Rage and outrage
The hazy smoke and fragrance of the dhuni still lingered in the air. The rhythmic reverberations of the dhak could still be felt long after the drummers had stopped playing. The smell of the bhog wafted through,…
Angry birds
I am getting ready for work when a loud tok-toking outside the front door grabs my attention. The tok-tok sound is repetitive. And persistent. It makes me leave what I am doing and walk to check its…
Lost opportunities
“She told me that you had given her a hug that day.” I hear these words and my heart sinks. It is a feeling I find difficult to describe. Guilt. Regret. Shame. Did that mean so much…
The walk towards light
I might have easily ignored the Whatsapp forward which talked about India’s first visually impaired company secretary. But my eyes fell on the name. Turab Chimthanawala. Surely, it couldn’t be the little Turab I knew. It was…
The joys of learning
Some years ago, I was part of a Fellowship programme where we were taken through a session on strengths-based leadership. I am usually very skeptical of these self-help kind of polls which give you a verdict after…
They don’t read statistics
Somewhere during the beginning of this pandemic I heard two streams of arguments at the workplace. The first was skeptics telling me that the fatality rate was less than 1% and people were overreacting. The other was…
Unwitting Peeping Toms
The world of live webcams is getting difficult to adapt to. I am conducting a webinar. For some reason the organizers think that a Saturday afternoon is the best time to conduct one. I give in. I…
Seeking acceptance outside
I’m listening to an interview by eminent Pakistani educationist, Dr Arfa Sayeda Zehra. Her Urdu is lilting and I am not able to decipher some difficult words that she uses. But I get the gist of her…
Names and addresses
In the Mira Nair film, The Namesake, there is a scene where Gogol Ganguly, a second generation immigrant to the United States of America, brings his American girlfriend to meet his Bengali parents. She tries to do…
Coping and hoping
I wake up early. The acid in my belly feels like it will burn a hole through my innards. I douse it with some ice cold water from the refrigerator, and find that sleep is no longer…
