Making our dictionaries meaningful again
This is a story from over two decades ago when a passionate environmentalist friend from New Zealand, who lived as I also did in the northern Thai town of Chiang…
Musings
Echoes of Resistance: Music and Poetry in the face of tyranny
Music and poetry have long been part of dissent, a tool of resistance, and an art form to express concerns, jubilation, remembrance, and heartbreaks. They are worthy forms of summation…
Anecdote, History and Kashmir
An anecdote is a concise, frequently personal narrative that communicates a certain point or idea. Anecdotes are frequently used to shed light on a person, location, or occasion and can…
Musings: Autumn, Nature, and Self-introspections
Autumn (fall season, from September 22 to early November) can be a metaphor for transformation that takes place in nature as well as in our personal lives. Autumn is a…
If Good-Hearted Aliens Ever Come to Earth, They will be Shocked Out of their Wits by the Injustices and Distortions They See
There has been much creative imagination regarding what kind of inter-actions human beings are likely to have with any aliens from outer space if they ever actually come to earth.…
Me And My Bicycle – A Narrative: Part II (2000 – 2024)
This is a two part narrative account of my experience with bicycle for 55 years. My bicycle experience can be divided into three historical periods: 1.1956 -2000; 2. 2000- 2017;…
Me And My Bicycle – A Narrative: Part I (1956 – 2000)
This is a two part narrative account of my experience with bicycle for 55 years. My bicycle experience can be divided into three historical periods: 1.1956 -2000; 2. 2000- 2017;…
Caged in Oligarchic Contradictions
A contronym is a word having two definitions that contradict each other. Two examples are the word bolt, which can mean to lock with a bolt and to flee, and…
The Empire Owns Us
In today's America there is no need for a contract for millions of my fellow working stiffs. With many states like mine ( Florida) having 'Right to work laws', unions…
The Immense Hunger
Like all living creatures, people need to eat to live. Some people, eaten from within by a demonic force, try to deny others this basic sustenance. All across the world…
LOYAL to the EARTH
If you choose loyalty, bypass being merely patriotic. Patriotism is a political tool used mostly by propagandists to stir emotions and further an oppositional agenda – an ideology. Loyalty is…
Sick, and Sick of It All
Sometimes it takes our bodies to return us to our souls. And our little pains to remind us of the indescribable pain of the savage killing and dismemberment of innocent…
The Unexpected
Despite calendars and clocks and all the mental gymnastics we use to control life and time, surprises are at the heart of existence. This may seem like a truism, but…
And I Feel Fine
Is it the end of the world if we blow it? For the first time in history humans have the power to communicate with just about everyone everywhere and look…
India at the Crossroads
Returning from India after visiting my elderly parents each winter, is always filled with mixed emotions; a confluence of feelings, that of regret for not being able to care for…
A Visit from Uncle Joe and Auntie Jill
A few days before Christmas Eve, the President and the First Lady travelled to a well-endowed children's hospital in Washington D.C. Their visit was in keeping with the long-standing White House tradition…
An Immense Hunger
Now that our revels are ended, the holiday celebrations and feasts, if one had them, just a dream melted into thin air, our hungers perhaps richly satiated temporarily or not,…
Solitude: A Source of Empowerment
Today was a quiet Sunday morning, I sat by the window sipping masala chai looking at the dew on the jasmine leaves spread across the backyard window, I noticed an…
Chance Encounters as the Walls Close In
“Apple Blossom – Blue Sky” by amandabhslater “A treasure stumbled upon, suddenly; not gradually accumulated, by adding one to one. The accumulation of learning, ‘adding to the sum-total of human knowledge’;…
Mumbai lost intellectual vitality of old days
Dr Ganesh Devy, linguist and scholar, is perhaps too optimistic about Mumbai playing a big role in making an intellectual contribution to the idea of civilisation. He made the plea…
When Christ cries and Anti-Christ laughs
I was born,brought up and got fermented as an apprentice rebel in the Roman Catholic Syro-Malabar Church in Kerala. Me and our village poet Josukuttan were ex communicated at the…
A Paean to the Past
I grew up in a country that thrived with diversity. I grew up in a country where we were taught to accept diversity of cultures, languages, religions as a normal…
Do People Change?
Because there is so much personal anguish, unhappiness, and human mental and physical suffering in the world, many people often wonder how they might personally change to find happiness, contentment,…
How the Personal Becomes Political
Looking into the long reflecting pool of the past, I find myself wondering what it was that made me an activist against injustice. I was born in New York City’s…
The Coca-Cola-ization of ‘God Bless America’
“Whoever controls the information, controls the imagination.” --George Orwell “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” --Albert Einstein “Imagine there’s no countries… It isn’t…
There Is No Escape From Telling
By the lake’s lapping shore above the town and the railroad tracks, my wife and I stopped and marveled, struck stone silent by two dazzling Baltimore Orioles, clawed together as…
Caught in the Draft ’73
One surmises that the volunteer military system devised after the Vietnam debacle erases what had transpired before. Perhaps we all need to revisit that terrible era, when phony US incursions…
Old habits die hard, hence another New Year wish
As a child, I would watch with trepidation-tinged excitement and fascination the conversation between one of my uncles and the long-haired, sickle-sword wielding “velichappaad” (oracle through whom a revered deity,…
Resisting the forces of fear
Turn, turn any corner Hear, you must hear what the people say You know that somethin' is goin' on around here It surely, surely, surely won't stand the light of…
Pluralism and acceptance – The senselessness of separation
“You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy, not religion.” Anonymous This anonymous quote that I received as…
Where Have All the Colours Gone?
Long, long ago — a very clichéd way to start a narrative — but none the less, long ago, I remember there was a time when my grandfather would graft…
Nostalgic for the Future
Despite its pedigree as a fundamental element in civilization’s greatest stories, nostalgia has come to be associated with treacly sentimentality, defeatism, and spurious spiritual inclinations. Homer, Vergil, Dante, the Biblical…
Unshackle the youth to realize a Republic
If we were to imagine our journey towards the 73rd Republic Day as a long, tiring and sometimes treacherous trek through the Himalayas, then looking back we can be proud…
Wishing You All a Very Nutritious New Year!
It has taken my slow brain a long time to figure it out but finally, as 2021 comes to an end, I have found a sure shot way of bringing…
Potatoes & Chillies in the New Year
“Oddly enough, it (potato) was introduced to the Himalayas by two Irishmen, captain Young of Dehra and Mussoorie and captain Kennedy of Simla, in the 1820s. The slopes of Young’s…
Looking Back and ‘Looking Forward’ with John F. Kennedy
“The President’s been shot!” he shouted, clamoring his way down the stairs in the dorm. The upper-classman! I was making my way to the third floor, and he was…
The Banners of the King of Hell Advance
“Vexilla regis prodeunt Inferni” – Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: The Inferno Try to look ahead and see if you can see what’s been coming for decades. Try to climb higher…
Decolonizing Minds, Including My Own, About U.S. Capitalist State Settler Colonialism
Where so many mainstream writers miss the mark is that whereas dispossession was a zero-sum game, these would-be settlers, mostly peasants, were fleeing feudalism at home. “The discovery of gold…
The End of the Speed Limit on the Highway to Nowhere
There was a time when time was time and space and speed had some human meaning, for people lived within the limits of the natural world of which they were…
Indore: A Memoir
A memoir is a sort of autobiography. You record only those things that have affected you. You don’t do any research for it, except occasionally to check a date or…
The Houses of Dead and Crooked Souls
“A house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs or illusions of stability.” – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space There is a vast and growing gulf between the…
Drinking Coffee in the Early Morning Rain and Thinking of Donald Rumsfeld
It’s been raining incessantly for three days. It is a cool early morning in the beginning of July and I have just made a cup of coffee. Now an electrical…
A BACK to the FUTURE DIALECTIC
I wish to write a little on a couple of terms, one of which, Ground or Grounding Dimension, I learned from an essay by Larry Dossey, and the other, Floating…
We, the People, the Humanity and Our Entangled Future in Global COVID-19 Pandemic
“He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.” CHARLES PEGUY - French Author (1873-1914). Looking Beyond the Erroneous…
Lucifer’s Task
The two figures strolled in the most relaxed manner, until they came upon what many up there call ' The Edge of Heaven'. They stood on the precipice and together…
MOTHER and CHILD
Of all visions accessible on this living Earth, no natural sight is more beautiful that a mother and child. If the mother and child are human (no matter of what…
The Christmas Tree
Let me tell you, divorce with kids is no fun. In most traditional divorces the dad goes off and the mom keeps the kids. Now, many will say that the…
The India I Loved
kitnaa hai badnasiib zafar dafan ke liye do gaz zamiin bhii na milii kuu-e-yaar men Exiled in Rangoon in the colonial British India, the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar…
Make Mankind Great Again!
“It has often been said that the only thing that could unite mankind was a threat from space.” I read this in Arthur C Clarke’s novel, 2061, Odyssey Three. The…
A platter of Jalebi opened a Pandora’s Box
Last night before dinner as I was deep-frying a batch of my favorite jalebi for dessert, Saroo Brierley’s face came to mind. Afterwards I found the 2016 movie Lion from…
A Throwback To The Small-Town Puja
In our student days a large part of the year was consumed by three long spells of holidays. The year started after the Christmas vacations which were long, but not…
In cinema, naked feet are not assigned sounds, but they gain them in poems
It's better to stay away from poetics to present in prose someone who wrote in verse that his poems have no forewords, critical studies or words of adulation. My patron…
To Rebel Against Necessity and More
“Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world, which operates on the basis of necessity. The laws of necessity are as unexceptional as the laws of gravitation. …
God’s Own Fools
These are all very Kolkatan in nature and you really won’t get to see or hear them in any other parts of the country. What? Some years back a national…
Corbett Park Tourism
The India Tourism byline is – Incredible India. I agree. I encountered it. Here is what happened. In 2015, two dear friends of mine and I decided to go to…
Independence
I’ve come to realize that I don’t conform to ideas of any particular political party, religion, ideology and position in the way that others think the world or people should…
A Serious Flaw of the Decalogue
In my “Putting the Decalogue Under a Microscope” I distinguished between “normative” and “empirical” statements relative to human behaviors. The latter are factual statements that pertain to either a given…
A Lift From Reality
Diya Barmecha from Mumbai, proving that young minds are capable of thinking equally, if not better than older ones. A stunning essay on the life of a security guard, drawing…
My Clean And Green Village
15 year old Abhipsha Mohanty leads us to this fairytale land of clean skies, green farms, beautiful fragrance in the air and a peaceful life.But all of this for real…
Late Summer ’70
When you're 20, full of piss and vinegar, you can open up to so much. That was the year, 1970, when dreams seemed so real. This writer had just returned…
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