Deep Ties

Somehow one grew up with the idea that only Sagittarians, like me, suffered from foot-in-mouthitis, an ailment almost as dangerous as the mad cow disease. The disease has now gone viral with prominent people, irrespective of their star signs, shooting their mouths off with nary a qualm. Makes for great entertainment, provided one does not take their remarks too seriously. Like the minister who scoffed at the idea that a senior minister would touch a scam for ‘an amount like Rs 70 lakh’. Or the son-in-law who proclaimed that ‘we are a mango people in a banana republic’, fully aware that he was part of a family in charge of the said republic. Or the suave ex-CM who spoke of the day when there would be ‘no girls to marry and we’ll all become gays’. Then came the dig by an irreverent MP, who was astounded that a woman in politics who had ‘been doing jigs on TV for money’ had now turned into ‘a political analyst’. Followed by a Union minister who claimed that ‘as time passes by, a wife get...

The beauteous Cleopatra only bathed in ass’s milk because she believed that it enhanced her beauty. Age could not wither her, it is quoted. However, had her mother spoken of the goodness of coconut for the skin, as modern mamas do, her beauty would have been unsurpassed! For a nut that is hard to crack, the coconut has a rather tender heart. As a child, I remember standing alongside my grandma, as she cut up little slivers of coconut to cook, and grabbing handfuls and cramming them into my mouth before she could stop me. In revenge, she would haul me into the bathroom, and douse me liberally with coconut oil, made from coconut roasted on the stove. The aroma of that oil has stayed in my memory, longer than the oil stayed on my hair and my body. Winters in Delhi found us on the terrace, while Mum rubbed coconut oil on our shivering limbs and made us bask in the warm caresses of the sun. As a teenager, I discovered coconut milk which not only tasted delicious in curries, but, when mixe...

Farhan Akhtar wrote an anguished poem on the heinous rape of a young 23 year old girl in a Delhi bus recently -“What is This Country that I Live in?” The girl, returning after a movie along with a male friend, was accosted by six drunken beasts, who decided to play judge and “teach her a lesson for being out at night with a man.” They gang-raped her, brutalized the duo with iron rods, hiding behind tinted windows, and finally hurled them, unconscious, on the road. The young girl lies in a coma, her internal organs in chaos, as a large part of her intestines have been removed to prevent gangrene. As she fights for her life, mammoth protests have been launched across the country by deeply moved citizens, shell-shocked at the tragedy. Three of the accused have been arrested and have confessed to their guilt. “Hang me!” says one fiend. The other pretends that he is ashamed as he has “committed a big crime.” Can they ever fathom the depth of the damage they have caused to a young girl wh...

America has just emerged from a gruelling election, and once again, Barack Obama has come out on top. As Americans celebrated, Mitt Romney congratulated his rival, even as he spoke of having fought hard, and of working together with the president to take America ahead. When Obama appeared, the applause echoed around as people cheered for the man who was president again. Then the magic began, as Obama addressed his countrymen, in accents simple and moving, the beauty of his words competing with his sincerity. He spoke as if his speech could have no ending, about gratitude, progress and togetherness, every word clearly measured. His silver-tongued oratory left goose-bumps and teardrops in their wake. We Indians watched in envy. Where were the master politicians back home? History had Gandhiji, Jawaharlal Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Tilak and Gokhale. Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech equalled all great speeches made before. His daughter, Indira, rose above the epithet of ‘goongi gu...

Some days I am up with the lark! Days that are rare, I concede, but once I am up, I go for an invigorating walk. The breeze blows gently and the world sparkles at that hour. I soon find myself surrounded by walkers of all sizes, shapes and ages. An Olympic- style walker whizzes around the block at the speed of light, arms akimbo, staring ahead in fierce concentration. There are no short cuts in his book, and by the end of his marathon, he is puffing like a chimney, sweat pouring profusely off his brow. A rotund old gentleman waddles ahead of me, with a strangely jerky walk. At one point he stops, looks around furtively, and takes out a plastic cover from within the recesses of his shirt. He proceeds to pluck flowers that grow strategically under a board that states baldly, 'Please do not pluck flowers!' A young girl jogs past, headphones and an attitude cutting her off from the rest of the world, as she goes by! She does not believe in niceties, not even deigning to wave to t...

The nation has the right to be disgusted! How can the Chief Minister of a state stand up in front of a large crowd and talk disparagingly about the wife of a fellow minister, calling her a 50 crore girlfriend, the snide note in his voice and the sneer on his face giving out the same message... "I am invincible! Hence, I can talk rubbish and get away with impunity!" Maybe a new commandment needs to be tagged on within political circles - Thou shalt not insult thy fellow politician's wife! And this is not the first time the man has shot his mouth off. Earlier when a journalist asked him about why women in his state were malnourished, he aimed another salvo that bordered on idiocy, expounding on how girls were beauty conscious and not health conscious, and hence, resorted to dieting, by refusing to drink milk. What he forgot to add was the very same girls had no food to eat in the first place! Much akin to Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake!” retort! The aforesaid lady...