Its always about the people and the city...

"Oh Congrats! you're going to become an aunt!" Beamed my friend from Britain. "Is it a boy or a girl?" "...I don't know, Pre-natal sex determination is not allowed in India" "....???" ..... I could just give him 'Is-that strange?- that's how is it- I never thought its a big deal-infact isn't surprise element great' look He didn't leave it at that, being a stubborn man, and being my friend... I wanted the conversation to end because this wasn't interesting and frankly speaking (hehe reminds me of Arnab Goswami) I am a little tired of enlightening Non-Indian friends of things that happen only in India and seeing the predictable reaction. Once in a while, the intellectual conversation of how developing world is so different and how India is 28 countries in 1 is fine but I can't really be a flag bearer to propagate it ad nauseam. But this was destined to be discussed. So I said it, again, with an intenti...

Oh my! This idiom was a nightmare. I would detest getting it for my exams to explain, or comment on... One moment I would feel I know what it means, next moment it would evaporate as I'd start to infer it word by word. It went on and on in loops. Child is a father- okay- of a man- what the hell? It comes from a couplet from William Wordsworth called " My heart leaps up" My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.   In simple words, as I yet again reproduce this from online text is that a person will have same qualities as an adult as he or she had as a child. In child psychology it is developed as the inclinations and preferences the child would develop once he/she grows into an adult. In Hindi, the corresponding idiom is "Poot ke paer p...

Offices are crazy places...most of them. They are full of disinterested and dispassionate people giving there best, or trying to appear so for the sake of earning money to do what they like. In terms of personal endeavors, its full of single people hoping to finally find that 'someone' they couldn't find in school/ college/ friend's circle. There are bored married ones who look for visual pleasures from alien men/women's proximity while thankfully there are those who do not think in this regard at all.   We are all well aware of the presence of 'Anti-sexual harassment' committee in our institutions. In fact I recall few sessions on introduction of such a committee and reaction of people. There were non-Indians in my first job who got extremely traumatized that their cultural difference and behavior may get tagged as harassment one of these days. By definition, patting a women's back or calling her by any name not perceived to be acceptable is also ha...

A lot has been said and out-poured recently about Article 377 of India and the latest Supreme court verdict. Principally I would be with the masses who have termed this as sheer stupidity, going backward, violating right to freedom and practice personal preferences. But being a devil's advocate that I am, I tried to figure out why was this done. I mean, no matter how 'dummy' our democracy is, the judiciary is obliged to provide valid reasoning behind everything being said or done. Another point about court verdict is- it does not try to get influenced-emotionally or in any way by the populist opinion and demands. So a Supreme court would not really log on to Facebook accounts to see how the young generation feels so strongly about something (which is mostly based on peer influence, half baked believes and several other motives including impressing someone, making an image, attracting attention etc. etc. but sound logic and reasoning.) ...

You would've probably heard  of this phrase recently if you watched 'The Perks of being a Wallflower.'     The Perks of being a Wallflower- Misfit toys scene     It actually refers to a children's book called "The Island of Misfit Toys." In this story, all the weird toys are sent to an island to live together. They are all defective and mostly unwanted. Irony is, they think of themselves as really special!   To understand this concept, which by all means I believe today we are more than aware of, picture the characters. There is a bird that doesn't fly but swims, a boat that can't float, a beer with wings, a train with square wheels and jelly squirting pistols. So much so that toys are misfits even because of their names! It is commendable how many parallels can be drawn from them. On one hand, characters and their 'mis-fitted-ness' is kept simple for a child to understand, on  the  other, it pose...

This is the first time, for no particular reason, that I did not finish a piece in one go and had a chance to drop a word about it to a few friends. A mention of this topic had unidirectional reaction. It was simple. Most male friends turned and made humming sounds to put a sound curtain, others dug their head in a pillow to filter 'noise,'  while few were generous to spare extreme reaction and gave a sweet blank look of no comments.   The female friends on other hand, without going into the details gave a casual look of being clueless or biased or worse, ignorant. My feedback is that they knew less about it than the boys. Boys had secretly researched about it to update self created Wikipedia section of their brain or maybe had a practical situation thrown at them at a point of time... Girls had of course taken it personally and rejected the idea, most of them...   So my point is not to stir the territory, I just succumbed to the series ...

I wish India was a Turkey eating nation, or that someone had attached a gimmick or financial sense around this festival...then Thanksgiving would have been popular by now. Alas! there is no way India would celebrate any festival that does not crop out of mythology or history or just a belief. I remember as a child when we had to write an essay on India, It would invariably begin with "India is a country of festivals." Then it would transcend from diversity to languages and religions and the usuals... I like festivals in general. But that is probably because I like anything that acts as an excuse to get together. Doing something for the sake of tradition... or routine of tradition, strictly on numbered days in a  year, doesn't really bother me. But coming back to Thanksgiving, its sad that we Indians are in a way on extreme edges. On one hand, I know how certain political/ radical groups and other Individuals I personally know have been dead against the ...