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The new Social Fabric: a Warp and Weft of Real and Fake

Trying to glean scraps of reality from hunks of false news which hits one's WhatsApp account is a task for those with ample curiosity and a huge chunk of time  at their disposal. Even though over the  years I have become quite apt at separating the one from the other, the need to be corroborated by those whose full-time job is precisely that remains acute. By and by, I have succeeded in narrowing down a couple of trustworthy fact-check engines which claim to have their professional research teams dedicated to such matters of no importance. Lately however, it is AI who has been jostling to be the first responder to most of my Google quests. One such reel doing the WhatsApp rounds revolved around an artist called Madhav hailing from a poor village in Odisha. By the stroke of his brush and latent passion Madhav achieved the impossible: he turned his sleepy depressed village into a vibrant stretch of unique artworks, attracting thousands of tourists. In no time, tourism brought pr...
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The Agelessness of Ageing

She who dwells in timelessness is a master storyteller. I watch the shifting weight of light cloud her face as she speaks . My mind doodles with words absent-mindedly, but the being soaks up the quintessence of such couch-potato moments; of my sister and I. Midway, a sentence is splintered by the sound of a passing train...and then another. Cars swishing past on the highway add haphazard punctuations and ellipsis to her stories. I listen...at some point, we  both drift off into our own inner domains. Floating between here and there, we learn to negotiate the narrow lanes of reality. 1. she rides  on the elusive  wings of her stories   words radiant steeped in love. songs surge eyes droop to hide the passions  long-dead and yet breathing... an army band playing the  national anthem passes by unheeded but the memories  from once-upon-a-time march on... the blue kite  entwined within the flaming  palash blossoms catches the wind: free at la...
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In-between

Another last day of the year. Feels like any other, like a birthday or any such day which offers an eligible opportunity to get wasted, lose ourselves in lights and beats and bottled up dreams so we can unbottle, loosen, find our real voice in a moment of unconscious, and arrive at the new year in a state of squirmish cognizance of Life from all the peeling deadness of the disappearing year. The sun penetrates the skin. The shadow of the pearly earring, of cashew leaves, of a  few strands of hair escaped from the bun embrace the dead stillness of the concrete porch and shake it awake.  Resonating in the background of this sleepy morning  is the sound of drums from the village yonder announcing an old man's death; a rich old man with many sons and several acres of land. The crow pheasant with its fiery wings hops around skipping gentle hollow sounds, looking for a mate. Frenzied beats of the drums grow louder and faster.  Clouds scowl, earth recoils into darkness. The...
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Paul Klee and I

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A book on Paul Klee and his paintings was one of the most thoughtful gifts I received on my birthday from my son Dhani. The gift came accompanied by a comment which catapulted me into the realm of unfounded egotistical bliss, "something of his work reminds me of you", he said as I pulled the book out off the gift-wrap. "Really?" disbelief and exhilaration ran simultaneously in my veins. Of course, I had admired Paul Klee for several reasons, but mainly it was the spontaneity and  joy permeating his paintings which had appealed to me the most. Needless to say I felt terribly flattered. Yet, honestly speaking, the similarity between Paul Klee and I began and ended with both Klee and I willingly disregarding our own passions to homeschool the child we had brought forth into this world. Yes, believe it or not, while Klee's wife enjoyed a full-fledged musical career, the painter decided to be a stay-at-home dad to bring up their son Felix. He donned on the role of a ...
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Let's Talk about Choices

"Did you hear about what happened in the U.S?" "Are you talking about the mysterious drones appearing in the American airspace?" "No, about the guy who shot the CEO of UnitedHealth..." "Of yeah...Crazy...But, we all know how corrupt many of these insurance companies are. Remember John Grisham's The Rainmaker?" "But, to kill someone innocent to make a statement? I don't agree with that." "Of course, you won't. You are a Gandhian. But, may be, sometimes such  drastic measures are necessary  to shake up the system..."  "I agree. Quite a good-looking fella he is. Only 26. Looks like someone Da Vinci would have sketched. Hmmm...what's his name?" "Luigi Mangione. Did you read how his instagram following surged from 945 to 64000 and above? Meta had to shut down his account." "Wow". "I don't think one needs to resort to violence. I don't condone any kind of violence." ...
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Alchemy

A strange mélange of melancholy and inexplicable joy of being part of some majestic grandeur washes over me. In gratitude, a smile emerges and makes its way through the thin veil of tears: crystalline rainbows jingle and clinker.  "If you love me, you would just drift into my view", I say to myself and to the invisible Spirit while hanging the laundry on the clothesline. And lo, as soon as I had hung the last article, it came, a Brahminy kite. Cruising in from the northeast, it pulled a few tight circles almost above my head, leaped vertically in an upward thrust and rose and rose, straight as an arrow and then took a shallow dive towards the earth, only to conquer much greater heights, propelling me  to grow my own wings and take that ultimate leap into the luminous domains: Lo, a raptor cruising  the hallowed heights:  circling, aligning zigzagging, dropping to rise again...dancing to the scintillating drops of light over the rain- -drenched leaves. for whom does i...
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  Live simply so others may simply live". Do you know how many droplets are there in a cumulus cloud? 10 billion per cubic meter! This mind-boggling information is emitted to the neurons by a book called 'The Cloudspotter's Guide'. It hits me like a thunderbolt. I wish Anna Sébastien the 26-year-old Chartered Accountant who committed suicide last month because of work-related stress had known this trivia. May be it would have made her feel less alone in terms of 'feeling the pressure'. Yet, if it were up to the so-called 'visionaries' like  Narayan Murthy, CEO of Infosys, our youth would be reeling under a 70-hour work week and dropping like flies...the way 30-year-old Rajesh Shinde did at his work desk.  'Stress,' the medical reports claimed. All in the name of enhancing productivity, GDP, and in the process all manner of pollutants. How dare we consider ourselves the absolute masterpiece of Creation, the pinnacle of evolution?  We, who have de...
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