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?