Viswanathan K's Thoughts

The next chapter in Vandana Vasudevan’s OTP Please is the yang to the yin of the previous blog . Pleasure was the emotion in that blog, so this one is about guilt.   If everyone is ordering in, what happened to maa ka khana ? When kids want to order in, the mother wonders whether her cooking is bland? Is the food somehow lacking in something? Sometimes, she’ll try to hard-sell the nutritional value of home cooked meals – so many grams of protein in paruppu usli or arhar dal . To no avail. The argument of price doesn’t make any dent, since one can find food delivery at all price points.   It is a fact that a “nutrition transition” is underway. The thalis of India, the equivalent Thakali of Nepal are being replaced. Low-fat, high-fibre foods are replaced by ultra-processed foods high in saturated fats, sodium and sugar. Weight gain, gastric trouble, bacterial infection, diabetes, high BP and heart disease lurk in the future thanks to this dietary change as well as the...

Some months back, two sets of refugees who were not exactly being welcomed where they landed (or tried to land) was making headlines. Europe started turning its back on the Libyans who were trying to get to Europe to flee poverty or violence in their own countries. Remember that Europe, based on its history of turning its back on the Jews during World War II, has a policy that every refugee has the right to apply for asylum. But that collapses when there is a stampede (over 170,000 refugees in Italy alone in 2014), which is what has been happening over the last year or so. Who will foot the bill? How many should each country absorb? What if those migrants don’t integrate? What about the resentment they create domestically when jobs are so few already? The other set were the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority fleeing Burma/Myanmar due to violence and lack of even the most basic rights. Around 140,000 have fled since 2012. Malaysia and Indonesia turned their backs on the refugees saying ...

Dong Nguyen is the guy who wrote Flappy Birds , the mobile video game that became so popular that it was netting him $50,000 a day via in-game ads! Then, while Flappymania was still at its peak, Nguyen tweeted: “I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users. 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore.” Which obviously led to the question that Rolling Stone magazine asked : “Who was this dude, and WTF had he done?...How could someone who hit the online jackpot suddenly pull the plug?” His answer was that his new found, sudden fame was suffocating; the paparazzi were besieging his home; there were relentless accusations for having created an addictive game that ruined people’s lives; and the criticism of having copied the theme from an older Nintendo game. Rami Ismail who came up with another popular game, Ridiculous Fishing , felt guilty about the money : “Ever since I was a kid I’ve watched my mom wake up at six in the morning, wor...