Psychedelic Slippers

If any place can claim to be lazier than Goa, it must be Kolkata. The city is lazy in an almost aristocratic manner. The stronghold of the East India Company, Calcutta still retains the regal air. You must drive across the city to see how much of their mark the English left in India. While other imperial strongholds, like Kanpur for example, have given up their regal legacies to time, Kolkata is almost pompous about them. Massive imperial architecture spawns the breadths of the city, it’s almost like you were walking across the streets of India of the 1900’s. The English came and whitewashed the city, and the city decided never to change itself again. There are boards above shops that probably haven’t been touched since they were first placed there. The fonts of those early days are visible everywhere, from shops, street signs to buses. While the rest of India follows a black with yellow stripes norm for taxis, Kolkata is different. The taxis are chubby ambassadors painted brigh

Everyone of us must have heard/read about the three wise monkeys, cliched in India as "Gandhiji ke teen bandar". To break the popular notion, they aren't Gandhiji ke bandar. If the monkeys had to chose a patron, they'd probably pick Confucius over Gandhi. Unlike the lions in our emblem, these three wise monkeys have their own names (credited to some etymological misinterpretation of course), Mizaru (who sees no evil), Kikazaru (who hears no evil) and Iwazaru (who speaks no evil).They embody a philosophy of living. A philosophy that most strive to live by.  Mizaru is a personal favourite, not simply because the name is much simpler to say, but i find him more intriguing. "See no evil". Three simple words, yet so profound. What do they mean? Does it mean, we blind ourselves to all evil? Or does it mean Bear no evil? The monkey misguides us, we are tempted to ape him. Will evil reduce if we blind ourselves to it? Well our perception of it may change, bu

Its like 3 years right... she said, 2 years 8 months he said It feels such a long time.. she said as he slid her fingers in hers effortlessly. They stopped walking. She looked up at him, then at the hands that looked so obvious entwined. "you have grown up" she said, in an almost motherly tone. He looked at her with confused eyes "This", she said bringing their hands up. "Its no more awkward."

A i m: To fall in love A pparatu s : Conducive environment, a bunch of friends, pen, paper, self-owned vehicle if available, sufficient pocket money (better if self-sustained), target Theory and Motivation: This is the age of co m petition. Times today are much more trying than before. In view of the skewed sex ratios, and limited available opportunities, it is imperative than one be prepared in advance for to fall in love is no child's play. It requires pre-meditated effort, lots of patience and planning. not to forget backing of generous parents and friends. And while there may be those who'd choose to wait for things to take their own course remember,  God help s those who help themselves. One realises sooner or later that there is no alternative to plunging into the rat race. Procedure: 1)    Identify: Though it may sound intuitively simple it is a tough choice. While making this decision please take the following factors into account Long term or short term

"Anything" is not a simile, neither a metaphor... When we use a sentence of the form  'A verb like B' then B is often used to site an example to support the verb, or to indicate the degree of a verb more like an adverb e.g. ate like a pig, grew like a giant. Anything is not an example of anything. So phrases like 'Drove like anything', 'Ate like anything', 'Grew like anything' do not make sense. When people use such phrases anything is used in place of something voracious, fast or rapid. According to dictionary.com Anything means 1) something no matter what, 2) any how or in any degree... [1] Lets take the last phrase, 'grew like anything'. If we replace anything by any how, it will read 'grew like something no matter what', or 'grew like any how', which would mean grew in any manner (if we ignore the like), or rather would imply in a disorderly manner (if we talk about speed, we would expect the growth to altern

Beginnings are difficult. They are slow, and they require you to be patient. You need a push to start with. And then you need to gather yourself up. At times you need to create a ruckus and at others you can just slide in quietly and take place. And then hold your stand. Change is difficult too, cause it doesn’t happen over-night.  You can’t build a conscience in a day, you can’t erase one either. Change is slow, and it requires patience. Habits are too difficult, too difficult to let go, coz letting them go would mean change, a change towards a new beginning and beginnings are difficult. Habits give a sense of stability. You are charting on a known territory... Sudden change is unfamiliar, gradual change gives you an opportunity to condition yourself.  You cannot overthrow a regime overnight... it will only cause chaos. Like transplants, you need ready replacements. Replacements that can gel in , and fit well. But also you need to condition the system to accept these re

Scattered, you see, One less , one more Pieces?  neigh moon dust a wishlist of me Frozen, you see Pawns un-still Drawn by will Some bound, Some free Dazzling, you see A pinch of silver A dash of gold All green, a tree? Hither, you see, Flitter and skitter Scramble and clamber All things that matter All things, meant to be!

There’s always hope, till you don’t word it. You can always escape a good bye with a see you. You can rush the hug over the blaring horn of a bus. You tell yourself to look ahead when you are racing through a flashback. You dont hold hands cos they will be that difficult to let go. You laugh cos you know the tears wont stop once they start. You embrace a crowd and drown them all. Time stops... you leave a piece of you, and from then all the way through... hoping some day to trace back the pieces, and pick up from where you left....set the clock in motion!

I have a brother. These are four very powerful words. Loosely translated in hindi it would mean , “Mere paas bhai hai”. (Of course not the “bhai”s of the “once upon a time in mumbai” kind, but i admit trying to give the same effect atleast once or more in life). I have used these words time and over in school, to ward- off guys... “bhai” would become “BHAI” then. Then that guy who’s dying to pass that love letter to you, would think twice, “ arey uska bhai hai re”. The physique of the bhai dint matter then, all it mattered was that there was a “bhai”. As you move out of school , and life’s troubles move beyond warding-off guys, you tell yourself, “I have a brother”. The words still give strength. I have a brother. My brother has a well-formed face, well developed, agile limbs, and a teddy-bear tummy he wishes he’d get rid off. We’ve been in two states for more than a decade now.It took me a moment to count the years. Of what he has been in this past decade i dont much of rem

As a student with some of the best grades in class, I grew up with a lot of dreams. I remember dad always pushing me to dream bigger. I’m sure am not the only one who grew up this way. Since school we are always pushed to perform better (girls, boys alike). Through high-school, college, parents fuss over grades (as we gradually begin to let go of them). Not only academics, personality development is also emphasized upon, you are encouraged to be a part of myriad extra-curricular activities. The general idea is to make you not just academically brilliant, but smart, outspoken and in general an overall genial being. What do you want to be? We hear this question over and over. Then we are bombarded with the big word “career”, and we knock doors in search of career guidance.After all this, when we have graduated and settled with our job we are said to have begun our career, or laid the foundation stone for the rest of our life (in most cases, besides those who plunge back into academics

"It's in my genes!!!" How often have we used this as an excuse, especially when we don’t want to change something, (be stubborn). It’s an easy way out. Genes are what you are made up of at a micro-micro level and since that’s what you are born with, there’s no way to change it. We use this as an excuse for overweight (underweight), for bad hair, even our moodswings and tempers. But do our genes determine our behavior? We learn, we evolve, when it comes to behaviour, it’s not cause it is somewhere in our genetic makeup but its cause of the way we have grown up to be. There is no gene for chauvinism, neither for ego-centrism, envy, and temper. How we react, respond or behave can be attributed first to our maturity at that point of time, and secondly our past experience. Just like we aren’t born with pre-defined destinies, we aren’t born with pre-defined behavior. A child that grows up seeing quibbles and fights is likely to be short tempered just as a child that grows up

There comes a time in everyone’s life, when you begin to see the other side… and life as you know it is changed forever. “Marriage” After you’ve grown up to be a certain age, suddenly everyone’s obsessed about marriage. Then begins the “Big Search” from matrimonial sites, to random suggestions from family n friends, you undergo one of the most grueling phases of your life, sometimes even worse than job search. I used to laugh at the old movies where the girl comes with a tea tray in shivering hands to sit coyly in a corner infront of the “ladkewale”… sadly it still happens. I thought times had changed, yes they have, they don’t ask you to sing any more. That’s it …. Rest all, observations, speculation, analysis, goes on just as before. “Wedlock” is reduced to a well calculated choice… like buying a car. 1.        You wanna buy a car, you check up for various models. You check snapshots. 2.        You shortlist some, check those with comparable specifications. 3.        Y

**I tried to put it all in one post... but it didn fit in well, so here's the first installment. you might wonder what i am trying to get at by the end.. but please wait til the next one...** If we look back in time, to the days of Rajas and Maharajas, we’ll find many women that stand strong. Then may it be Rani Lakshmibai or Jijabai… not only were they well educated and adept to stand amongst strong men (strong here implying by valour and stature) but they were also very independent women, who took decisions that shaped not only the destinies of their families but history as we know it. Somewhere along time the trend reversed, women took a backstep, and their role in society was diminished to merely home-makers (I am not undermining the task of home-makers here, it is indeed a huge task). Men earned the bread, women served it. It is said education empowers you. In the pre-independence era many prejudices plagued the society, one of them was the social inequality faced