Rumbles of a Lonely Mammoth

The Hindu Wedding - the extravagant, "feed the whole town" and "bring together the whole clan" kind of wedding, has been under attack for several years - if not decades by the liberals of this country. Incidentally, the same group that is attacking the Hindu wedding is at the forefront of the so called "Social Justice War" to ensure prosperity to the lower strata of the society. The attackers of the Hindu wedding are proponents of forced wealth redistribution, and go as far to rob Peter to pay Paul. They imagine themselves as modern day Robin Hoods, who want to deprive the evil rich Hindu of his / her ill-begotten wealth and give it to the poor. They argue that the Hindu wedding is a grotesque exhibition of wealth; a kind of "in your face insult" to the poor, and hence must be curbed. We should look at this accusation in a bit of detail. Let us consider a typical 3 day traditional Hindu wedding. A brief summary of a Hindu wedding goes as follo...

Two major events shook the world. One was the election of Donald J Trump as the president of the United States. The second, and closer to home (and more important in my mind) was the demonetization of large denomination currencies by the government of India. First on US Elections I had always held through this election season that HRC - the Democrat contender, would be a global disaster as a president. Part of the sentiment was the disdain with which she dealt with an emerging India. She made it a deliberate policy decision to hyphenate India with a failed state, Pakistan. Her shenanigans as a secretary of defense in hurting Indian interests has been detailed elsewhere, and I shall not venture into them here. Suffices to say, I am glad she lost. While she will still have considerable pull in the way Indo-US relations will shape up, she won't be in the driver's seat. Having said that - it would be naive to suggest that DJT is the best thing since sliced bread for Indian i...