India, May 6 -- By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam

I discovered my gift for satire entirely by accident, the way most useful things in life are discovered. I wrote something in my college days about a particularly pompous professor who delivered forty-minute lectures on the virtue of brevity. My classmates laughed. The professor did not.

I immediately understood that I had found my calling but did nothing about it till I started working in the government. This was the time I felt that I needed to tell the world reflections of my experiences without hurting anyone's sentiments, but with a bit of learning thrown in.

Being a satirist is, at its core, a service profession. You look at the world with one eyebrow raised, which is a more sustainable p...