Love, Life and Happiness

Blasts Which Killed 256 People (Courtesy: Huffpost) It has been a longish week. Every week is the same, seven days, but some weeks have more than a fair share of events which demands your attention. This week was such. These are the weeks which decide what we will emerge as on the other end of the time. This week, we learned much about Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, brother of fugitive, Tiger Memon- Key operative behind the 1993 Mumbai Serial Bomb Blasts. The media went into tizzy with the announcement of Maharashtra Government’s Announcement of death sentence to Yakub Memon, scheduled for 30 th of July, 2015, at 700 hours, post dismissal of his curative petition on June, 21 st .  As the channels planned for a walk towards gallows kind of programming, to much of their satisfaction, suddenly they had something better to debate and discuss. Nobody would have expected support to pore in from places of eminence, like retired jurists and artists for the man convicted of planning

The Unsuspecting Casualties of War- Courtesy: Getty Images All the Light We Cannot See- Amazon Link Author: Anthony Doerr Publisher: Fourth Estate Published: 2014 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction It is a matter of sheer coincidence that I found two books written by authors from 21 st century about the worst wars in the last century. The first one was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak ( My review of The Book Thief- Click Here to read ) . I was worried if it was too much of similarity for the book to be able to hold my interest, after one has read the beautiful account of the second world-war in The Book Thief . But then perspective is what any author worth his salt can bring to his version of the story. The writer sits perched on a vantage point from where he watches the events of history and interprets them for us, the readers. The place from where he looks at the events makes the book or breaks it. While Markus Zusak and Anthony Doerr both s

"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer the problems of spirit. There is only one question- when will I be blown up ?" Said Faulkner in his Nobel prize acceptance speech.  As the news of deads in now infamous Vyapam scam float over the unfeeling television screen, the pronouncements made by the famed author seems truer than ever. The number of deads vary between 27 and 45. Some channels have even started counting hapless people who where selected through the process of Professional Examination Board of the state of Madhya Pradesh as casualties of the scam. There, of course is no logic to it. But then sensationalism overwhelms the logic. Deads make a good story, and more the number the better the story is.  27 however is in no way less ghastly than 45, especially when most died soon after getting linked to the scam, either as a witness or victim. What is most tragic is th