Our yellow-infused blind travel date
‘I think I’ll pack this yellow khadi suit,’ said Specky, my wife, ‘will be absolutely cool and go well with the blue skies in Goa.’ I smiled because this was the fifth yellow to go into her bag after yellow silk jootis, yellow cotton cap, her notebook with a textured yellow cover, and a pen...
The great Indian festival
I was once asked to describe a festival. I thought for a while, and then replied, ‘Shopping!’ ‘What? Shopping?’ said this friend and raised a questioning brow. ‘Festivals are all about joy,’ I said, ‘they are as much about sharing as they are about buying. There is a lot of happiness being given and accepted....
AI-infused robots as siblings vs adopting an orphan
Note: #SiblingStories is a blogging train hosted by Ila Varma in collaboration with the Brand Ang Tatva. Thirty esteemed bloggers from blogging fraternity have joined hands to participate in the Blog train for #SiblingTalk reviving the sweet and tickling hours spent with loving siblings and revive golden memories of the past. This post is written...
Lufthansa in Malgudi
‘Who’re you?’ I asked. This kid had appeared suddenly from nowhere and was smiling impishly. He said, ‘Swami. My grandmother calls me Sami.’ ‘Hey! Aren’t you pretending to be that character from Malgudi Days?’ I ask, suddenly remembering that book I had read decades ago, ‘And if you really are that Swami, you’d know where...
Jump into the pool, dammit!
Seeing something bad happen and me learning a lesson was never a part of my destiny. In fact I can safely hazard a guess that most people are like me. We love watching, tut-tutting, discussing the importance of doing things the right way… and then going ahead and doing the same thing that had got...
Love appears unannounced
A poem that I wrote in 1984 was all about a few moments together that I spent with the girl who would get to hear them only after we got married a few months later in 1985. isn’t it funny how just a nod or simply a few words mumbled will form an unseen bond...
Unveiling inspiration
Converting a weakness into a strength is what #inspiration is all about. Other elements like hard-work, focus, involved approach, and research can play a role in strange and unexpected ways. Let me give a few examples. There is a story about a boy who had lost his left arm in an accident. He remained shattered...
There is more to games than shooting alien spaceships
If you’re the sort who thinks a game played on the laptop or your handheld device is a waste of time or you link VR with another expensive and time-consuming entertainment for spare time or you believe that AI is only for those who have an interest in robotics, you have no idea how fast...
Life is cool in Delhi, Mr Modi
Newspaper reports live in their own world of make-belief but once in a while they tend to hit upon some conclusion that stays steady from one decade to another, from one generation to the other… and one such conclusion that most renowned editors have never divorced is that the top leadership in the country has...
The LGBTQ war isn’t over
Politicians have never been kind to homosexuality. Not that the society in general and our religious and cultural leaders have been kinder. Known and active politicians like Subramanium Swamy, Yogi Adityanath, Gulam Nabi Azad, Rajnath Singh, Lalu prasad Yadav, have called it unnatural, and a mental disease with a ‘need for psychological treatment’, have emphasized...
Political comedy is a show that never ends
Indian politicians are either smart or street-smart and they assume that whatever they say will finally get them votes when the time comes. I use the word ‘assume’ because more often than not these politicians speak things that lie somewhere between being utterly dumb to being absolutely unsavory. When we are in a charitable mood...
There is no silence
There is no silence. Not when you hold your lover’s hands and look into her eyes, for these are moments when you can hear your heartbeat distinctly. Not when you are trekking on a mountain and there is no one around with music blaring from some Bluetooth speaker because you can still hear a distant...
