What I Learned

Let me start with a disclaimer that I am not an expert in Banking or Finance. In fact, as my family and some of my friends know, I am pretty bad at handing and managing money. Having admitted that, while thinking about subprime crisis and reading about ponzi schemes and loan defaults by some of the well known so-called Indian industrialists, I started wondering if the idea of lending and borrowing and the greed is the root cause of all this evil. Being a hardcore Hindu, the best thing I like about Islam, is the principle that lending and borrowing for interest are sins! Perfect! I think at least half the financial troubles in the world may disappear if just this one rule is put in place. If not complete ban at least there has to be a ceiling on the amount that can be borrowed or lent, to help in case of emergencies, and education for deserving student. Below are some of the consequences I could think of, of such a move. Farmers in India may stop committing suicide be...

Today while studying geography, my son, Om asked me about Earth’s orbit around the Sun, the distance earth travels around the sun in a year. I didn't remember it and hence I searched on Google and read it on Wikipedia within a few seconds (many thanks to the Internet, the Web, Google and Wikipedia, and to the people who created these technologies and sites – this would have easily taken me at least over an hour without these to buy/find a book and read the information). The answer is … hold your breath, the Earth rotates around the Sun at the speed of 30 Kms/second (1800 KMs/hour) to cover a distance of about 946,080,000 KMs in a year, while rotating around its own axis at 25 KM/second (1500 KMs/hour)! ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_orbit ). Now I know why they say, fact is stranger than fiction! Facts are anytime more surprising, fascinating, amazing than fiction. Who needs fiction to get amused? And this is just one example! The world is full of such astonish...