Dubai police’s car caravan … tallest, fastest, strangest in UAE

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 5/7/2013 9:33:17 AM

'UAE, the land of the biggest, tallest, richest… everything grandiose, in short. And those who cock a snook at the use of gold to line up the walls of hotels like the Burj Al Arab and Emirates Palace hotels or the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque may well note that wealth is to there to flaunt [...]'

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Virat Kohli must realise IPL is about clubs, not country

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 4/28/2013 4:19:29 PM

'Virat Kohli is brash, arrogant, typifies the modern youth and that can be a good or bad thing for Indian cricket depending on your upbringing and what friends and trends you have been following on social media platforms. In the ongoing IPL 6 season, as Royal Challengers Bangalore captain, he was booed off at the [...]'

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The Narendra Modi conundrum that divides India

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 4/11/2013 10:56:05 AM

'I have been sharing my Abu Dhabi flat with three roommates, two of them are Narendra Modi and BJP supporters. I, on the other hand, am the disillusioned Congress supporter… Disillusioned since the last 10-odd years in my 38 years of life but waiting for a viable alternative and it is not Modi.   [...]'

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Celebrating Holi early in Abu Dhabi (UAE) with apertures and shutter speeds

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 3/23/2013 2:22:34 PM

'Click on the image above for a shortlisted slideshow of images from the Corniche in Abu Dhabi and then again on the first picture for a bigger view. It just happened that a couple of friends gathered around to share and develop some more knowledge on SLR cameras with some professional help from The National‘s [...]'

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Selection into the team is not always on merit

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 3/20/2013 10:11:24 PM

'You can call a spade a spade, because a spade is a spade is a spade. But then in this era of being politically correct and everything else incorrect legally and morally, that can assume significance. Mickey Arthur, the coach of  the hard-nosed Australian team, penalised four players by suspending them from the third Test [...]'

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Is Ram’s Diwali with a gender bias relevant in Hindu mythology?

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 11/14/2012 9:20:09 AM

'I believed I was an atheist because I was not comfortable with the obsession with thousands of variations of God in Hindu mythology and its accompanied paraphernalia bordering on hypocrisy. That was as a growing teen before years of debates and insight of knowledge made me realise that there is indeed a God, except I [...]'

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Kejriwal’s overdose of expose could hurt fight against corruption

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 10/18/2012 2:20:58 PM

'Arvind Kejriwal is a man on a mission or a hit-and-run mercenary or just plain opportunist who wants to hit the ground running and realises a new party can only make an immediate impact by striking when the iron is hot. So a slew of sting operations and exposes that justify the motto of India [...]'

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Lance Armstrong doping motto: ‘Live strong’ or live smart?

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 10/17/2012 10:33:05 AM

'Few years back, I got to profile a teenaged female wrestler who stayed on the outskirts of the official suburban limits of Bombay (it wasn’t named Mumbai then). Her father was a sportsman in another discipline but her uncle was a past champion in wrestling sport and the mentor in real sense. A list of [...]'

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Jakarta: So much money in Indonesia, so little on tourism

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 9/26/2012 5:10:15 PM

'When one US dollar is 9,500 Indonesian Rupiahs, currency conversion can be a nightmare. The first thing you do when you book a prepaid taxi on arrival at the Soekarno Hatta airport, Jakarta or even buy a local SIM card is balk at the number of thousands thrown at you. 231,000 IDR for a trip [...]'

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Rahul Gandhi, Hazare, what next for Indian politics?

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 8/7/2012 5:13:25 PM

'A brilliant article / idea from Sadanand Dhume in the Washington Post last week is close to one’s belief that India’s strength is also its bane – democracy. But before that, a quick summary of Dhume’s proposal: Next presidential elections, the dynasty of Nehru-Gandhi be elevated to a monarchy because they are a perfect fit and [...]'

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Televsion still going ballastic on terror attacks

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 8/2/2012 5:40:36 PM

'Four, five or six … if all of them were low-intensity ones, does it matter? Yet as it was unfolding on a major arterial road in Pune, television channels were understandably in the dark far away in New Delhi. So what does Barkha Dutt does to allay the fears? Read on, as she enlists four-five experts [...]'

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The story behind Her Majesty’s jump at 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 7/28/2012 11:28:46 AM

'Like the five rings of fireworks, resembling the Olympic logo, that descended on Danny Boyle’s stage-managed opening ceremony of the 2012 London edition of the sporting extravaganza, the limelight over the next few days is on Great Britain. It is not just the athletes who will strive for the motto, ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius but England [...]'

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World Cup or Olympics: which is bigger?

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 7/28/2012 9:04:52 AM

'Just read that 204 countries participated at the London Olympics, the same number that goes into the grind for the football World Cup although 32 teams make it to the Finals. There are all sorts of numbers that proponents of the World Cup are touting about in terms of television and revenue. But Olympics for [...]'

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Weird games to have made it to the Olympics

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 7/27/2012 8:38:13 AM

'Every Olympics, the tussle for various disciplines of sport means few drop out to make way for some more. It is a tough balancing job for the IOC such that a few weird ones have slipped through. Here they are, courtesy The National newspaper from Abu Dhabi, UAE. Live pigeon shooting (1900) The only time [...]'

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Clean toilets at work? Great but they can raise a stink too

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 7/26/2012 1:29:56 PM

'It has happened with everyone of us at some point of time in life. We hear about something – it could be a word or phrase, the name of a place/song/term, etc for the first time in your life, and almost as coincidence, you hear it again; as if someone divine wanted you to follow [...]'

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What leaked Yahoo email passwords tell us?

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 7/20/2012 4:03:39 PM

'As much as security is paramount these days in this Information Age, people still can show their inclination to being of Stone Age in not adhering to the rules of setting up a password despite so many tips everywhere of having non-dictionary characters/ words in alpha-numeric combinations. Ignorance cannot be bliss here as the top [...]'

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Timing of India’s decision not right to host Pakistan cricket

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 7/17/2012 8:24:57 PM

'Sunil Gavaskar has always took issues head on, as an opener, as captain, as commentator, and as a proud Indian. And unlike the politicians, who would like to keep tangling the India-Pakistan relations for their personal benefits, Gavaskar had a clear message on the decision to revive the cricketing diplomacy. That message got lost when [...]'

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Jobs and sexy cars: do they match?

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 7/16/2012 2:21:46 PM

'I got this joke, supposedly but not at all funny, about a job worker on my BBM today: My boss pulled up in his brand new Mercedes today and I couldn’t help but admire it. ‘Nice car”, I said as he got out. “Well,” he said, noticing my admiring looks, “work hard, put the hours in, [...]'

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Everybody’s two words on a quiet Sachin Tendulkar

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 7/15/2012 8:43:27 AM

'Another one of those pieces written by pseudo-authorities of the subject Sachin Tendulkar do not deserve attention except that I know that this writer is, or was, somebody I knew to be level-headed and just curious about things. When I came across G Sampath, my former colleague’s 10 questions he wants someone to ask Tendulkar, it [...]'

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What is the purpose of a job?

Author : Kumar      Blog : BETWEEN THE LINES      Date : 6/27/2012 9:09:36 PM

'Think hard about it and ask yourself a question: Is what you are going to get (salary) enough to achieve you dreams? If the answer is a rare yes, how much time is going to take you to that end and is it worth it?'

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