I will tell you what phony is? A soft drinks-and-instant-snacks major sending out a press release on its campaign for promoting whole grains in our daily diets. The manufacturer of fuel-guzzling SUVs planting saplings to offset its carbon emissions. Any company, NGO or social enterprise using the phrase ‘touched such-and-such number of lives’ to tell…

Except on Environment Day, that is.   Sounds as cynical as it gets, I know. Hopefully it is also actually as cynical as I mean it to be. Just the other day, at Delhi’s Lodhi Garden – child and I were doing some reading outdoors – we saw a man on a nearby bench throwing…

So, there’s an obsessive compulsion to check the news every hour (two hours at the most?). Terrifying as the news is, the need is there. Maybe partially to prepare oneself for whatever is unfolding out there and then get a fuzzy idea about what may therefore unfold in the immediate future. All quite pointless in…

So much is happening in the world, it’s all quite too much. Somewhere women are being conferred with the Nobel for chemistry and physics, elsewhere someone is getting raped and all but butchered. People are dying of hunger and other people are fearful of dying due to complications related to obesity/being overweight from overeating/bad eating….

Here’s the thing, the situation, and the dilemma, if you may. For any sector/industry that is polluting, or heavy on the carbon footprint thing, or guzzles way too much energy, or is just intrinsically not sustainable business, and therefore either should be phased out or operate at the most basic level and with minimal resources/renewable…

In a fair, ideal sort of world, my Facebook post urging people to take an affirmative stand for the cause of good air to breathe will get at least a fourth of the likes/comments/shares conferred on a post celebrating the awesomeness of someone’s child’s (self-proclaimed) angelic smile/antics, or anniversary of marriages/vacations/other life landmarks. Of course…

The world is not the same anymore. I know, I know. Who doesn’t! What’s the point in stating the obvious though? Also, when has the world been the same anyway? Things have always been happening to it. Sometimes to shock, sometimes to restore a semblance of equilibrium, sometimes to shake us out of our delusions…