Reflections

Reflections: Introducing Perry Mason.... : Introducing Perry Mason, a lawyer unlike any other you will encounter in books, or even in real life. A passionate believer in the law, a...

Introducing Perry Mason, a lawyer unlike any other you will encounter in books, or even in real life. A passionate believer in the law, a crazy risk-taker, a fighter, an inveterate optimist, a supporter of people in trouble... adjectives fail me in describing the man! Perry Mason is the central character in 82 books by Erle Stanley Gardner. Each book is a murder mystery, and the plots are unlike any you will find anywhere.  Most murder mysteries begin with the murder and follow the investigation. Not so in Perry Mason mysteries! The plot usually opens with a small, almost ludicrous situation that unexpectedly explodes into a murder, leaving Perry's client holding the bag and in an almost hopeless situation. That is the standard format, and yet the treatment of each story is so different that the reader is stuck to the book till the last page! Perry Mason is one of the widest read characters in the whodunit genre of Fiction books, and is in a class of its own The...

Reflections: Is Lokpal the solution????? : Lokpal - the central topic of discussion, in fact the first topic to actively engage the entire society at large, without exception. Driven ...

Lokpal - the central topic of discussion, in fact the first topic to actively engage the entire society at large, without exception. Driven by the Utopian dream of Zero Corruption, it has been galvanised into a movement that dreams of removing corruption from our country by creating a powerful Lokpal. Initially even I was pulled in by its allure, my eyes blinded and my thoughts totally engaged and dominated by the promise of finally tackling corruption... This is not about Annaji, or about Congress vs BJP. It is not about the prevailing chaos surrounding this matter, and at the outset let me clarify that I am not against Lokpal. In fact, I very much want a strong central body like the one advocated by the Jan Lokpal.  The doubts and questions assailing my mind have more to do with the underlying problem: corruption, its players, its nature and its effects. The first pricks of doubt in my mind emerged when I read the latest corruption ranking index update, which fir...