Write it when you feel it!

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 ...

  All of us are lucky to be born into the latest generation and but few of us survive to be labelled the oldest generation before we give away our current body and return to our favourite abode with our favourite people. The story that happens between these two events are often categorised as life of a person. For a colony like India many things were reset from the colonial era often wiping out our history before British as mere fantasy. When new country was formed, our priorities would have been on nation building. After being looted for few generations & trained to be a good disciplined Victorian labourer, we fancied a British life and Anglo goals as a motivation to work towards. India continued it’s Babu culture and government servants(if am allowed to say), took the role of the Britishers in all facets of Indian life. We being poor and agriculture dependant country; people often had a choice to be a good farmer and face the uncertainties of life devoted to natural calamitie...

Pursuit of perfection is the beautiful journey that we embark from the time of our birth. We are often reminded by the world around us on how imperfect we are. This starts with parents and adults reminding us as children on how we are the only laggards they had ever met. Every facet of life is often compared to other successful men and women who adorns the crown of perfection in their trade. A boy who dreams of being a soccer player is often compared with Messi or Ronaldo. A cricket aspirant with Kohli or Bumrah. A musician with Mozart and so the list goes on and on as you can imagine. We grow up becoming a self critic who sees the imperfections in us like a painted canvas. We reflect harshly on ourself succumbing to the peer pressure and constant comparisons of this world.  Sadly there is a big chunk of people who are so upset with their looks that they tend to overlook the fact that they lost a genetic lottery and it is nothing that they can do about it. Fortunately so the world ...

It is Year 2050, while we are at an advanced state of colonizing Mars and conquering universe once more. First time after the extinction of ancient civilizations which left various shastras for our scrutiny as technology texts, made the earthians dream bigger forever. We have continued to milk every drop of energy sources in planet Earth and had reached a time when we had to sadly accept other planets as home. As usual the average citizen was racing with rats, while our sun continued to glow with vengeance seeing what humans did in spite of all his hard work to keep the perfect living conditions in Earth. As much as a cliche it would sound but somewhere in Japan, Mio Hana had dreamed of starting her own power company seeing the potential we humans had to harvest and harness the green energy. Mio's vision materialized in the form of RunSys, the very same year when man had planted the first paddy field in Mars after paying a fortune to start a new life. The only aide of RunSys was su...

India is a developing country and the ambition in our youth to have a crore in their bank is also developing in same pace. Wealth of India and Indians is a well-known phenomenon in this world. We were once considered the richest land. Even now we have few wealthy people who can give tough competition to other rich men around the planet. Indians grow up understanding and tagging wealth to gold and property. Most of the current generation had seen a struggling prior generation and/or heard of previous generations working hard to earn wealth. Most of the Indians didn't have housing in earlier generations and the ones who had been the landlords often lending money and renting property to the larger masses. This practice had led to our ancestors often linking richness to having property for rent.  Our rich dad poor dad preaches us to have assets which are earning bucks for us versus sitting idle and shut which links to having rented property. We often overlook the fact that when is buyi...