Love, Life and Happiness

Winters are lovely times. There is nothing as magical as the snuggle in a jaipuri blanket with your little one. It is difficult to get out of the blanket in Delhi winter, even to watch the tempting television debates, with most articulate aggression one can get. The sun is mild, and the green in the neighbourhood park looks fresh as a child. Days are not yet unkind, though chill has made appearance in the dawn. The most agonising part of the winters is the mornings when the kids have to be readied for school, which Nonu dutifully misses at least three days in a week, much to the chagrin of her mother. I, as silent co-conspirator to this, on account of my own sloth and my distaste to what appears to me as unnecessary torture to the little one in the name of organised education, cooperate in her staying at home oftentimes. In fact, had a discussion with her mother today on this, and when I contested, stating the I could even sail through my engineering with shaky attendances, and in th

Last week, barely a week after my Office trip to Thailand, I was again put on a flight to Chennai. Dutifully carrying my Kindle, this time I had firmed up in my mind to do some reading on the three hour long flight. I did what I had resolved to immersed in lovely Autobiography of Mark Twain. I must confess, I had never hitherto read Twain, some scared of his dry, serious kind of image which comes out in his pictures. But I was surely in for a pleasant surprise, as I floated in the amazing world of one of the most witty and picturesque, if I may use the term for the great verbal imagery created by the great author, memoir I have ever read. This post is not a book review, however, ( that sure will come, in week or so, once the book is finished); not prompted by the great literature of the great author. This post rather celebrates Twain as a father, a man whose immense love for his daughter flows through the greatness of thought which forms this book. For a great portion of the first pa

A girl of Twenty One, Shaheen Dhada, writes on the Facebook post regretting the bandh on the death of Bala Saheb Thackarey. She, prefacing her status with due apologies, mentions that people have closed their shops and establishment out of fear not out of respect, which every one would know, could be true for great many people, late leader's stature and following notwithstanding. It may also be not true, merely an assumption by a young mind. Nothing criminal with that, so any sensible person would have thought. Suddenly things change, Local Shiv Sena leader files a complaint and an unusually enthusiatic Maharashtra Police swings into action. With great alacrity, not seen ever in the cases of corruption (they did fail to notice the fourteen floors of illegally constructed Adarsh Society)arrests not only the girl who posted this, but one, rare, uniquely unlucky friend of hers, who liked the status on Facebook.  IG police, Deven Bharti, calls it a minor aberration, citing an e

Another Diwali passes by. Having celebrated it in Delhi, in the memory of propriety which has long since lost relevance. Known to all, Diwali is celebrated to mark the return of the great, upright king of Awadh, after his fourteen years in the woods. I am not sure in today's world with life expectancy of sixty years or so, this story serves  more to persuade people to pursue the path of high morality, or deter them from it, well, fourteen years in the prime of your life in the woods, not much to show for the idealism. I do not think people celebrating your correctness centuries later will ever make up for the lost years.  ,. That said, these mythological stories, serves as a moral peg on which one can measure oneself. They also consigns a sense of hope in otherwise hopeless world, just as crucification of Jesus in early thirties (or is it late twenties, not a lot of difference anyways) does. If it were not for these lofty ideals held together by mesmerising tales, the world

The newspaper headline screams at me - a leading school faces the issue of child molestation in Noida, so close to the national capital.                                         I sit next to the newspaper, horrified,terrified petrified, dumb-founded.  The kids are close to three and half year, pre-nursery, much below the Khap prescribed marrying age. Where do we hide those kids, tell us, our honourable (they insist being addressed thus, else they call it infringement of parliamentary  privileges, notwithstanding their  behaviour in the parliament). leaders,  "pray, do tell me,  Is there any one concerned?" I cradle my child in my arms, hold her so close to my heart, that no one and nothing may pierce through the impenetrable circle of my embrace to reach her. She looks up at me with those dove like eyes, not understanding me any bit.  Suddenly, the winter morning is no longer pleasant not even in Delhi, and I leave for work, with worries hanging over my head.  We c

Most people live the live of quiet desperation, so said James Joyce, though some say he didn't. But that originator of the wise quote is immaterial; what is truly important, is that in the winter of 2011, In a sudden urge to try to re-claim my old self, I sat myself down to write together essays on various thoughts which occupy my mind, thoughts which have been floating across my mind, like clouds on a faintly clearer sky. Add caption I used to be pretty good with words when I would write the poems of longing when as a young man, as any young man of that age and time would, with future more or less certain with an engineering degree in sight (the great middle class dream so well lampooned by many including Chetan Bhagat), was most likely to do; that is, looking for love. This was later followed up by a courtship running though more than six years or so, mostly through semi-poetical love letters written to the love sought and received in the person of my then girlfriend and

Some writers are blessed with a great skill of verbal imagery. Ravi Subramanian is one such author. He does not need a large number of pages to reach where he wants you to go, a page or two will carry enough flow, impact and imagery to transport you to Angola. The web of blood diamonds, illegal arms transaction, forms the backdrop of this fiction, while the main story plays around in the corporate confines of banking industry, an area which the author knows well about, amply demonstrated in his earlier books, "The Devil in the Pinstripes" and "If God was a Banker". In his fourth book, Ravi sticks to the world of banking, which is a good thing.   Being from the same industry, he understands the nuances of the industry, various pushes and pulls under which very human feelings get to play in the industry. Though most corporate and their people, who at times are termed as corporate warriors, and aptly so, face the similar lures and threats as the characters of the st

I turned on the television after quite some time today evening. A heated debate was on all channels, with eloquent speakers shooting verbal arrows in all directions, as a shy and almost embarrassed of being there in the midst of those eloquent greater minds, sat Ravi Srinivasan.  The man has just returned after a jail visit, though without media  glare of the kind which accompanied Anna Hazare or say, Anis Trivedi, the cartoonist who got arrested very recently, in face of great national outrage. But that did not deter our kingly politicians from today arresting a man, a mango man, which Mr. Vadra looks down at with a very open disdain, notwithstanding the fact that he traces his origin to the same nameless human mass, which feels happy to be part of a nation bigger than individual  merely  by paying taxes. The remorselessness of corruption is in your face, and the disdain for law is complete. The brazenness of rulers start from where the selfish interests begins. Corruption of the