Write it when you feel it!

On a Friday evening, a quarter of the city was on the road driving back to their hometowns where they had someone waiting for them. The second quarter was seen entering the pubs of Bangalore to savor the spirits which made Gods go crazy. The city was well known for the indulgence that it can offer and was always popular among the youth. A large chunk of home-loving dads and moms were busy planning the weekend to ensure it ended being busier than the weekday. The little that was left after all the quarters and large chunks, were few homebodies. Adam was a proud homebody who never even in his shortest dream also had a thought that he wanted to step out of his house. He was elated by the Kishore Kumar songs that he was listening on his newfound love Caravan. Adam did know that " aanewala pal jaanewala hai"  and if I said to him earlier during the day that " yeh shaam mastani ", he would have pushed me aside bringing out his handy statistics demonstrating how in last 36...

India was much more poorer in the 1990s when my parents while struggling to get us to the next phase of life, gave me a promise that I can get my pets once we have our own land. What my parents meant is quite obvious to me now but in that teenage it was all about literal meanings. It was a time when teachers could successfully trick us in exams asking whether something is a simile, metaphor or conceit. We poor teenagers would feel all as same. Maybe this lack of understanding or maybe the lack of worldly knowledge, I decided to exercise my boon. Before I get there, it is important to throw some light on couple of other escapades which had me featured in my much younger avatars. It could be maybe when I was thirteen that I once found a snow white coloured puppy on the streets of Kochi while returning from school. As any kid would do, I stopped for a while and played with it having time by my side and no competition of attention from others, the puppy would very happily engage with me of...

Reality: Everyone wants to be rich. The very next person you would meet also would tell you their life goal is to get rich. Some wants to travel the world, some wants to build large mansion, some wants to buy great cars, some wants to buy grand jewellery. Whatever some wants, all wants to be rich definitely. All are not born into large business families, and many don't have any support from previous generations too from a fortune inheritance perspective. And most of us don't win lotteries too.  Employment in India: Over 50% of the India's workforce is self-employed which would include new startups, local grocers to your tailor. The employee workforce is around 22% of Indians. Official unemployment in 2024 is around 3.2% and remaining are all casual labourers and unpaid workers. As per key studies,70-80% of self-employed workforce in India earns lesser than salaried employees. Over 85% of the self-employed business never grow or hire employees. About 15-20% of the self-emplo...

While I was riding my decade old Royal Enfield through the woods near my abode, I chanced upon a little cafe buried in the middle of nowhere behind a little Bharat Petroleum station. As always I was in no evident rush that could make me skip it and that really is a happy trait of weekend jolly rides on the wheels of joy. The name of the cafe meant coffee coffee-bean in Amharic and Oromo, which are official languages of the birthplace of coffee ‘Ethiopia’. I didn’t know a local coffee shop would go for such a thoughtful name and it did surprise me.  Bistro welcomed me with a melodious jingle of the hanging wind chimes with few hundred threads up above the ceiling almost touching the glass door effortlessly. A smiling face of the barista made my entry grand and making me feel as if they were all waiting for me to arrive for few days. I looked for a corner seat with no one to make eye contact so I can’t continue my selfish business of thinking, reading and writing. But I was forced to...

We had decided to do the daring drive from Kochi to Bangalore on the latest Harrier EV. The beasts had waited enough for this union and were eager to test each others mettle. The beast in Harrier and the other beast driver in me. My friend and husband had planned to pick me by Noon but had to start from their home by  3pm  after few detours after running some errands elsewhere. I had already started driving around the monstrous Harrier around Kochi city. I silently enjoyed when the roadside bullies in other cars and motorbikes giving way for the beast to pass. On another day, on a different vehicle these bullies would have not thought twice before showing me their true colour in 8K clarity. Who knew that our beliefs were going to be tested that evening and what night had planned for us. The fact that whole India was under construction was well reminded by the road maintenance work on the highway between Kochi to Bangalore. Roads were getting clogged up as a heart with choleste...

Visiting temples in India during the festive season is one of the favourite sport that everyone plays from late September to October end every year. Normally I would skip the temple run Month and keep my interactions with divine confined to his/her off-peak time. That worked well for both of us. However this season the demands were different that I ended up in a famous temple with a part of my family around me. I would love to appreciate the efforts put in by the town and city authorities to keep the place clean and tidy. Considering the footfall, it was really remarkable. If we minus abandoned Indies and stray cows from the place, the place would be completely under human control limiting the chances of stepping on something unknowingly when the monsoon rains get mixed with everything you don’t want it to and engages in creating mini pools and flash rivers at will. As always trying out local delicacies and every other highly rated restaurants from google and hidden gems from vloggers ...

  “Traveling—it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta Life is a collection of stories. We all are striving hard to make it eventful and memorable. Everyone creates their own stories and is proud of it. Same story when re-told  by different people would often end up getting different perspective. We tend to have a newer version of every story we narrate based on the audience lingering between getting the listener sympathise to wonder at ease. The distance to an exaggeration to the latest enhanced narration is considered to be non-existent.  If we ever sit down to write our life story, we would realise that we are not able to find a meaning for this life to express to the reader. Someone who can effortlessly write an autobiography and make it gripping really needs to given a standing ovation. We often overstate the incidents in our life glorifying it, but life altogether is bundled as non-eventful in most cases when we try to paint it on p...

We all wake up some days in a bad mood, during the day we struggle to retrieve information from our memory, and many a times before we go to sleep we know there is really no motivation to even wake up next day. We all would have faced that villain in our life.   Most of us don’t realise this change in us is often caused by brain’s reward system. Brain often looks for opportunities to reward us for doing various things and this reward is nothing but sheer happiness. Who doesn’t want to be happy? All our philosophers had lived and died advocating that happiness is all that is strive for in human life. It was too late when I realised that a natural chemical produced in my body can be of this big significance to my day.  As always man’s quest to control and regulate continues even when it is our own natural chemical. This feel-good hormone often famously nick named as dopamine, has the capability to drive all the facets of human body from waking up to sex drive to good sleep. We o...

When it is time to write about civic sense, most Indians don’t even know where to start or should we even start? I am also hit with the same dilemma. Did we invent poor civic sense? Did we always have poor civic sense? Did we inherit it? By the way, what really is the civic sense because of which whole Indian civilians are presently mocked by the world? A good place to start would be the definition of civic sense as per our AI friend.  “In simpler terms, civic sense means being mindful of how one’s actions affect others and the shared environment, such as disposing of garbage properly, not smoking in public places, respecting elders and minorities, and participating in public welfare activities. It also includes obeying laws and contributing positively to collective social order.” Life in ancient India as we know it, should have been closely linked to cleanliness considering the importance of the Sanskrit word Swachhatha in old vedic texts, which meant clean or pure. The link that ...