DK Kapila The Oracle

  30th was Eerie ! 31st better ! 2025 will be much better ! Dinesh K Kapila (CGM (Retd). NABARD) On 30th December evening I stepped out of the house. The day had been very cold. A cold wind blew in from the hills, the sun was determined not to be seen and the ground was still wet from the recent rains. During the day I had stepped out for a short stroll, hardly any kids were to be seen in the neighbourhood parks. Strange as it was the holiday season and kids just love to be out of the houses, the mom’s would have issued diktats to stay in. Well, I stepped out on the 30th evening and found myself on a deserted road. It’s quite a long stretch and not a soul to be seen. Slightly foggy, the roads and houses seemed lightly draped in a gentle wispy layer, as a car went past with fogged up windows. I was all geared up including wearing my Himachali cap. I normally prefer my beret but this year I realised even after gifting away a few I had a sizeable number of such caps. Plus berets tend ...

  Water. Dr SS Grewal. Mrs Ritu Singal. Water gives life. The Morni Hills in Panchkula District can be dry in summer. Denudation, population pressure and people from the plains building houses there plus of course climate change are all factors. And partly geographical as the plates move. Dr SS Grewal, the accomplished soil scientist, who has devoted a life time to water, water for farming, heads the NGO SPACE, post retirement, pushing 73 pls years, he stays committed. Not only here but in the Arravalis too. More about him later. We had teamed up to take up projects on water conveyance and water storage systems in Morni Hils. Funds were to be sourced from CSR funding. Well we got nowhere !! Then we reduced the size of funding required but still found no takers, some businessmen wanted the two of us to convince a couple of youngsters on their CSR Team who had no clue about such work. Then Mrs Ritu Singal stepped in. She is the Chairperson cum Managing Director Raglan Group and Winne...

 My TMT (Treadmill Test). Dinesh K Kapila This was a few days back. It was not easy. A few of us drove down to Morni Hills for a CSR Funded project. Sad to say even today the small hamlets of Morni Hills, scenic, maximum height around 4500 feet, are connected by stony tracks and cemented pathways plus even narrow winding steep paths. There were a few of us, Dr SS Grewal, Soil Scientist and committed water man, Mrs Ritu Singal, Industrialist and committed to social   causes and her daughter, and me, the retired wandering soul looking for a cause. Then the farmers and animators were there and Hakikat from Mrs Singal’s office.   We reached the nearest somewhat initially steep stony track at village Daman, the taxi driver saw it and figuratively wet his trousers. So we decided to walk it, we requested Mrs Singal to drive down in her large SUV, but she chose to walk down with us.   It was an easy walk though the stones did not make it easy. Then of course we had a w...

 Engineering !  A Chain of Thoughts on Vishwakarma Day ! Dinesh K Kapila Vishwakarma Puja is celebrated in Punjab after Diwali. Unlike other states where it is around August or September. Vishwakarma Puja is a festival that honors the birth anniversary of Bhagwan Vishwakarma, the god of creation and architecture. It is a day to celebrate craftsmanship, creativity, and skilled labor. In Durgapur, at the Durgapur Steel Plant of SAIL, where I started my career in 1983, we used to welcome this festival as it meant the hot headed trade unions would cool down and spare us the gheraos (surrounding us and shouting slogans and not even getting to go to the loo at times) and bandhs and cribbing about overtime or acting promotions for the leave reserve or just about the food. Maybe the hot months contributed to taking some time off for trade union activities! But once Vishwakarma Puja was upon us, we could look forward to comparative days of serenity as then it would lead upto Durga Puj...

  The Teacher has ten Avtars now ! Honestly ! Dinesh K Kapila The profession of teachers, specially in private schools a female oriented profession. Once upon a time comparatively stress free, reasonably paying and accorded a degree of respect and recognition by society. Well times evolve. Me, I am miles away from anything and everything but somehow land up knowing something. Then writing something. Its fun to meet teachers from the newly established private schools, these schools are slick, smart, well packaged and ranging all the way from just about passable to the well heeled, catering to the just about have’s to the really full to the brim ! One commonality is striking, the teacher and her roles. Its expanding formally and informally. As one middle aged lady put it, I on being introduced asked her what do you do, and she smiled and asked you really want to know. Then she smiled as she went on to list – hold your breath – model, artist, dancer, sports, coach, counsellor, ...

  Wars and Compassion at Ground Zero by Dinesh K Kapila   (Note - As related By Major General PK Batra, AVSM (Retd).   45 Cavalry) General Batra and my late father, Major General Rajendra Nath, PVSM (Retd) go back a long way. Their bonds were forged in the din of bitterly fought battles in Bangladesh in 1971, where Dad Commanded 62 Mountain Brigade and then Major PK Batra commanded the A Squadron of 45 Cavalry. About these bonds I will write separately. And their battles. This story, well, it’s different. It’s from Another War. 1965. And touched my heart. It really did.   Where do I come in, well, I got connected with Major General PK Batra over the years as I deem it an honour to be connected to my father’s comrades in arms.     Wars are not only about death, bullets and blood and guts but also acts of caring and compassion. A barbed fencing or a wall can only create a superficial barrier but can not run through the hearts of people who were part of ...

  Training my Pencil and Persevering ! Dinesh Kumar Kapila I am at my wits end while repeatedly training my pencil. It just does not want to learn. Try as I might, With patience. Diligently. It’s as  though it is telling me, you damn human,  go take a walk. The pencil, a very humble writing  instrument, well, I and the pencil have a rather chequered history. Mostly the pencil, in it’s real humble avatar, has notched up more victories in this battle of attrition. Here I am really discussing the Apple pencil, its been tough going, as I scribble away on my iPad. Then I just cannot make out what the words are, my thoughts and words are at a 180 degrees to the actual words on the IPad.  The Pencil has guts, it’s adamant, it just refuses to even adapt. Its stressful and really annoying. And confusing. Junior, Prashant,  an Advocate, uses his pencil and Ipad with ridiculous ease and motivated me to opt for this productivity tool. Now Junior’s hand writing is...

  The Concept of Fungibility through a Very Short Story !! By Dinesh K Kapila I was asked about this recently. On a social media platform for professionals. By a young lady who had just completed her BTech and was preparing for an examination. I just gave a standard sort of answer but found a few others added their bit. It was also like the concept of fungibility was now evolving. And NFTs were in and what was not. We just did not get into the practical side of it. A finer understanding would come from that only. Simply put, Fungible assets are interchangeable, Fungibility refers to the ability of an asset or good to be interchanged with other assets or goods of the same type. Fungibility implies the same value between assets, as a result, fungible assets simplify the trade and exchange process. Fungibility is the idea that units of money are interchangeable and can be substituted for one another. It's a key principle in economics and is based on the assumption that the value of...

  Secrets are they Really Secrets Dinesh K Kapila   What is a secret. Something that is not or must not be known by other people , covert, stealthy, furtive, clandestine, surreptitious, underhanded, mean done without attracting observation.  secret  implies concealment. This is precisely the problem in our day to day lives and even otherwise, the moment you say an issue or subject is a secret, ears are up, people cannot digest food until and unless they know what is the secret. In any office, just put a paper onto a file and write secret and all hell breaks lose in the mind and heart. Gossip, the fuel of offices, the informal communication circuits, are very powerful.   Then as the wisdom goes, “ Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead ". Jealousies, insecurities, a fight and the anger about it kept well hidden,   a simple plain inability to hold it in,   to just have an urge talk without thinking, all contribute to the secret being a ...