Deep Ties

Let’s nip this habit in the butt (ouch), oops, bud, I mean! Life can get downright embarrassing when one’s tongue lets one down, and not gently at that. When I was a teenager, I remember walking up to two nose-up-in–the-air classmates, who spent much of their waking hours listening to Western music. I don’t even know why I did it; I guess I just wanted to show off, and so I spoke airily about a song that was all the rage at the time. “Don’t you like ------? I think it’s an amazing number!” Their mouths fell open, and there was a trace of mockery in their eyes, which gave me a moment of discomfort. It was only later that I realized that I had made a complete ass of myself by mispronouncing the very name of the song. My cover was blown! That was the day I decided that I would stop showing off. That was also the day I realized that pronunciation rules. I had always loved my books (blame that on my grandparents and my parents!) and I took up Literature in coll...

War loves to seek its victims in the young.                                                                                                      Greek saying A pall hung over like a grey curtain. People were on their way outside the main gate. The Cantonment was winding up for the day. Autumn leaves lay in heaps on the ground, freshly swept orange piles, as the security checks went on relentlessly. Things seemed peaceful, a bit too peaceful for Srinagar, a city prone to blasts and bloodshed. However, the cantonment was like a fortress... entering it meant going through a rigmarole of frisking, questioning and stringent checks. The men in green knew their jobs and went on with it like clockwork. Suddenly the qui...

Rubina Ramesh has done it again! After her first book of short stories titled, ‘Knitted Tales’, which brought forth myriad moods of life, her ‘Finding the Angel’ comes across as a breezy romance that is easy and pleasant to read. The mystery kicks in later, but romance it is that reigns, and lingers. “When he became the seeker, she was his haven. When she became demanding, he became her beacon.” Shefali Verma is employed to catalogue the Ranaut antiques, and entrusted with the Angel with Egg in a Chariot, a rare, beautiful Fabergé egg , part of the private collection of the Ranaut Dynasty, given to Rani Gitanjali Devi by her late husband. “The Angel, a Fabergé  renowned for its workmanship, was a legend, a sort of folklore, amongst art collectors”.  Enter the cool, handsome hero, Prince Arjun Ranaut, who had taken over the helm of the Ranaut empire at the age of twenty-three. Disarmingly handsome, with a magnetic personality to boot, it requires all Shefali...

“You have a cataract in your left eye!” I felt the world spin around me as I heard the doctor’s calm voice. I hadn’t ‘seen’ that coming! My husband looked just as stunned. A cataract at my age? I wasn’t close to seventy yet, even if my hair was a natural burgundy, as I always claimed. How could I have a cataract? The doctor smiled in amusement. “Yours is probably a pre-senile cataract!” she explained, as though that made it better. “People in their forties sometimes develop this condition.” “Ahem, I am in my mid-fifties,” I coughed modestly. “Oh, then it is a senile cataract!” she amended decisively, making me cringe for my poor cataract. “But don’t you worry! We will fix you!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbJuEFs7-kU   Fix You - Coldplay I went home in a daze, half apprehensive, half elated at the bombshell I was going to drop on my unsuspecting family. And I was not disappointed, for all of them were flabbergasted, each one climbing over the...

Jayant Kripalani has always been a name to reckon with, whether in filmdom or in the world of theatre. He has lived his roles to the hilt, be it the charming protagonist of Mr Ya Mrs,  or the suave Rohit in Khandaan.  Now he is all set to prove his prowess as a writer in Cantilevered Tales, and there is no doubt that he 'cantilever'! (can deliver) The story behind Cantilevered Tales Why Jayant Kripalani wrote this book? Why did I start writing this set of short stories that became one long story? I don’t really know. I was on way my back from somewhere by train and at Howrah Station a group of taxi drivers tried to extort a higher fare from me.  This was before the time of pre paid taxi booths.  Rather than shell out five times the fare I thought I’d take a bus. It was peak hour in the morning and though I did get a seat since the bus started from there, I hadn’t calculated the length of time I’d be sitting in the bus on the bridge. Forty...