The Eternal Optimist!

I think the city of Panaji is like a beautiful painting and you cant take your eyes off it. Roaming the city in late evenings after office has become my hobby. I don’t walk. I don’t do anything on my own account. The streets come alive and pull me on and the sea sings songs of joy. Miramar beach is my trusted friend. It is here that I built my first sand castle as a kid. It is here that I wrote my first poem . I shared my grief here with the sea and tears from my eyes fused with the waves to become a part of their calm humming that provides hope. There is this place, elegant as a nobleman, charismatic as a leader, whoprovides a peek in the corridors of power. The hill of Altinho-abode of the ruling elite. Sometimes I stand before the Archbishops House and pretend I own the place or stand on the heights of Altinho imagining I rule the city spread below. The mentions and bungalows of the city’s powerful barons, the sophisticated black coated lawyers at the high court and govern...

Monsoon heralds the beginning of the new academic year and brings joy to all. To me, it announces the end of the party season. My uncles used to drop me back home with a bag full of fresh cucumbers and lots of good wishes for school. I hated monsoon for that. It brought me back from the cave of Alibaba that was my grandmother’s house. It brought me back to this cruel world of studies from the magic kingdom of stories. Above all, the uncles, my two Jinns would vanish behind a curtain of rain- not from the sky but from my eyes. My cousins Sushrut Ria and I called grandmother’s home “Magic Kingdom”. As dark clouds vanished and winter approached, the magic would spread its wings. Like intelligence agents, the uncles knew before we did, the dates of our mid term break. Afraid that my mom will deny permission to go to the magic Kingdom, I would plan my escape a week before the Diwali brake. Bal mama’s shop of electrical appliances was on the way to my school. He used to wait outsid...

So, I got this awesome job with a news channel. I joined and started out with an average performance. But within a month, my performance skyrocketed. I became a favorite at the office and my ideas began to revolutionize the channel. What happened? Freakonomics happened. While I was still a fresher, a trainee in the corporate world, I was given some time to observe the workings of the office. Lot of free time, to kill which, a friend gave me this book. What was in this book? “Incentives” she said. That’s it. Must be some high end economics book, but something’s better than nothing, so I set out to read it. It was awesome! Out of the box application of economic principles focused on one assumption- people react to incentives, positively or negatively. You can solve any question, yup, ANY question using a correctly created algorithm and finding the correct data. That’s what the book tries to say. People don’t react to incentives in a predicable manner, there might be very different reaso...