Of bloggers and blunders
God in his infinite wisdom decided to place bloggers and blunders only a vowel away from each other in the dictionary. You don’t think there is anything in this that needs to be taken seriously… right? You feel this is simply another chronology coincidence that I have stumbled upon and that, like the media, I...
The inaudible language of the heart
This morning as I sat in front of the television watching the telecast of the Republic Day parade on Rajpath, I found it as engrossing as the best film I have ever watched. I was literally glued to my chair and even sat upright in ‘savdhan baith’ (at attention) position as the National Anthem was...
Jordan: Where is my donkey?
I’m sure you’ve met a lot of donkeys and some of you will say, ‘Well, there are donkeys and then there are mules. But they’re all asses, aren’t they?’ All I can say is that I am yet to meet a smarter donkey than this Jordanian one who managed to teach me a lot about...
The fine art of finding something you weren’t looking for
This is an everyday occurrence with me. I find things in the book-shelf, almirah, cupboard, and even on my study table that I am not really looking for now but remember that when I had wanted them they were not to be found anywhere. So I have speeded from desperation to nonchalance in a blink...
The nation wants to know
Don’t you worry, I am not going to make this post a political flumadiddle because it isn’t going to mention what Pappu did recently or where Feku is right now (though we know they’re both getting acquainted with the textual details of French wines). So what else is there that the nation actually wants to...
Navigating through defaced history and culture
Our monuments, gardens, streets, walls, and even books in libraries have one thing in common. They are all defaced. I remember it was a pain navigating my way through a garden without touching a tree where a heart or some name wasn’t etched. It is the same story with walls of houses, inside parking lots,...
Music speaks louder than words
It was Friedrich Nietzsche who wrote that ‘without music, life would be a mistake’. Leo Tolstoy called music the ‘shorthand of emotion’. Beethoven thought it was a ‘mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life’ and Missy Elliott was content to declare that it must necessarily ‘be your escape’. To me all these definitions sound...
Only creativity is infinite
‘Life is short, youth is finite, and opportunities endless,’ wrote Justin Rosenstein and I agree with him because I have seen that the human brain loves interacting with the endless flow of chances. A chance to succeed or a chance to reach out to fulfilment forms the main ingredient of every small or big race...
When imagination became Jotunheim
Jotunheim is not a city. It is a word from Scandinavian mythology and refers to the outer world or the realm of giants. The word has an interesting Germanic conceptual explanation and mentions innangard or something that is ‘inside the fence’ where existence is orderly and law-abiding and at the other end is the utangard...
An emotional acre on the road
An emotional acre on the road – Zica review A car isn’t just a car but attempts to be an emotional bond. A relationship. It tries to be a drivable emotional acre on the road. Every time. Each of them. Some succeed and some do not. This is so much like any of our...
Standing with people, not above them
What is strange about this man is that everyone feels he or she has met him… and possibly connects with him on some issue or the other. I met him on the 13th of May, 2013 and was with him much beyond the scheduled thirty minute drive from Jantar Mantar to Hauz Khas village in...
Snacksgiving
‘Come on, help me solve this complex Sudoku grid,’ said my eighty-year old neighbour and I stepped out of the lift after my noon-walk and walked towards my apartment. I am a writer and am generally at home and this is what puzzles all the young and old in my block who don’t seem to...
