July 01, 2024

Dear Friends                                              

Another round of random reflections for your perusal:

1. Traveling by road in Uganda is a unique experience. Having covered nearly 800 kms by road over a week, we never heard the honk even once. Everyone follows traffic rules. Interesting that there are petrol pumps every mile or so, each owned by a local company. And, every street corner in every town, men on motorcycles are waiting to provide much needed and inexpensive transport, in the absence of any public services.
2. When day temperatures hover around 50°C for 5-6 weeks, walls of buildings (made from concrete) become ovens. Much of this past month, many countries experienced very high temperatures, breaking past records. When rains did come to cool down, it poured with such vengeance that flooding occurred in so many towns. Modern construction does not fit with local weather, thereby causing enormous hardships in the face of climate changes.
3. Nile is the longest river in the world (at 6650 kms) and its source is a spring in lake Victoria in Jinja, Uganda. This lake (named after the British monarch Queen Victoria) is the largest fresh water lake on the African continent. Meaning ‘flat rocks’ in local language, Jinja became a trading town at the turn of 20^th century when British colonial rule set up East African railways. When indentured labour from Indian sub-continent was recruited to construct the railways, Gujarati businessmen arrived in Jinja as well. Descendants of those early arrivals own most business in Jinja today.
4. June 29 is celebrated as National Statistics Day in India. Derived from Latin word ‘status’, it originally referred to data collected to help kings make decisions about land revenue and military. Despite much progress in computerization of statistics, its purposes seem to have remained unchanged……modern day rulers, tycoons and money-bags wanting to predict and control human behaviour. Now a fine art, small samples are drawn to count a phenomenon and then generalize findings for the whole ‘universe’ (of populations), many a times resulting in serious ‘poll’ errors!
5. When the whole world and all Indians were watching the ‘finals’ in Ahmedabad, the loss at cricket world cup last November was heart-breaking. When not many were watching (in person) in Barbados, the victory by same Indian team in world cup finals was euphoric. Many critiques were offered after the loss; victory showers washed them all away (even though same critiques remain valid). Is winning everything?

Stay well, sincerely

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