How to be Happy in Life

Once a group of 50 people was attending a seminar.Suddenly the speaker stopped and decided to do a group activity. He started giving each one a balloon. Each one was asked to write his/her name on it using a marker pen. Then all the balloons were collected and put in another room.

Interview with Raghuram Rajan (Reserve Bank Governor)

India will be one of the greatest economies, Raghuram Rajan tells students

Very, very few children ever get an opportunity like this. For the 800-odd children who came to Mumbai's Birla Matoshree auditorium on Friday to meet and hear Reserve Bank governor Raghuram Rajan, it's a day they will carry with them into adulthood.

Shorn of jargon, Reserve Bank governor Raghuram Rajan's hour-and-a-half interaction with them at The Times of India's Newspaper in Education (NIE) meet was a masterclass in economics. Before he came to Mumbai to head the country's central bank, he'd been chief economist with the IMF, a professor at one of America's top universities, author of a widely-acclaimed book, chief economic advisor to the government of India, and one of the world's most influential economic thinkers. But not once did he talk down to the children. A senior RBI official says Rajan spending time with children- and it showed. He was patient, he was thoughtful, and he applied his mind to every question he was asked. He started with a question that many - and not just children - might have thought of asking (in the fond hope that money can buy happiness), "Why am I such a cruel person today that I keep control of our printing presses and do not churn out thousand rupee after thousand rupee notes". Emphasising that there was no 'silver bullet' to check prices or increase incomes, Rajan spoke across a range of issues, from monetary policy to subsidies to capitalism to protectionism to India's place in the world - to his own hopes and fears. Here are excerpts from the Q&A.

God's Motorbike !

There are some incidents in your life which leave a mark forever.They are meant to teach us something and in a way that we can never forget  what we learnt. I experienced one such lesson.I was travelling daily from my home in Nanded phata,Pune to my class located in Deccan. Pune unlike mumbai has a screwed up transport system and hence there is not good connectivity between regions. As a Navi-mumbaikar i may have been habituated to the comforts my city provides but seriously Pune seriously needs to improve its transport system. My daily transport was a tedious affair involving 2 shared autorikshas, a bus and then 20 minutes walking.The entire cost of this was 80Rs. But it was imperative to attend the class so i had to undergo this ritual daily.

A CUP OF TEA !

A group of fifteen soldiers led by their Major Sahib were on their way to the post in Himalayas where they would be deployed for next three months. Another batch, which will be relieved, would be waiting anxiously for their arrival so that they could fall back to safer confines of their parent unit. Some would proceed on leave and meet their families. They were happy that they were to relieve a set of comrades who had done their job. It was a treacherous climb and the journey was to last till the next evening. Cold winter with intermittent snowfall added to the torture. If only someone could offer a cup of tea, the Major thought, knowing completely well that it was a futile wish. They continued for another hour before they came across a dilapidated structure which looked like a small shop. It was locked.