life's a kick

“Don’t teach me. Don’t try to patronize. Tell me a story so that I may learn.” Two years ago, I met a friend, a prolific reader, who happened to utter these words in a casual conversation. He was talking of an author whose style he considered rather didactic. It must have stirred something deep in me, for I remember his words, and the lesson, clearly. And so I will clothe my message in a story. A real one. The year I joined college, Delhi government woke up to the traffic chaos faced by residents of Palam and Dwarka. Then, Palam was bustling with life and business, and Dwarka had been freshly dug for the coveted metro. Property hawks were, as always, the first to milk the fattened cow, and before we knew, our modest property had become Delhi’s latest desire. Resultant – habitation in Dwarka soared; cow sheds were replaced by buildings and private vehicles zoomed on the roads hitherto dominated by buses. What the property dealers inadvertently forgot to mention was t...

“Silence is a powerful enemy of social justice.” – Amartya Sen History stands testimony to the fact, that among other things, it takes voice to staunch injustice. Whether it was Raja Ram Mohan Roy or Nelson Mandela, one person with courage has made the majority, riding on the wave of voice and words. Today, as 52 small island nations across the globe face serious survival threat owing to environmental imbalance, as 1 billion people go hungry day after day, as 13 million hectares of forest cover is erased annually, and as species get extinct sooner than the most pessimistic scientist predicted…humanity longs to hear the surge of that voice of dissent. Nature knows the best The planet bequeathed to us by nature has a history of 4 billion years. Through eons of evolution, a gurgling molten mass of material cooled off to become conducive for life. First in the form of singular cells, and later in complex forms, life broke through the chrysalis of uncertain environments, and flour...

Did I tell you I will be ok without you? Did I lead you into believing that I shall remain intact, my insides in order, even if you were not there to hold my hand every day? Did I actually ask you to leave, without forcing myself on your path? Smiling, did I tell you that physical absence didn't count where conscience is united? Was I the one to have guided you on the other hand of the fork, urging you to have faith in the beauty of our union, and the tremendous power inherent in it. Did I really possess the power to hold your gorgeous face in the cusp of my hands, your milky complexion reddened with grief, moments before we parted, saying I’ll send the kisses through the moon? You see, I’m updating my restraint diary. I’ve a feeling I’ve been doing a splendid job, managing to breathe, live, behave and love with nearly the same panache. No, it’s not sadness. I do remember your single-minded desire for me to be happy, and so I settle for a state of be...

“Don’t throw it outside. Because there is no outside.” The statement above, taken from an award winning campaign against littering, bespeaks the fact that this shared planet is everybody’s home, and hence, everybody’s responsibility too. Cleanliness is next only to Godliness, is a proverb we’ve all heard in school, and in this essay, I shall try to understand and explain its multifarious facets. The topic of cleanliness reminds me of an anecdote narrated by a senior during my Plant days, seven years ago. During his official tour to Australia, while sauntering on the spic and span sidewalks of Sydney, he happened to drop a wrapper on the pavement. Unmindful of his act, he carried on without qualms. An elderly woman, walking a few steps behind him, lifted the wrapper and put it in her bag. Stumped, our man stopped in his tracks, as the lady went past him with a nod and a smile. “I learnt the lesson for once and for all,” he confessed. The eloquent silence of that woman was preg...