This is my World

It is not the first time it has happened and it will not be the last. There will be honey traps, there will be CCTV footage, and there will be tapped phone calls. Matches will be rigged and fans will be fooled. Every single time, cricket will lose. So then, what is curious about spot-fixing this time?  As always, bookies were involved. So were call girls, actors, politicians, and the underworld. All the right elements to make a great drama. But the icing on the cake came in form of "towel in the trousers". At first, the idea seems so absurd. Watching the repeat telecasts of it in the media make it look even more crazier. But throw the mongrel in to the mix and the whole thing becomes so fatuous so that it seems possible.  Lot has been said and written about the involved cricketers. Media is out on a mission to slain them, just to sell. The sharks involved are lurking in murky waters too defiant to break surface. And amidst all these men is the avid cricket l...

Life is short. It is unfair. And it will be forgotten ! A thousand years ago, there lived a great king in the southern parts of our country, who  perfected the administrative organisation by creating a strong and centralised machinery, developed an excellent irrigation system to turn a piece of infertility into a rice bowl, established hospitals and infirmaries across the kingdom to aid the ailing, installed a revenue system that eradicated corruption and brought to justice defaulting landlords and most of all, insisted on charity and forbearance.  That is not all. If his administrative achievements were  meritorious, his military accomplishments were simply exemplary. When he assumed throne, his kingdom was restricted to parts of present day Tamil Nadu. But when he died, he died a mighty emperor reigning over all of South east Asia, the first one to do so. Present day Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Andaman, Lakshadweep,  Srilanka and...

They are not an uncommon sight. Often, we run into them at roadside restaurants, small coffee shops and mobile eateries. To earn a living, t hey put up with abusive bosses.  They bear the brunt of customer's rage and frustration.   They work long hours, but take home low salaries. They clean only to be wiped out later.  Even in a crowded place, they are not very easy to miss - the middle-aged men who dispose our drunken cups, dirtied plates and used banana leaves in the many hotels that fills our streets. Take a close at them. Not much separates them from our fathers. They are of the same age, they share the love for their kids and most of all, they both are trying to survive in this unfair world.  Not long ago, I met such a man at an eat-out.  He was tall, lean, and drawn. His clothes, an old-fashioned loose-fitting chequered shirt and a not-so-desirable polyester trousers, did not do any favour to his haggard looks. However, his hair, typi...

Yesterday, after a very long time, I visited a barber shop for a haircut and a shave. My experience there induced me to write this article. And when I talk of experience, I do not mean the duel my hair had with the blade. Though I would love to talk about it for it was the first time my hair met with clean scissors and combs, I would like to keep that for a later article.  You might ask, 'What else could someone experience at the barbers other than knives and dyes?' Well, a lot a really.  When I stepped into the shop at seven in the evening, it was infested with men most of whom sported long unkempt hair and messy beards. Two were already under the knife and two more were in queue. As I waited for my turn, I found myself watching a Telugu movie which featured Hansika or rather a Hansika movie which happened to be shot in Telugu. I bothered neither the dialogues nor the other actors.  About half an hour passed and the two who were before me in the queue were now in t...

Ties severed, movements restricted, communications broken and the problems manifold. Freedom is imprisoned and humanity is suffocating.  Enslaved by a beast, a mother lay in wait for over a hundred years to give birth to two beautiful babies she carried in her womb. Each day, she fed them with thoughts of a future filled with love and hope. She made them dream of liberation and eternal happiness. Most of all, she taught them tolerance.  But life never gives what one wants. And so were the twins born.  Heads detached. And bloody. The bleeding has not stopped even after over half a century and each passing day, it only gets worse. These are the times when you go back and ask did the partition really achieve what it set out to.  First, let's go back a few years to know what really happened.  The idea of partition was first proposed by a poet, a Allama Iqbal, who in his presidential address to a Muslim convention in the year 1930, de...