In a Covid-19-hit world, there is a whole new parallel socioeconomic ecosystem that is emerging, and in a way that is turning more than our health system on its head. We now have a mask for every occasion and dress type, a sanitiser to suit every mood, a Facebook challenge (covering saris and books and…

None of us can ever be sure to see the next morning, or the next hour even. So why this compulsion to be adamant? Why so smug about humiliating others, so righteous about one’s own religion and dismissive about another’s, so careless about the planet?   What are these energies that we exchange, knowingly or…

Cartload upon cartload of sugarcane dominates the narrow roads of Bazpur until Kashipur (in Uttarakhand, as you leave the mountains behind). So much sugarcane, you exclaim and wonder. For all the sugar in our processed food products, you soon realise. Sugar, the modern-day curse and cancer, is also a big reason for the air pollution…

The siren of the ambulance mixes with the incessant horns of bikes and less-incessant horns of cars and I realise that that aggression is feeding some aggression inside me and I honk in turn at a random bike rider, thinking I am teaching him a lesson while being totally sceptical that he is taking any…

Child, I wish life was more than about moving on, getting by, letting go, living on, letting this and that pass, finding peace, finding acceptance, resigning to the ways of the world,   and so on. Today I am feeling the shock of it and grieving and raging and protesting and screaming. Tomorrow it may…

Am I not glad for having dragged this errant-driver-cum-errant-and-foul-speaking-man to the police station today? And he thought he could get away with a) taking a turn on my side of the road while entering the colony gate, landing in front of my car, and putting his fingers up gesticulating, instead of moving his car, b)…

orporate social responsibility (CSR), or the fact of CSR becoming a sort of law, has bred a strange phenomenon (are all phenomena strange by default?) of companies going into self-denial mode. In what sense, one may ask. Do they behave as if they have no responsibility in the first place? Or do they outright deny…

The Union Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath has declared that giving ‘legal sanction’ to all religious structures in Delhi is ‘part of our community service’. Temples, mosques, gurdwaras and other places of worship built prior to 2007 and are on land that is unauthorized or partly unauthorized will be given legal sanction. The minister said…

As parent to a two-year-old, I very often find myself at random toy shops”by  random I mean ‘non-branded’, the equivalent of the local kirana store. And more  often than not, the category of ‘toys’ that is most prominently displayed is  guns. I suspect this is also the category that sells the highest. Now, even if…