Ripples In A Teacup

 My short story "A Jar of Laddoos" has been published on Story Mirror. Please give it a read and tell me if you liked it. https://storymirror.com/read/story/english/tjjofjtv/a-jar-of-ladoos

Let me first confess that I used to enjoy playing with firecrackers, although its been over 5 years since the last time i did. Theres just something about seeing that pop of colour and seeing the light you ignited hit the sky- that stirs a gush of excitement within me. Even this year, seeing the colours erupt around the city at night, was undeniably a sight to behold.  It was a sight to behold, but the sounds werent too pleasant. My two cats spent the better part of last weak hiding under beds, trembling and cowering. Here are two photos, both taken from my living room in our 24 th storey flat, which offers a view of the sea and the Bandra-Worli sealink. The first one was taken on October 25 th , the day after Diwali at 8:30 am.  The normally azure blue of the sky was obscured by a thick sheet of smog.     The second photo was taken today, October 30 th , at roughly the same time. While clearly an improvement, the sky hasnt regained its clear blue, and the smog...

 I recently read about a New Zealand girl of Maori origin being left hurt when staff at her day care shortened her name. Apparently, the educator found “Mahinarangi”, which means “Moon in the sky” to be too tough to pronounce and shortened it to 'Rangi'. Her mother explained Mahinarangi’s name is often mispronounced and mocked by her peers, leaving the young girl “embarrassed” and lacking the confidence to correct anyone. I live in Mumbai and out here, we have people from all over India. Occasionally one encounters a name which is difficult to pronounce, but to be honest, I’ve never heard of someone shortening or changing someone else’s name because it was too hard to pronounce. Indians from the northern and western parts of India tend to have shorter names than those from the southern parts. Also, the languages prevalent in the south are different from languages spoken elsewhere in the country. Northerners find south Indian names to be tongue twisters, but I’ve never heard of ...

Should teenagers train with weights? I’ve come to realise that many folks think teenagers, especially girls, shouldn’t train with weights. And it’s no consolation to have found that even my parents felt the need to regale me with ballads of the irreversible damage weightlifting apparently inflicted on teens Fortunately, it’s been sorted. My parents have been re-educated and the gym supervisor has been “brought” around.  It panned out like this. I started using my dad’s dumbbells around six months ago and then, after we moved house three months ago, began to frequent the gym inside our new apartment complex. My dad and mom kept reiterating that lifting weights might not be a good idea, since I was get to ‘grow up’ fully and my muscles might not develop fully they way they should. I ignored them. Then the gym instructor started telling me and my dad quite loudly that I shouldn’t lift weights and should restrict myself to the treadmill. It was all very annoying. Thankfully, my parents...

Lately, I've been trying to cut down on my hours unproductivity (read: binge watching youtube), to focus on more rewarding pursuits.  The other day, while learning French, I came across the words “bazar”, meaning “mess”. C'est le bazar translates to ‘it’s a mess’ and “ mettre le bazar" would translate to  " make a mess” or “mess things up” Bazar or baazaar is a word I’m familiar with. In Hindi, a “bazaar” or “baajaar” means “market”, a word which has its roots in Persian .  Although the alternative meaning is foreign to me, a  baazar is usually a jumble of shops, and I can see where the French are coming from. This has got me thinking. Are there many more Persian or other Asian loanwords in French and other European languages? I searched on Google for Persian loanwords in French and didn’t find much, though I found a ton of French loanwords in Persian , which is only to be expected. Since European nations industrialised much ahead of Asian countries, it was natur...

  A nine-judge bench of the United States Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 in Dobbs v. Jackson that the right to abortion is not a constitutionally protected right. By overturning the ruling in Roe v Wade which had enshrined the right to abortion for nearly five decades in the United States, the Supreme Court gave back to individual states the freedom to legislate on abortion. It is expected that a number of states, especially those with Republican legislatures, will put in place or reinstate laws that either make abortion illegal or make the process of getting an abortion very difficult. This process had already begun in the form of trigger laws designed to be effective if Roe V. Wade is overturned. I am outraged by the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson . In a country where people have so much freedom to buy firearms, why don’t women have the right to have an abortion? Until the foetus is delivered, it is not a separate being and does not have rights that are distinct from the w...

Living in India, I consider Europe to be the ‘cold continent’, where summers are cool and winters frigid. This snowy vision of Europe melts away on hearing that temperatures in both Spain and France have broken records, hitting 35C and is expected to reach 40C in some areas. Firefighters have been battling wildfires across Spain as the country faces its warmest early summer in decades. In the UK, temperature records have been broken and it was more than 28C on Wednesday and 29.5C on Thursday. Climate change is real. Climate change is here. Let’s wake up and do something before it is too late. Or is it already too late? 

 Today is Juneteenth. Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, when Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3, proclaiming that the enslaved African Americans there were free. "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free," the order read. "This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor." Two months before Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to the Union Army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia which marked the end of the Civil War. Two-and-a-half years earlier, President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which expectedly didn’t have the desired effect in areas under Confederate control...

I just read this chilling BBC report of how Nepal is preparing to move its Everest base camp because global warming and human activity are making it unsafe. The base camp is located on the Khumbu glacier, which is rapidly thinning. The exposed ice is melting, causing rocky debris to fall, and destabilizing the glacier.  "We surprisingly see crevasses appearing overnight at places where we sleep," said Col Kishor Adhikari of the Nepali army, who was staying at base camp while leading a clean-up campaign "In the morning, many of us have this chilling experience that we could have fallen into them in the night. Cracks on the ground develop so often, it is quite risky."  This frightening change has been attributed to global warming.  A leading member of the committee that recommended the base camp move, Khimlal Gautam, said the presence of so many people at base camp was contributing to the problem. "For instance, we found that people urinate around 4,000 litres at...

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve felt outraged on hearing of yet another woman being attacked solely on account of her gender. However, each time I hear of ‘another’ incident, I resolve to do something about it and yet nothing happens. Will venting on my blog about this new incident in north-eastern China help anyone? Most probably not, but I can’t help myself and so please bear with me.  Three women share a meal at a restaurant in a restaurant in the Chinese city of Tangshan, which lies 180 kilometres to the east of Beijing. A random stranger (incidentally a “man”) walks up to them and seems to have a quick word with one of the women and also places his hand on her back. The woman pushes him away. The man strikes her immediately. His companions drag the woman outside and beat her up. Her companions are also brutally assaulted. You can watch the horrible video here. Why did that man attack that woman? I don’t know. Was he annoyed that she was an independent woman who see...

  I live in a rather old house. Vines have crept up its blackened, decayed sides and twisted themselves into an intricate maze. Blood red roses grow on large sprawling bushes in a wild, maundering fashion. At night, the moon throws an ethereal, almost ghoulish glow over the landscape, casting parts of it into soft, muted shadow. The dead trees outside sway melancholically in the gentle breeze. My friends called me crazy for buying this dilapidated mansion. It is far from town, and completely isolated. The neighborhood is practically deserted. The truth is, it was offered to me for almost nothing. The original owners left in quite a hurry. They seemed frightened, speaking of “strange happenings” and “mysterious voices”. People really do get into a tizzy over nothing. Frankly, I’m not the crazy one for accepting a deal as good as this.  I’ll admit, when laid stark and bare in the cold light of day, my residence appears unseemly. The cracked, peeling paint is the only sign of its...

Recently I started reading about food shortages across the world, caused in no small part, by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Apparently, after a few decades of plenty, we are staring at an impending global food shortage . Ever since I can remember, I’ve been told that I should never waste food. There are so many hungry, starving people in the world and they’ll be so glad to have the food that you are wasting, I’ve been told time and again.   I’ve always been a fussy eater who hated almost everything I was expected to eat, with the exception of chocolate. Maybe my gullet is smaller than normal (I’ve never measured it, mind you) or maybe I lack some enzyme on my tongue which causes food to taste good. I’ve also had to contend with the fact that many of my classmates and friends have restrictions placed on the amount of food they can eat. Every time I heard my parents’ dialogue about there being so many hungry, starving people in the world who’ll be so glad to have the food that I...

The Ukraine war has killed thousands, uprooted millions, and appalled people around the globe. My father tells me that war came to his living room when Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq in 1990 and CNN broadcast war visuals live . Well, I wasn’t even born then and for me, this is the first time, after I started paying attention to world politics that I have seen so much of fighting on television.  How can Putin decide whether Ukraine can or cannot join NATO?  This is not the first time Russia is invading Ukraine. They got away with it in Crimea. They have been getting away with it in the Donbas region for many years. It looks like Putin will not get away with it this time, since the Ukrainians have a very good leader in the form of President Zelensky and are giving it back as good as it gets. For Russia, it seems to be a repeat of their 1939 invasion of Finland . Don’t they say history repeats itself? Russia is attacking civilians, bombing hospitals and killing non-combatants. The...

Today morning I went out cycling as I usually do on weekends.  I had learned to cycle when I was eight, but it is only in the last one year that I started going on solo trips, without my dad accompanying me. Today I cycled towards Bandra, planning to cycle down Carter Road, towards Khar. Carter Road hugs the sea and is quite scenic. It was a pleasant day, not too warm, slightly cloudy, with a hint of the monsoon that’s just a month away. At 7:00 am, Carter Road was crowded with a number of cyclists, walkers, runners and the occasional vendor selling tender coconuts or street food. On reaching the point where one turns off to go to Union Park, I turned right to buy myself a coke from my usual shop, drank half of it and continued to cycle towards the end of Carter Road. I was about to do a smart U-Turn and retrace my route back home when I decided, on a lark, to explore a bit before I returned home.  I had my mobile phone with me and planned to use Google Maps to find the best r...

 2021 was a tumultuous year for a multitude  of reasons. But as they say, there is nothing a hot cup of cocoa and a good book can't get you through. Here are brief reviews on three of the best I read in 2021. *********************************************************************************** Em and the big Hoom Em and the big Hoom is the spectacular and devastating debut novel of Jerry Pinto. The narrator lives with his parents and sister in a small, cramped apartment in Bombay. The spotlight is on Imelda, his volatile, beedi smoking mother. “Em”, as she is affectionately called, throws the whole family into chaos as she swings between deep depressive episodes and bouts of unpredictable mania. In contrast, her stoic and dependable husband, “the Big Hoom” is the rock of the household. The tale paints a vivid, evocative picture of everything it touches through effortless and witty writing. Suffused with humor, it never strays into the realm of sickly, sweet sentimentality. Thing...

  I used to be a neem tree, tall and strong, my slender leaf fronds swaying in the wind. I lived in a beautiful forest, brimming with life. It was called Aarey. Every day my friends and I danced to the rhythm of the sun, harnessing the soft golden light to make something magical. It was oxygen, a gas that fostered life. This oxygen brought joy and life to our forest and the dirt ridden polluted city around us. Life couldn’t be better, but I had under-estimated human folly, stupidity, short-sightedness and greed           A few months ago,  we  heard the rumours for the first time. “They are going to chop down a few thousand trees at Aarey” to make space for a Metro car shed”.  At first, I didn’t believe the rumours. And why should I have done so? Why on earth would the humans want to destroy the only forest in the heart of Mumbai. Why would they want to massacre thousands?            Panic broke ou...