'Fiqui tranquilo' is the Brazilian mantra that I have learnt living here: 'Keep cool' is its colloquial translation to do justice to the spirit of Brazil.' B S Prakash bids goodbye to Brazil after a four-year stint as India's ambassador.
The challenge is to go out and do something different; not one more 'application' to download, not one more 'Angry Birds', a YouTube sensation. Something is changing yet again in the innovation hub that is still the Silicon Valley. B S Prakash on whether it is reinventing itself perpetually?
'My Indian guests were to get a slice of the authentic Brazilian experience, the cuisine being only one part of it,' says B S Prakash of a typical Brazilian institution.
In India traffic comes to a virtual standstill whenever there is 'VVIP movement'. At the Rio+20 Conference there were hundreds of world leaders, but no security agency seemed to hassle the locals, notes B S Prakash.
Over a hundred world leaders including the Indian prime minister will be at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio.
Are we submerging our individual abilities, memories and consciousness to a larger anonymous cloud over which we have no control? Is this a surrender of our mind to an omniscient, omnipotent Viswa Chaitanya, a Universal Consciousness that the great scientists or rishis dreamed of?
Are we submerging our individual abilities, memories and consciousness to a larger anonymous cloud over which we have no control? Is this a surrender of our mind to an omniscient, omnipotent Viswa Chaitanya, a Universal Consciousness that the great scientists or rishis dreamed of?
A battle for a glass of red wine ends happily when an Air India traveller magnanimously accepts whiskey instead, reports B S Prakash.
'As a vegetarian in this mainly carnivorous nation, how does he manage food; how does he commute in a complicated city; what does he do for news and entertainment since virtually everything is only in Portuguese in Brazil, etc. "No issues," he kept saying.'
Are the great always good? Few of his associates would use the adjective 'good' for Steve Jobs. The circuitry and the code that runs an individual is more complex than that which runs a computer. The world, feels B S Prakash, would be a duller place if it were not so.
'But where were the majority of my cousins from South Asia, the multitudes from Pakistan and Bangladesh and my own compatriots,' wonders B S Prakash.
'They were the service class: Cleaning, pouring, clearing, wiping, sweeping and getting rid of the rubbish.'
'The public are being told to consume more, even in China and India. A part of the global problem is being attributed to the saving patterns of people in Asia and we are being told that greater demand and consumption in BRIC countries can help ease the pain of the developed world,' says B S Prakash.
'Every slide in the power point presentation had a graph with years like 2006, 2008, 2010 on the X axis... Most lines seemed to lie inert horizontally and many seemed to dip despondently, except the red line for China which seemed to rise triumphantly in each slide...' B S Prakash attends the World Economic Forum's Latin American version.
There are many unknowns about happiness, but one thing is known: Thinking about happiness does not make you happy, says B S Prakash.
Kissinger asks Zhou Enlai' 'What do you think is the impact of the French Revolution?' Zhou, after a pregnant silence so beloved of Statesmen says, 'It is too early to tell'. This comment about the Revolution that changed history has been a subject of analysis for decades.
'Are we losing this race too? Will the Chinese outstrive us, even if they don't outsmart us?'
Marc Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sergei Brin and Larry Page of Google, Steve Jobs of Apple and Bill Gates of Microsoft -- visionaries, missionaries or monopolists? A bit of all, I suspect, says B S Prakash.
'Tall frames, blond hair, blue eyes, high cheek bones -- some of them inherit an explosive mix of attractive features. They may come from modest backgrounds and farming families, but spotted early they can be trained and transformed into super models.'
Talk of American decline and loss of influence is both premature and overblown, says B S Prakash.
'Who am I to say that the happiness of individuals is any less significant than Memorandum of Understandings signed between governments?'
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