Coming late to controversy

In my usual spaced-out and self-centred way, I appear to have missed out on a blogwar-of-sorts about the IIT-JEE. Usually, I would’ve shrugged and moved on, but this war was about gender bias in the JEE! You can’t expect me to resist that! The fact that this is actually being discussed gives me this huge [...]

Read Full Post »

Privacy

Aa okka vishayam meeda kada, nannu lokuvaga choostunnaavu. Aa okka daanito nenu neeku lokuvai poyaanu. Anduke kadara nannu ila treat chestunnavu…
Interspersed with sobs and in a suitably tearful tone of voice. Overheard on the road home. A girl, perhaps a few years younger than me, standing on the roadside, and crying into a mobile phone.
She’d [...]

Read Full Post »

Pearls of wisdom – 1

“Service should be inspired not by servitude, but by concern and consideration”
Cool insight from last night’s pankti bhojanalu, with traditional food vaddinchufied by an extremely enthusiastic and affectionate bunch of kids.

Read Full Post »

Provoked

Saw it in Hindi, in Nagpur, in a more-than-half-empty hall, at midnight.
The problem with Hindi-dubbed movies is that you’re automatically translating into English in your head when a dialogue is spoken, so when you can’t get an idiomatic translation immediately, your mind is occupied with wondering what it is, rather than what is happening on [...]

Read Full Post »

Is it just me or…

…can you smell lightning too?
When the weather is going to change from dry, soul-sapping heat to a quick storm-like shower, when clouds are moving in over a blazing white sun, and the wind is revving itself up among the trees, can you smell the lightning? Does it travel up your sinuses, burning them up, searing [...]

Read Full Post »

Thirty years later (2)*

“Amma must be home”, thought Amulya, trying to remember whether she’d told her mother she would definitely be eating out, or said it was a possibility. “So it doesn’t matter. Except that Malini would be angry at how inconsiderate I am.” The thought of the bossy old lady who helped out at home made her [...]

Read Full Post »

Thirty years later

“Thanks, andi,” the Neighbour held out a large envelope. “My mother was so happy to see the photograph. We were able to get a digital copy made and printed it out for her, you see? And she is planning to get it framed. He meant a lot to her, you know.”
She took the envelope, smiling, [...]

Read Full Post »

42

Akismet is quite wonderful at keeping away spam, but it’s all rather mysterious. It claims to have caught 42 spam on this blog; I have never seen a single one of the 42.
So, the question is, what happened to all my spam?

Read Full Post »

Half a world away (1)

He closed the book, marking his place carefully with a leaf, and stretched. Stretched, he thought, as if I weren’t long enough already. Opening his eyes with a smile, he sat up against the tree he’d parked himself under, two hours ago. The morning walkers had left, and the kids hadn’t arrived yet, so this [...]

Read Full Post »