Yet Another Point of View

The first whiff of freedom after a long confinement…smells of wet earth. After almost 3 months, I stepped out of home for my routine walk at the lake. Before this viral pandemic stopped us all in our tracks and made us hunker down in the confines of our homes, I used to be a regular at the jogging track around the Mahadevapura lake.  Well, truth be said, it’s not really a jogging track, just an unpaved, narrow meandering path around the lake. But, it is like a little watering hole in the concrete jungle around us. It draws walkers and joggers of all kinds, shapes and sizes. And, to my delight, they are mostly back in Unlock 1.0! On my first day back, it gave a semblance of normalcy. Like, nothing had changed. Except the ubiquitous masks. There is the lanky old man who prefers to walk in a lungi and t-shirt. The words on his t-shirt are meant to reprimand you if you even think of smirking at his choice of attire.   They say in bold - ‘Old is Gold’. There is the Gen Z you...

This lockdown has influenced us all in unique ways. It made me do some of my favorite kind of writing….fiction.    I wrote a very short romantic thriller (Amazon Kindle e-book) titled The Saviour - Love and Danger in Pandemic Times.   This is my first e-book and I am excited to see how it fares. It’s available for free download on Kindle Unlimited . Pick up the book  here .     What's the book about?   It’s a fast-paced urban story set in today’s pandemic environment. A viral pandemic ravages the world. As death lays waste everything around the protagonists, Jahnavi and 'Doc', love doesn’t stand a chance, especially one that not many speak about. In times of pandemics, nothing acquires greater precedence than the quest for a vaccine. In the race for the vaccine, some sacrifices will have to be made. Whose will it be? And, what will the survivors be left with? Read to find out.  You'll breeze through the book in 30 minutes! That's a quick re...

Yes, I just hit 40. Sounds like I hit a tow truck.  We’ve been socially conditioned to treat it as some dead-end, or worse, a hill top. After this, it’s only downhill. The truth is its one of the most liberating milestones in your life. By 40, you are mostly wiser, professionally established, (hopefully) financially secure and personally surer about what you want in life. You are also still young enough to chase some new dreams, enjoy the fruits of your labors and reinvent yourself, if need be. Running up to my 40th birthday, I started thinking of listing out all that I had learnt in the last decades. All those years had to count for wisdom, if nothing else. Some of the below lessons, I learnt myself. Some were taught to me by others. Some will make me sound profound, others plain stupid. If some sound familiar to you, give me a shout. 1.      If you want something in life, really, really want it, go get it yourself ! If you are sitting around ...

Time Magazine apologized earlier this week to Indian-Americans for publishing an article by Joel Stein that was offensive and derogatory to the community. I agree, the article IS offensive in parts. Its like Mr Stein started out writing a humor column but somewhere midway he gave in to the strands of subconcious racism that he can't deny have woven themselves into his diatribe against the Indian onslaught in his precious New Jersey hometown. Come on, "dotheads"?!! You cant imagine you'll get away with language like that in a magazine like Time. Celebrities get flak for using politically-incorrect terms all the time. Mel Gibson was in trouble for using the 'N' word recently. Public figures are made to apologize for using the 'F' word. So, I am glad Joel Stein was required to tender an apology for using the 'D' word. Not that the apology sounds sincere to me. He says "I truly feel stomach-sick that I hurt so many people." What? He didn...

And, as if that justifies everything. As if it justifies that 12-year old Rouvan Rawla was repeatedly rebuked, harrassed, humiliated and finally caned by Principal Sunirmal Chakravarthi of Le Martinere school in Kolkata. He was caned so hard that the cane snapped in two. Worse, it broke the spirit of the boy so badly that he hung himself in his room four days later. In response to the protests and outcry, the Principal has now "apologized". He said, ""I have to admit that when I caned this boy, I made a mistake and am willing to face consequences of that. But to link the caning of this boy to his death 4-5 days later is stretching it." Really?!! Is it really such a stretch to understand the connection between a 12-year-old's fragile, impressionable psyche and the emotional trauma caused by physical and public humiliation? Hmmm, doesnt sound like rocket science to me. And the Principal is supposed to be the expert of children's education, personality de...

There's this guy who decided to focus on a bright twinkle in a dark sky. Everyday. For a thousand weekdays. I stumbled upon an online write-up in The Huffington Post on Neil Pasricha's book The Book of Awesome . He had started it as a website 1000 Awesome Things back in 2008. In each post, he writes about "one simple, universal little joy" like "snow days, bakery air, or cashiers opening up new lanes at the grocery store, the smell of rain on a hot sidewalk, and waking up and realizing it's Saturday." Most of the posts are bang-on and just about everybody, from every part of the world, could relate to them. He also peppers the post with personal vignettes and that makes them all the more endearing. They are well-written and that's probably the reason why the book works. "Awesome!" is not usually my chosen exclaimation of sheer delight, but were I to use it, what would be my top 10 instances? Its actually tough to shortlist ten, leave alone...

How does one say "India should be more generous" and also say "I can't change anti-India sentiments", both in the same breath? Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina's statement, in a most I-am-helpless-what-can-I-do manner, puzzles me. She also implied that the anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh has been festering since the 1950s. The soundbite is here . Lunch-hour conversation over Sheikh Hasina's stuttered remark brought India's relations with our other (dare I say, angrier) neighbor to the table. Someone mentioned the recently launched The Times of India initiative Aman ki Aasha . Its hogwash, he said. The anti-India sentiment in Pakistan is so deeply embedded that its not going to change for several generations to come. So, let me get this right. Because you believe that your neighbor hates you from the core of his being, you are never going to do anything about the situation. Never take any initiative, never try to understand, never make overtures or for...