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...
Who said it?
Who said it? You said it. Who is ‘you’? The common man. The aam aadmi? Well, you said it. Who cares? You said it. The truth is that the common man is forever jabbering the truth. Someone hears this blabbering once in a while and some good gets done. Most of the time though this...
It’s time for B-team to command
To BE is to be in the B-team today. So it is right if a politician stings like a bee and leaves the A-team to join the B-team because BEEing there is to BE in the middle of everything. Yes, this is a time when even ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ has decided to have some...
The truth serum: Review of ‘A hundred lives for you’
If you’ve ever played that game of plucking out petals from a flower while saying ‘She loves me’ and ‘She loves me not’, you’ll know what I mean when I say that the first few pages of this book made me say ‘I’ll read it’ and ‘I’ll read it not’… and yet, I read on....
Real Time Intelligence: Review of ‘The Winner’s Curse’
Politics, political subterfuge, political nexus, political patronage, and the politics of a socio-economic drama… these will no longer remain mere words once ‘The Winner’s Curse’ by Dee Walker has been read. Yes, the book can be read fast, but then if you’re too fast you just might have to turn back a few pages and...
Reimagining our world
Politicians are forever doing this. I mean, reimagining the world. They have glorious day-dreams of cleaning up the safes of the rich and the poor, the mighty and the insignificant, the tax-payer and the cheat… they love clean safes. Even their safes in their homes are generally clean, unless the transfer to their Swiss bank...
Writing of rights: Review of ‘Talking of Justice’
Now here is an author who doesn’t flinch as she admits that she is short and that there are things that she doesn’t know about. Leila Seth writes in her book ‘Talking of Justice’: As the discussion began, I remember feeling acutely uncomfortable on stage. I am short and, seated on the chair that I...
Smile Times
Celebrations and festivities are invariably under duress these days. These are cataclysmic times and a lot of people all over the world are suffering because of one reason or the other. But is remaining glum or serious or in darkness the only ways of showing solidarity with them? I mean, what they need is more...
Ghar redefined
Yes, there is nothing like celebrating Diwali at home. I still remember everything that happened when I was a school kid. ‘Leave your novel aside right now and come here,’ shouted mummy. I dropped the P G Wodehouse that I was reading and ran into the kitchen. The sight of freshly palmed besan ke laddoo...
On Modi XI
That anchor, I’m sure, was talking of Modi Eleven And their dreams and day-dreams of a global heaven But critics, you see Say it was Xi And now DD’s credibility is down to minus seven Arvind Passey 22 September 2014
Stop building roads, Dr HarshVardhan
Dr HarshVardhan says: ‘Condoms promise safe sex, but the safest sex is through faithfulness to one’s partner. Prevention is always better than cure.’ His vision also suggests a ban for sex education in schools based on his presumption that this is one of the reasons for the increase in sex-related crimes in India. We have...
