Careful (or maybe not) in Srinagar

Being in Srinagar is a strange feeling, or perhaps I should say a strange mix of feelings.
On the one hand, there’s the very visible presence of the Army, or the alphabet of armed forces (CRPF, BSF, RR, whatever). You see soldiers everywhere, all with guns, you see barbed wire and bunkers with tiny slits [...]

I Know Why She Stared

Poverty once more… there are ways and ways in which it comes up and taps you on the shoulder. The ethics bit I wrote about before is one aspect. Tell you what, I’ll tell you two more stories that left me lost in thoughts, not all of them printable.
Kids on Bombay’s suburban trains who sweep [...]

Your Principles, My Food

Poverty is widespread in India, and has all kinds of effects on the country. Saying this is no great insight of course, nor am I going to start rattling off some dreary list of the obvious fallouts of poverty.
What I am going to do here is touch on one intriguing side-effect of poverty in this [...]

I Don’t Care, I’m Agnostic

One dictionary defines an agnostic as “a person who holds that the ultimate cause (God) and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable.” That is, an agnostic is somebody who does not know whether God exists. And really, he doesn’t much care anyway.
Now not being either a believer or a non-believer is one [...]

The Class of ‘74 Bra Flinging Story

Now that I’ve got your attention…
Not long ago, I met some old school mates IRL. To familiar and mostly male groans of sorrow and frustration, one of the women, I’ll call her Divya, reminded us of the bra flinging story. When the groans died down, she turned on me. Insisted I write it up.
“You’re the [...]

The biryani‘ll get you

Wedding last night. Daughter of a friend, we all call him Munna. The festivities happened in a long marriage hall in a warren of crowded lanes filled with rusting bikes, crumbling taxis, empty once-factories and simply crammed with people, so much so that I couldn’t understand how our taxi driver made his way through it [...]

Blood sport

Am I getting this right? Bush and his Republicans are actually tearing at John Kerry because he didn’t suffer enough in Vietnam? Master Bob Dole actually pooh-poohed Kerry’s decorations because he didn’t bleed enough? Master George Bush actually said that it wasn’t a bullet that wounded Kerry, only shrapnel, and thus it couldn’t have been [...]

Bhar lo pani

Ae mere watan ke logon, zara aankh mein bhar lo pani;
Jo shaheed hue hain unki, zara yaad karo qurbani.
Crude translation:
Oh my countrymen and -women, please fill your eyes with tears;
Please remember the sacrifices of those who became martyrs [to win
freedom].
It’s one of those classic patriotic songs. You hear it played everywhere around August 15 [...]