Cheers, jeers, and fears
I know hundreds of cricket fans who know nothing about the technicalities of the game and yet they look forward to watching every match and also have strong favourites… and I know yet another set of hundreds of fans who talk intelligently about the game, watch every game, but have no favourites. They divide their...
Stranger
One word and yet it fills you with myriad thoughts and conclusions and extreme emotions too at times. I’ve seen people shy away from strangers, avoid them, hate them, shout at them, fearful of them, and sometimes wonder at their audacity. The word ‘stranger’ is familiar in our language and this is precisely where the...
The smiling side of life
Life smiles when we get more than we expect out of it. There is a twinkle in the eyes, the eyebrows arch like a ballerina does, the nostrils quiver with excitement and the lips seem to forget every other emotion than what we call a smile. When this happens, all the hormones in the body...
Thinking like a woman
I looked at Specky and said, ‘No, I wasn’t in a store when this happened. Not even haggling with the vegetable vendor. Nor was I buying movie tickets. And yes, not even booking a new car on the telephone.’ ‘Were you in some imaginary world then?’ asked Specky, my wife. I looked at her with...
On winning and whining
Of late I’ve observed a strange cycle of truth… the whiners have started winning. Look at our politicians and you’ll know what I mean. Look at the bureaucrats and their transfer requests and you’ll know what I mean. Look at the way the auto-wala whines away to make him win a few extra rupees in...
The revolution has not devoured itself
So they lasted for 49 days. But what are 49 days of unconventional governance compared to 66 years of entrenched corruption? And yet the social media, I find, is full of intelligent urban population proving themselves not just uninformed but also naïve and rather arrogantly stupid. Why else would they call Arvind Kejriwal the ‘item...
Pepper spray and a dialogue with God
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: ‘In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.’ This is true of men. This can be true for any human-human situation or conflict. Well, I’m not very sure if this is possible every time but we’ll examine it later. Let us examine other situations now before we go to a...
The MORONiverse
The busy-morons and the idle-morons Have a mad wisdom to what they do At dusk and during morns And at other times too. The moroniverse is vast And expanding quite fast. The babus in the offices Place file over file And then say The work will take a little while! The moroniverse is vast And...
Love her, love her, love her…
It took me more than an year to read ‘Great Expectations’… but then I was in school then and more fascinated with Bigglesworth, Gimlet, and the Famous Five. I read somewhere that this book was published as a novel in three volumes in 1861… and I said to myself, ‘Wow! No wonder it took me...
Bloggers – the online chefs
I’ve headed Corporate Communications for years and I know how expensive one print insert is. But does this mean that every insert must necessarily lead to purchase decisions? No. Every print media insert costing lakhs or av bytes on the av media will not necessarily make the sales charts sing with joy. The ad-campaign decisions...
The gang
Three is hardly worthy of being called a gang… the number gives an impression that the gang probably has a lot of expectations but no aggression. And if you go on and call them a triangle, the punch gives way to imagined thoughts that insinuate relationships with hyperventilation of emotions. But then the three that...
The ploy
‘How can he reduce tariffs?’ said the opposition. The bureaucrats too muttered some such inanity that appeared to agree with the politicians. The people were confused. Debates happened on almost all TV channels, every nukkad, and every office lunch-break. Some called it foolhardy while others just said, ‘What’s the harm if we’re getting a benefit.’...
