One of the many things that I have inherited from my father is the ability to weave impossibly incredible tales. Simple as it might sound, it takes limitless faith that anything is possible, unreined imagination that will fly without boundaries and the complete lack of conscience that the poor sod listening intently at your stories has no clue that it couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Did I forget to mention that you also need to be willing to bear the consequences - I had my first experience with that when, as a six year old, I had a classroom full of students enthralled in a story on how the Red Indians are actually Indians who dug a hole deep into the earth, so deep that it crossed the whole earth, and they arrived at the other end of the world, where they discovered America - and on their way, they had to pass through hot molten lava and thats why they turned red. It was a bit unfortunate that my class teacher failed to see the humor and imagination in the tale, and decided I had to be duly punished, even though I insisted I was merely repeating one of my father’s stories and had no clue myself that it was not true - guess I was not that good at lying, after all.

Sadly for me, S now knows all too well what I know and what I don’t - and its very hard to bluff him these days. Today was one of those rare days that I almost got away with it, when I was in the mood for a discourse on the 10 different ways of governing people. I was caught out while I was in the midst of a comparative analysis of Plato’s Republic and Kautilya’s Arthashastra when it struck him that Arthashastra has been on my Amazon wish list for a long time now, and there is no way that I had read it (Ok, he insists that he knew my bluff all along, but this is my blog, ain’t it?) , which he then extrapolated to how I had never read the rest of my 9 sources too, which really isn’t true. Now that I have lost the one listener I had, where else can I vent my thoughts than on my blog..

Did you know that Xerocracy is a form of government? And that it is the rule through photocopying, in which members spread and copy their opinions and convince others, rather than through formal organizations.

Did you know that Kleptocracy, which is governance through corruption, and kleptomania, where you steal compulsively, have the same root words?

Or that Vaishali was the first Republic ever? And that the first King of Vaishali renounced his crown in the name of human rights? And this happened somewhere in the 6th century BC?

Don’t you think India might be called a gerontocracy, where the average age of the ruling population is significantly higher that than of the ruled?

Haven’t you ever wondered if demarchy, where the government is chosen at random, might just work better than democracy? If you could make a perfect random generator, perhaps you could build a perfect government?

As snobbish as it may sound, geniocracy may not be as bad as it seems? As often misinterpreted, geniocracy is not a rule by the most intelligent, but it merely says that people who form the government should be above a certain level of intelligence, usually a certain % higher than the average.Now, is that really something unreasonable to ask for?

If there was such a word as malarchy, US just might qualify for it?

Had you heard of Ajayocracy, which is a rule by people who cannot hold their drink? If that isn’t a weird way to pick your government, what is?

Governance is not such a boring topic as you might have thought, is it?