Wanderlust Sajid

Last month I wrote a blog on how driverless cars will be common sooner or later and that human drivers to become obsolete will be a reality :  http://wanderlustsajid.blogspot.in/2016/03/the-romance-of-driving-is-going-to-end.html .  There had been many movies and novels depicting complete takeover of day-to-day work by robots and technologies substituting humans. Hugely successful and critically acclaimed movies like 'Wall-E', 'AI-Artificial Intelligence', 'I,Robot' and this year Oscar winning 'Ex Machina', have all illustrated dystopian world, where Robots elbowed out humans. In The World Economic Forum of 2016 at Davos, one of the main agenda of discussion was the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Participants representing head of the nations, renowned economist and business leaders around the world, all conceded that Fourth Industrial Revolution is already underway and that it will eliminate millions of jobs over next 5 to 10 year...

Three days ago, Prince Rogers Nelson, or just Prince, by which name the whole music world knows him, passed away.  Prince was an American singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, multi-instrumentalist and music innovator, who pioneered the Minneapolis Sound, which is a hybrid mix of funk, rock, pop, synth-pop and new-wave. He sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists worldwide and winning 7 Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and also an Oscar Award for Best Original Song Score. Prince became a big celebrity at an age of just 21, by when he went platinum in 1979, which technically means selling 1 million records. Quite similar to him, in present day, arrived a singer, who is dubbed the next big thing is music. His name is Edward Christopher Sheeran, or just Ed Sheeran for the music world, a 25 years old English singer, song-writer and musician, who dropped out of school at the age of 16 to pursue a career in music, quite prodigiously....

Securities and Exchange Board of India or SEBI, for the uninitiated, is a regulator for securities market in India. In simple terms it is an authority which regulates the Share or Securities Market and Mutual Fund Industry, analogical to what is RBI to banks.  SEBI is responsive to the needs of 3 groups,  which  constitutes the market : 1) the issuers of securities, 2) the investors and 3) the market  intermediaries. It has three functions rolled into one body : legislative, executive and judicial. It drafts regulations in its legislative capacity, it conducts investigations and enforcement action in its executive functions and it passes rulings and order in its judicial capacity. This makes it very powerful and there exists only two appeal avenues against it, the Securities Appellate Tribunal, which anyway is under purview of SEBI itself in broad view. A second appeal lies directly to the Supreme Court.   Even though SEBI has taken a very proacti...

Few days back on a snoozy afternoon a gentleman dropped-in at my office, who happens to be a distant cousin of my business partner. Me and my partner had then just finished our meagre lunch, which we ate sumptuously nevertheless, and were hanging on for an odd summery power-nap. That gentleman actually came for a discussion on his investments needs with my partner, who also manages his portfolio. On a gestural note I greeted him with a handshake, followed by a small bit of introduction. That small bit of introduction, blew me away. Never had I been amazed so much while meeting a person, as was getting to know him. He is Mr. Siddharth Singh, who runs an NGO by the name Snake Awareness Association and Wild Life Rescue Centre, where he is a Director. The NGO has its office at New Panvel, Maharashtra. As the name suggests, Mr. Singh and his NGO dedicatedly works across Maharashtra and also on other parts of India, on rescue and rehabilitation of snakes. Snakes, as I get t...

One of a very close friend of mine from US, recently posted a picture (see below) on her Facebook page, which drew me today to write this blog. She has been a passionate proponent of Montessori form of education and is a firm believer in natural form of education with care to environment and ecology being the best way of teaching. She is also a a great preacher of gun control and disarmament. Even though, one might argue that the number mentioned in the picture might not be correct or that it might be an exaggeration, but none would deny that the arms race and the easy supply of those arms, followed by the back-up of ammunition, is one of the primary root cause of ethnic riots and wars prolonging around the globe, which eventually is paralyzing the entire human race.  Each decade the world sees a new evil, a new name, that unleashes terror and bloodshed across the globe. The evil is new, the devil is old. Its the same demon with a new mask. Be it Hitler, Khmer Rouge, A...