Oh to be alive

Matters of the heart in every which way matter! Be it a casual hello or a nod of the head across a street or corridor or just the glint of approval or scorn in someone’s eyes: it impacts us very deeply, affecting our psyche positively or negatively. A deeper insight thus into both the workings of the head and the heart are extremely essential. There are no thumb rules or established theories that would help one to tide over the intricacies of life, but certainly a few universal and time-tested rules could be adhered to, in order to sail through happily, rather than be faced with obstacles at every turn. At the core of our daily lives are relationships, as we are a gregarious species by design and thus default. From the age of hunter gatherers to a settled and more elaborately socializing group, we are up against newer challenges every single day. Old orders are changing, increasingly being replaced by a more global perspective. Cultural lines are thinning, merging or overlapping,...

Courage in the face of sheer adversity, grit and determination when pushed to the wall; aspiring, dreaming, voicing one’s concern, all of it and more is seen from time to time in the world around us. Right from bone chilling tales of escapes from the most horrendously warped regimes, with equally perverted mindsets, to sick minds on the loose in homes, on the streets and just about anywhere, the malaise is deep set. In fact it all begins and ends with the mind.    Pain, suffering, atrocities either experienced firsthand or through another, are all examples of the so called bestial primeval instinct in man; the inhuman side, once unleashed not only devours the perpetrator over a period of time, but wreaks havoc in everything around.  In times or climes such as these, where the world has become a narrower place to live in, there are competitions of a different kind, in spite of the Thomas Friedman model of a flatter, more equal earth, there are huge and glaring disc...

Slowly ever so slowly, over the last few years it has been dying a slow and painful, though sometimes almost hilarious, death. How could death and humour go hand in hand? Strange bedfellows would be an apt way to describe it.   Change is a part of life, one is told, there has to be a passing over, the cycle must be completed, one often hears. Hence what is, wasn’t so before, what will be, is not what it is right now or what it is supposed to transform into! The situation in question is baffling, intriguing, consternation-riddling and incomprehensible, to say the least. How then, just how does one see something go before one's very own eyes? Sometimes it is a murder, sometimes it is a self-destructive, callous and very strangely egotistic suicide. Sometimes it is due to a systemic spread almost akin to a cancer, where one rogue cell finds its way slowly, but surely into almost every healthy cell, fanned by the mediocre but potently artificial diet of junk food and steroid...

Perplexed, agitated and or plain and simply hexed, he wasn't really sure. This was not the first time it was happening. He had encountered many such situations, but had come out a winner always, well nearly always. He was different indeed and he felt it to the bone. The world called him weird, but he ignored it and relentlessly went on. They often jeered; he knew they called him all kind of names. It really didn't matter to him, as he knew the blood that coursed through his veins was just as warm as theirs, was just as blue as theirs; was just as red when he bled. He’d been like this ever since he could remember. As a little boy holding on to his mom’s hand as he entered the little nursery, he walked in with a certain calmness as the other parents were overwhelmed by the surrounding pandemonium, emanating from little, almost devilish creatures, feverishly kicking and hitting or just crying their lungs out. Even as far back as then he would walk into his class and patien...

He couldn't breathe. He sat down, holding his head in his hands and letting the feeling of exhilaration just sweep him off his feet. In fact it was not so much about being swept off the feet as it was about letting the feeling sink in: The feeling that he had finally given in. He prided himself in being different from the crowd, in fact not just him; he felt his friends of both genders felt different too and why not?  They all had an extremely healthy, balanced and well, to use a cliché, a different upbringing. Thanks to that and the fact that he was a boisterous creature, with a natural knack for making friends, he had managed to keep Cupid at bay. To put it more aptly Cupid had been quite unsuccessful in afflicting him with even a single arrow, dipped in the so called potion of love. Whether he had managed to hedge the arrows, or they hadn't really been aimed his way, was a debatable point. He hadn't succumbed in school or college either and even at work though h...

It was everywhere. There was no escaping it. I had deliberately cut myself off from the world in a way and thought not reading the newspapers would help, imagined that shutting out all sources of information would perhaps make things better. Well, better is a word hard to come by of late, worse being the more ubiquitous one, when one looks at the daily scenario. So not having followed the news for a really long time, for reasons as mundane as bad reportage, slipshod follow ups, corruption and the like, I unfortunately, only came upon the horrendous Mumbai-rape case three days after it actually happened. Turmoil in heart, mind and soul is the only way to explain the feeling of unease that washed over me. Disgusted and disturbed in equal measure, I tried to follow up every little morsel of material that was being shown, aired, and written about the sickening incident to understand if this was going to in any way lead up to stricter laws as was the mood after the equally inhuman act i...

It is that time of the year yet again, where there will be the same antiquated lip service to the way the country earned freedom, long drawn speeches on how many made tremendous sacrifices and how a large of number fought to get us our basic rights, and how we wouldn’t be where we are today, but for them. Almost every word of it is true, but does that fervor really hold everyone in its sway, the way it did or the way it should, perhaps not. Is there a nationalist agenda other than hurling the choicest epithets at each other by different political parties in the name of professing an undying love for the country?  Are there any programmes or policies worth their salt (for that is where it all began) that systematically encourage the building of national character, rather than individualized fragmented short sighted goals, that only fuel the fire of divide and rule (a legacy from our erstwhile rulers). There will be yet again, symbolic respect paid at every nook and corner, whi...