Naked in the communal bath
We were going to get married and it was time to rent a house in the vicinity of my work place. We started house hunting in one of the areas of Nagpur which now frequents national headlines.…
Badla: Sujoy Ghosh’s taut thriller
It is after a long long time that I have seen an audience break into applause spontaneously at the end of a movie. The last time I witnessed that was in a Leicester Square cinema hall in…
The summer soap opera
In the summer of 2000, a new kind of soap opera invaded our television screens. Indian audiences, who were used to intense stories from the partition or funny sitcoms starring Satish Shah, Shafi Inamdar, Rakesh Bedi and…
Thinking like a rat
I walked into the laboratory that morning and was told that the hematology automated cell counter had stopped working. A few frantic calls and a day later, the technical person from the company came over and repaired…
Supine readers
It has been almost a month of reading thick Pathology tomes non-stop. As quizmaster, I had been preparing questions for a State level Postgraduate Pathology Quiz. I enjoy the process of discovery, and reading academic texts for…
The Braveheart
Much of my early childhood was spent in Sainik School Bhubneswar and then in Bangalore Military School, where my father headed the Zoology Departments. I can’t remember much of Sainik School, but memories of Bangalore are very…
The desert and the oasis
In the distance, She can hear The sound of the hoofs. The dust clouds billow She can no longer see. The sky turns grey As the dust spirals upwards. “I think I saw A man with a…
The business of beauty
On days when you feel exhausted and think you deserve to be pampered, you head to the spa. I would prefer to say ‘spa’ or ‘salon’ to sound sophisticated. But the unfortunate truth is that small towns…
Soof and Khaarek: Ways to select a bride?
“I hadn’t seen my wife before my wedding”, says Mukeshbhai. “But I was sent several samples of embroidery made by her. That told me so much about her.” We are at Kala Raksha in Sumrasar Sheikh village,…
Gully Boy: The divide and the angst
A young driver watches the owner’s daughter rush into the back seat of the plush car, her eyes streaming with tears. He shuts the door and drives the long drive back home in the silent night, craving…
