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More writers than readers?

I met Ruskin Bond about two decades ago in a luxury hotel of ITC in Mumbai. He was the chief guest of a prize distribution function organised by ITC and one of my students was a winner whom I accompanied from school. The young students lost interest in the great writer as soon as they got the autographs. Eventually Mr Bond stood all alone in a corner of the dining hall where dinner was being arranged. Even the organisers were not in sight. I smiled at him and he reciprocated. I hesitated to start a conversation with him just because I had not read anything much of what he had written except a few articles in some newspapers. Anyway, Mr Bond didn’t have to stand there alone for long. The organisers arrived and took him to a prominent place in the hall which he deserved. Those students who received prizes from him that day were all winners of a national level short story competition conducted by ITC which had just launched a new brand called Classmates for students’ stationery.

Dying without a thought

One of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell, said, “Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.” A lion’s share of the evils in the human world could be pre-empted if people started making use of their thinking faculty. When I returned home an hour ago after dropping Maggie at her workplace, Kittu, my cat, accompanied me from the car porch as he usually does and entered the house even before I did. He has inculcated a sense of entitlement, thanks to my pampering as Maggie alleges. He did something odd today. Instead of going to one of his usual places to sleep, he climbed on to the chair which I normally use for working with my laptop. He went to sleep within seconds. He usurped my place without a second thought.   Kittu: Self-contentment Well, there’s no first thought either for him. Like Walt Whitman , I always end up envying his thoughtless self-contentment. Whitman wished to be like the animals. “They are so placid,” he

Akshaya Tritiya

Monica, a distant acquaintance of mine, was waiting for a bus at the junction as I happened to drive by. I stopped the car and she accepted the lift. “Today is Akshaya Tritiya,” she said when I asked her something to start a conversation.   She was going to buy a little gold, “just a few grams”, to ensure prosperity for her family at least for the coming year. “This is like Modi ji making the quadratic equation or the Fermi problem the main theme of his election campaign,” I said. “What’s the connection?” She wondered aloud. “I know that you are an inveterate Modi-baiter. But what’s the connection with Akshaya Tritiya?” “What’s the connection between Akshaya Tritiya and your family’s prosperity?” I threw a counter-question. “Don’t tell me you don’t watch the TV,” she said. “Haven’t you seen at least some of those ads about Akshaya Tritiya?” Just then a huge billboard appeared round the corner. “This prosperity is like the fifteen lakhs promised by

Bones of Success

American singer and actor Reba McEntire identified wish, guts and humour as the three ingredients of success. She called them “wishbone, backbone and funny bone.” Life is a struggle from birth to death. It is a struggle against all sorts of hurdles and pitfalls that inevitably come our way. In order to overcome those hurdles and pitfalls, we need dreams, guts and humour. There are plenty of examples from history to illustrate this. Let me take an old example: the family of King Edward I of England and his wife. Queen Eleanor (1241-1307) bore 16 children between 1255 and 1284. She lived in palaces, ate the best food, had all the luxury she could wish for in those days, and also had an army of servants and the best of doctors. Yet her children died one after another. 1.      First daughter died in 1255 at birth. 2.      Daughter Catherine died in childhood, did not live beyond the age of 3. 3.      Another daughter Joan died at the age of six months. 4.      Son John

My life, my story

Everyone has a story to tell: his or her own. I chose to tell my story for various reasons and it has been published by Amazon. Let me present a few extracts from the book. To start with, here’s the blurb: Reading Autumn Shadows has been a cathartic experience. He has not put his past to a palliative erasure , rather has discovered its value as a trace , something to re-member and re-launch into an adventure of love and life, redrawing the boundaries of humanity, religion and spirituality. It is a reminder to individuals that revisiting our lives and coming to terms with our journeys is well worth the effort to reinvent ourselves and take the Nietzschean plunge into reality. The book also states that love is personal, equally political, and a search.                                                 By Dr Jose D Maliekal, Author of Standstill Utopias and Professor of Philosophy From Chapter 12, ‘Second Class Citizen’: In 1986, soon after my arrival in Shillong,

Retirement

Most of my boyhood companions have either retired from their jobs or are on the verge of retirement. Officially I have a year left for entering that stage of life in which you never get a day off. Personally, I wouldn’t want to retire at all till the last breath. Being practical, I know that the best time to start thinking about retirement is before my boss does. School reopened yesterday after a month’s summer holiday. Reopened partly, that is; the whole school will reopen when the monsoon ushers in a totally different mood in the state. As we got ready to go to school yesterday, Maggie remarked about the inertia that the one month vacation had built into her psyche. It is then I realised that I was waiting for the school to reopen. I hope my boss won’t think of my retirement too soon though I know that even he is restricted by the given system. What actually buoys me up is the reward I receive from my students for my efforts. The results of the Board Exams were release

Devils

Fiction “Jet Airways acknowledges the valuable support we received from passengers like you for over 25 years. We regret to inform you that this is our last flight as we are suspending our services from tomorrow…” Tony looked at the passenger next to him to make sure whether he had a sense of humour. The passenger’s belly that sat heavily on his lap led him to the assumption that he must have a sense of humour. So he said turning to him, “Hope they won’t suspend the service mid-air; may God save us.” “What?” The passenger woke up from some reverie. “Did they say ‘May God save us’? Means there’s no hope?” And he laughed. “Oh, no!” Tony hoped that the airlines was secular. At least the hemlines of the skirts of the airhostesses were secular, he had noticed. “They just said that their achhe din are coming to an end.” “Hahaha,” the passenger laughed and his belly danced in his lap. “ Achhe din came to an end for everybody in India some five years back, din’t they?”