakness. When neighbours become suspects and po...

A minister can leave office in an afternoon; repairing a broken examination system can take years. A resignation can produce applause, but applause cannot secure a question paper, restore a wrongly deleted voter or rebuild public trust. India’s present confrontation over the Chief Election Commissioner therefore deserves a harder question than whether protesters can force another departure: what changes after the departure? Democracy needs the courage to demand accountability and the wisdom to turn confrontation into repair. A soft landing can serve the public well, provided it lands on enforceable reform rather than convenient assurances. The question is immediate. The Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, has demanded Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Its announced October 10 mobilisation, described as “Jantar Mantar 2.0”, invokes the earlier examination protests. Opposition parties have ...

India rises before the world in an extraordinary procession of beauty: temple towers crowded with celestial figures, granite sanctuaries glowing beneath tropical skies, rivers joining in deep mountain valleys, and Himalayan peaks watching over ancient shrines. Two pilgrimages, one through Tamil Nadu and Kerala, another across the sacred North, reveal the scale of this inheritance. Across journeys imagined over ten to twelve days each, India unfolds as a magnificent meeting of nature, artistry, faith and living memory. Every halt opens another scene; together, they display a civilisation whose beauty reaches far beyond any single journey. The railway window provides the opening panorama. Southern fields spread in luminous green; palms rise above tiled village roofs; distant gopurams announce towns before their streets appear. Between destinations lie smaller treasures: a river crossing, a flower market, a courtyard washed at dawn. The landscape itself prepares the eye for the splendour ...