The Man and His Journey 

As I pen this, we are in the 4th night of the great demonetising crisis in India. Social media is polarized, the media is polarized and the nation is polarised. There are tales of hardships faced by the masses and yes I still am part of the masses. There is talk of what next and there are voices of what now. In all the chatter the main purpose of the demonetising is being forgotten. I am no Raghav Bahl with my own news channel to talk about Shyambhai and Rambhai. I am no Ragh

Speaking about him… In the early ‘80s I was aboard an Air India flight headed towards New York City. I was an excited teenager about to join an American University. There was an air of superiority considering there were very few of ‘my cadre’. A few minutes into the flight and I noticed to older teenagers engaged in a heated discussion. They were near enough for me to hear their conversation. I could tell they were intellectually charged. One was a clear fan of Vikram Sarabha

India is now said to be free of polio. The scourge has been vanquished. Polio is said to breed in filth and affect the poor more than it affects the rich. Surprisingly this wasn’t true just a few decades ago. One of my heroes in the fight against polio is perhaps the last person on this planet that anyone would think of. Today’s generation might not even know his name. While Mr. Bachchan has loomed large on billboards and TV ads urging people to give their infants ‘just two d

The rear of my house faces the rear of another house. The rooftop has 3 perhaps 4 small rooms. There is one toilet clearly demarcated and some water faucets in the common open area. When I first moved into my house I observed that only one couple lived in one of the rooms with 2 small children. Since a year or so, I have noticed more people on the rooftop and my guess is the other rooms have been let out. I have been able to identify one as a couple from North East who don’t

I recently visited Amritsar. It was 23 years since I last visited it. The time gap is important for many reasons. This is the city where my great-grandfather (paternal) settled when he moved from Lahore. This is the city in which my maternal grandfather lived all his life and before him, his father did. This is the city where both my parents were born. I spent many summer holidays in my maternal grandfather’s place. The only time I contracted Jaundice (1974), was in this city