Chronicles of Nikhil Baliga

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Majority wins, minority loses... A large unit divided is smaller than a whole small unit " Imagine you are with four other friends and you decide to go watch a movie. However there is the question of which movie to watch? Some of you want to watch movie A, and some of you want to watch movie B. The question is, how do you decide? The answer is simple (if you are normal) - Poll and majority. If you look around you, you will see that most decisions are made in the same way. Whether it is decisions in companies (based on share percentage) or in politics, this concept of 'majority wins' is the common way of deciding. My first question is, why do we consider majority? And my take on that would be - So as to appease most number of people, piss off least number of people thereby having increased general happiness (You know, if each person's happiness was measurable in units, we would have had more such units). The real question is -...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " You can snap the twig between your fingers... " I love watching nature shows on TV. If you tune in to Animal Planet, Discovery or The National Geographic Channel, you often see the grasslands of Africa. And in the vast grasslands graze the gnus, gazelles and zebras while predators like lions and scavengers like hyaenas are prowling around. Let's not forget the meerkats and other rodents nervously walking around with twitching noses. And then suddenly there're thousands of thundering hooves galloping, creating clouds of dust behind as they try to escape the bite of that lioness (or her pride)... Eventually the herbivore takes a tumble as the lioness sinks her teeth into the wind-pipe of the moaning animal. The rest of the animals catch a breath and watch as the hungry cats devour the vanquished beast. I don't know about the gazelles, but the zebras, gnus and buffaloes are very powerful animals. Herbivores often graze together in...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Going that last extra mile is harder than the entire journey... " When placements were going on in our college, the college director told us that the placements go by the 80:20 rule. We had three tiers - Tiers 3, 2 and 1 depending on the salaries - lowest to highest. What's the 80:20 rule? Basically out of 100 people, 80 would be placed in tier 3. The 80:20 rule gets applied to the remaining 20, and thus 16 would get placed in tier 2 and 4 in tier 1. The question is, what is it that makes people to get divided in these proportions? When we were in school, my teacher used to say that God has given us all equal intelligence. But if you look around, that's not true. Each of us has different levels of intelligence and different levels when it comes to talents and natural skills. There is nothing that you can do about something that you are born with. Some people have a spectacular memory. But this essay is not going to discuss that. Wha...