Sustainability lessons from a swimming pool

My daughter has joined weekend swimming classes. And I had agreed to be her chauffeur. At 6.00 AM in the morning, I virtually had to drag myself out of my bed: It was a Saturday (an off day for me); it was still dark outside; it had rained (rather drizzled) most of the night and I could feel the chill. The warm bed and thick bedsheet that I had all over me was so cozy that I hated to come out from it.

But then, my daughter was keen on her swimming lessons: she had just started back stroke, which she was thoroughly enjoying. In her own words, “I enjoy just lying on water, watching the sky. And when the sky is clear blue, it feels like you are in a big blue egg!!!”. I could not disappoint her for those extra winks of sleep. So, I got up and got ready. 

My sandwich: Sum of parts is not same as the whole

Union Cabinet approves merger of five associate State Banks with State Bank of India (SBI), read the headline. The five associate banks are State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Travancore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Hyderabad. The merger will create INR 37-lakh crore banking behemoth, with over 50 crore customers. According to a press release by SBI Chairperson, with this merger SBI will now get some global level visibility as the merged entity would now be in the top 50 banks of the world.

“The whole is other than the sum of its parts,” Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka.  

The paratroopers

If you want to travel from one place to another and you select parachute as your mode of transport, be rest assured, the most likely way you will get to your destination is by being air dropped! Although in daily life, people do not, typically, choose a parachute as a mode of transport to reach their desired destination, in politics, para-dropping is quite common. 

Traffic jams make good economics

We all hate traffic jams, but some love it!

If one thing is common across all cities of the world, it is traffic jams. None have been able to escape its clutches—either in developed nation or developing nation. Traffic jams characterize a city. A day may not be far off when we start measuring distance by a unit of time rather a unit of distance! 

Life at a Traffic Signal

I was driving to office in my car. The traffic light turned red and I stopped at the traffic signal. The traffic was pilling up; the additional traffic was because schools had reopened today after summer vacations. Everybody enjoys summer vacations: the kids for they are not bound by a fixed routine, and office goers, like me, as there is less traffic during school vacation! So, as I sat in my car, I looked at the traffic signal counter: it indicated there was still 73 seconds to go before the signal would turn green. So, I turned off my car’s engine and casually looked around.

Another car came and stopped next to me; nothing unusual about it. The car was a Nano, branded as the world’s cheapest car. The lady driving the Nano turned around and with great urgency took something that was placed on the seat next to hers.