A playfield called CSR
A playfield called CSR This happened ten years ago when I was heading corporate communications for a company and CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility was slowly attempting to penetrate our plans. The CEO said, ‘We need to project the company as environment friendly.’ The suggestions that followed included giving away hundreds of saplings during events...
Ration the potions with notions of nation
Ruckus. Babble. Chaos. Irreverence. Arrogance. Protest. Bullying. Questions. All this and more happens every time the nation starts defining any concept… it could be anything stretching from nationalism to terrorism. All that one never really sees are solutions, answers, a convergence of ideas, and an acceptance of dissent. All that is never there are people...
That’s how stories happen
I tried rubbing the edge of my study table, whispering, ‘Appear, my lovely story. Appear!’ It didn’t. I tried this with the walls in my home, with trees in the park, and once even slyly tried rubbing the end of the shawl of a woman I didn’t know at all. Nothing happened. No story appeared...
The Nation Needs to go Hybrid
I’m part human There is hardly anything that exists as a single entity… look at what we study in the university and you’ll know why adding mathematics to even economics makes sense or why reading science gives a student of literature that edge. Petrol and diesel vehicles say namaskar to CNG, capsules encourage different...
Breaking up cosy cartels
Discussing politics fills us with enthusiasm… and so this is all that we can hear in buses, on kerbsides, in shops and offices, in homes, on the television, on radio, in colleges, and I sometimes suspect, even in the mushy conversations of lovers in some park. But there is another truth that must accompany this...
The Presstitutes and the Poltitutes
A few of them seek to regale you for a fee and give you what you desire to see, hear or read. Others just want to accompany you on sensual trips of exploration all over the world. They have the power to reduce every upheaval of excited turmoil into exclamations, sighs, and groans. ‘Read between...
HOLI goes way beyond the legends linked to it
If legends make a festival interesting, it is a contemporary interpretation of festivities that makes it so hard to forget! Holi is one festival that goes way beyond the legends linked to it and has formed its own identity. I remember when I was in school I was mortally afraid of colours and so during...
HOLI has more than one legend linked to it
Ask anyone from India about Holi and the answer will be, ‘Colours. More colours. Wet colours. Dry colours.’ There will be the other elements that form the festival revealing slowly only later, after the enthusiastic orgasmic intonation of colours is over and done with. So yes, there is more to Holi than just colours. There...
Imagination is Dangerous and Combustible
‘That’s incorrect,’ said an editor and I had to remind him of the reason why David Davidar had to be fired in 2010. In every relationship there will be two people imagining different outcomes and it is the friction between two wonderfully abstract thoughts that invariably results in a conflagration that tickles reporters and lay...
Flog the micro-blogger
Yeah! The easiest thing to do on the social media and even the offline world is to flog the micro-blogger. It is so easy to say, ‘These 140 character creators are good for nothing dolts.’ People who tweet know that there is more truth carried in their precision than even a 1000 word edit in...
