My Quora Content

Although the content, the answers and the blog posts do not show up on search results in Quora, they are all still there and can be accessed via this link. No search function unfortunately.

https://www.quora.com/profile/Vinay-Kumaran/all_posts

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Do clothes make a man?

I've often been told by my wife that I should take more care of my appearance. I'm notorious for turning up for conferences wearing sandals and bush shirts. Of course, I like to dress for comfort rather than to impress people but there is some long term thinking behind the attitude. My Uncle, Prabhakar Menon, took the Civil Services exams twice in the late 1960s. The first time, his rank was 13 or thereabouts, apparently missing the IFS (foreign services) by one rank. Instead of taking an IAS (adminstrative services) seat, he decided to decline and try again the next year. In an account of the exam by someone else, I read 'I was surprised to see Prabhakar Menon turn up for the interview in a bush shirt. I knew he had qualified for the IAS last year.' Formal attire was nearly a requirement for these interviews. Why did he turn up in informal clothes? I can think of some reasons. He may have done well enough in the exam that he was confident that he would do well regard
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What is a mentor?

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This is from an invited post I wrote on the Facebook group 'Learning General Surgery'. During my residency at Maulana Azad Medical College, I was initially assigned to the unit of the head of the department, Dr TK Malik. The less said about that part of my residency, the better. However, I did have good second and third year residents from whom I learnt how to look after patients. Halfway through my second year, Dr Malik retired and a new unit was created with two Consultants, Dr  Vinod Malik  and Dr  Ram Kaza . Being the most junior unit at the time, they had the Saturday emergency and were always short of staff. For a considerable period of time, there were no third year PGs, no first year PGs and no regular Senior Residents. There were, however, two second year PGs,  Brundaban Nahak  and me. Dr  Vinod Malik  and Dr  Ram Kaza  were gentle bosses, allowing us to figure out how to keep the day to day running of the unit going, putting up with the occasional bizarre things
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More Ruminations on Religion

I was talking to one of my fellows the other day. There was a discussion about dietary restrictions. He was surprised to hear that I have no religious affiliation and no dietary restrictions. He was under the impression that most Indians are Hindus and vegetarian. He told me that most Japanese people do not have a religious affiliation which, in turn, surprised me. My only visit to Japan was to Kyoto and most of the 'places to see' there seemed to be Buddhist temples. In any case, my thoughts turned to the manifest fact that much of the irrational human behavior of the modern age seems to be rooted in religion. Objections to abortion and stem cell research in the US, the fact that nobody from a minority religion or without religious affiliation has ever been elected to a major leadership position here, the conflicts between India and Pakistan, the middle east situation, Israel and the Arabic countries, the list goes on. In history too, some of the greatest crimes committed by
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