Non- Fiction

Stepping Back

You take out your best formals to wear at a party and find them too tight. Dismayed, you decide to re-start a regular workout regime. You retrieve (read excavate) your walking shoes from never- never- land and dust the entire Harappan civilization off them. The steely glint in your eyes could slice Mt Everest into […]

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Objectively Speaking

We aren’t taught objectivity in school, unfortunately. It is a vital personal skill. This one skill alone can save countless instances of depression on one hand and varying degrees of megalomania on the other. Considering how many life skills one is compelled to learn- after many a humiliating fall- after one passes out of school, […]

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Brand Equity

No, this is not a white paper on corporate finance. Finance is a strange (read fanged) beast I run miles from. Something tells me that the feeling is mutual. This is me asking you to take a walk with me, up a mountain. I have taken this walk before but I need to refresh the […]

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The Art Of Hoping

धीरे-धीरे रे मना, धीरे सब कुछ होय । माली सींचे सौ घड़ा, ॠतु आए फल होय ॥ ~ संतकबीर  [Dheere- dheere re mana, dhere sab kuchh hoye, Maali seeNche sau ghada, Ritu aaye fal hoye.] Translation: Be patient O my heart, for everything happens slowly, in its own time. A gardener may irrigate his plants […]

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Imperfectly Perfect

Many years ago I read a heart-opening account written by a father, of how they learned to embrace and celebrate the the Imperfectly Perfect completeness of their teenage daughter. The girl was overly emotional apparently. The slightest things would hurt her and she would either dissolve in floods of tears or blow every one away […]

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Borrowed Feathers

The world will always be full of dreamers. There will always be mavericks whose only purpose in life is to jump into as many frying pans (and fires) as possible. Forever restless, always on the move. They infect you with their madness. They are charming and magnetic in their passion. Your shell of diligent preoccupation […]

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Facebook Rules Ver 1.0

You thought you were getting it all free, didn’t you? That you’d get to do your own thing, your own way? Have loads of fun? Break a few hearts, put a few aristocratic noses out of joint in a merry free for all? Ha. As your poor mother tried to din into your thick skull […]

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Random Chance

Ravi hitched up his backpack and left. He had come to visit them ten days ago. They lived in a village fifty kilometers away from Nagpur. Dawn was just breaking in the east. The sky was flushed with promise. For no reason at all, Ravi felt braced. Today is the first day of the rest […]

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Unpacking The ‘P’ Word

The word is Positive. There, I said it! With an enthusiasm that can (and will) set your teeth on edge, proponents  of Positive Mental Attitude will exhort you to Be Positive. They go about it will all the delicacy of a bull in a china shop. On an aside, have you, personally, seen a bull in […]

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Ordinary Courage

Many years ago I read a story about a boy called David. David was a spastic suffering from cerebral palsy. When he was two years old his parents noticed something wrong. They were told he would never walk, talk or count to ten. They were told that the case is hopeless and David will live […]

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