The Happy Wanderer

Dedicated to my Pati (grandmother)... Toy soldier, dear Where have you been? Parading with Some fairy queen! Ahoy, ahoy, the whole brigade I'll join you in the masquerade! A toy in town, I feel a child, Age has stirred me o so mild! I’ve jingled on and let nothing fade, The dye covers up for a little jade!! On my Noah’s ark I oath, Though aboard a shaky boat, I’ve oceans to wedge, hills to mount, These I shouldn’t sit and count! Some day the stars will clear way for me, They’ll welcome this old Humpty Dumpty, And till my star’s in vacuous yonder, I’ll bet I have nothing to ponder.

A warm Namaste! The festive season of Diwali is round the corner now! The mood of gaiety and mirth sets in... but so does that of noise well over the 100 dB limit, of pollution that leaves the healthiest breathless... Amidst all our joy who should come but 'much-desired' crackers!! Year after year there are pamphlets published and presentations made on the side-effects of bursting crackers, of its treacherous root-cause, of the starving, trembling hands that sit down to making these weapons.. What does all of this seem to a practical citizen other than jargon and exaggeration? Nothing. There is no afterthought when messages on 'noise-free' Diwali are sent across. If on your birthday, instead of celebrating with a party, you pooled in donations from your friends and personally visited an Anathashram , it would undoubtedly give you limitless joy. Perhaps it takes a lot to make that compromise of that 'once-in-a-blue-moon' day to work towards a cause. You go...

“There’s a hat trick!! Another of Dhoni’s helicopters! What’s Warner saying to Kohli? Clean-bowled? Of course not! Didn’t have to blink an eye before Kohli swung his bat right into a hundred! Hurrah! Touched two hundred! India!! Three cheers!!” Your lungs are ‘pounding’ with patriotism. Turn to page thirty five of your Biology book and trace your finger to ‘Muscle Movements’. You will find an elaborate diagram with blobs hanging out like strawberry gelatine intended to explain what you are experiencing. But what they really want you to realise is that this ‘strawberry-gelatine’ lines in a dent inside you, and before this moment, you would never have guessed so! Textbooks might never have seemed more than a cartload of theory to be penned on the examination paper in the right places. You’re pointing a finger to what exactly today’s dilemma is- THE DEFINITION OF SCIENCE HAS BEEN DISTORTED. Science, according to Wikipedia, is ‘ the intellectual and practical activity...

What is friendship? Life? Joy? Endless chitchat- memories, nostalgia? Happiness? Somersaulting and prancing? Playing the clown together? Scholarly colleague-ship? The answer sure is a debatable point. But let me rephrase this for you to make it sound simpler. What is life?- Friendship. What is joy? Friendship again. What is mimicking a puppy or a kitten together or pouting or giggling? Friendship once again. What is scholarly colleague-ship? Being a friend. To every individual, friendship has a different significance. Two pranksters might stick together simply because they love bubbling around! A trio of bookworms might take time off their reading only to engage in a discussion about the books they took their eyes off with each other! Two crazy clowns might meet only on the grounds of pooling in their efforts together to get a big, broad smile on the most serious of faces! But, however it may be, to each individual, irrespective of his or her nature as a ...