Orderly Disorder

A fair part of last weekend was invested in reorganising all my books at home. It was not much to my surprise that my ratio of read to unread books was rather dismal and I hastily and rather sheepishly made a mental note not to be tempted of buying another book from the next mailer sent by Flipkart . Or while passing by a bookshop at the airport or at the mall. But books ( except the one's in school and college) and me have a love love relationship. As it turned out I was invited to attend a Jane Austen Book Club meet at a refreshingly well appointed, old world charm kind of bookstore - 'Kitabkhana' - situated right behind the Hutatma Chowk Memorial at Fountain. After the event I had a good fifty minutes or so to kill before my next appointment , our annual iftari food savouring in Bohri Mohalla & Mohammed Ali Road. I decided to invest this time in browsing around Kitabkhana. Trust me that I did start in earnest, remembering my resolve not to fall prey into buy

At school we rarely came across the history of Bhutan. But it always figured in our geography lessons as our neighbour country. I confess having basic knowledge about Bhutan before my maiden trip earlier this month and was glad that I did not web crawl for any more information, barring for a cursory look at the weather this time of the year. Here is the first of my postcards from Thimphu, Bhutan. India and all virtually Indians are consumed in the GDP race. What a welcome thought it is to visit Bhutan and interact with the Bhutanese where they value and actually place GNH ( Gross National Happiness )  higher than GDP. GNH simply explained is more of a social indicator measuring quality of life in spite of the pressures of material aspirations in the era of modern economic development. Aboard the Druk Air ( Bhutan's national airline) one cannot miss the smiling countenance of  HH Jigme Wangchuck and his wife, the queen Jetsun Pema, staring at us from the immigration forms.