" If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or into the deep, deep, woods, and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer."   -  A nne Shirley in ' Anne Of Green Gables ' by  Lucy Maud Montgomery I was sitting inside a temple, accompanied by my grandmother, enjoying the beauty of the golden yellow evening sunlight falling on the walls and pillars. I derived a unique pleasure from the scene  that was spread out in front of me. The sight of the women in their colourful sarees, their oiled hair neatly combed and adorned with flowers, and their turmeric tinted traditional features accentuated by sparkling nose studs and large, round bindi s; people meditating or reading from shloka books, the distant hum of the priests chanting.. ..the kids determined to reach the overhead bells all on their own, jumping...

Social media seems to be flooded with upma memes. I just came across one showing the troubled face of a husband who, after being asked by The Wife to pass his verdict on the taste of the upma ominously lurking on his plate, has almost forgotten to chew and swallow his mouthful in the shock of the worst dilemma of his life - if he were to say it is tasty, she'll heap two more karandi s of it for him to struggle through; on the other hand, if he were to admit the absolute truth and declare his lifelong enmity with it , the aforementioned karandi will end up as a weapon against him! Although I thoroughly enjoyed the creativity of all the upma denouncing memes, their sheer number has made me afraid of telling people that I actually like upma , and being at the receiving end of their dismayed, scornful looks. But now that I have confessed, the security of the sluice gates in my mind has been compromised. I might as well go ahead and let slip another such unspeakable truth, and then...

"Anyone who ever gave you confidence,  you owe them a lot. " - Truman Capote in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's ' We have all been completely consumed by, and assimilated into the digital world - like insects trapped in an invisible pitcher plant, that never fails to lure us in with its enticing scent of entertainment and convenience.  And so, as we get on with our lives amidst the omnipresent digital signals darting and flitting all around us, our sense of empathetic understanding - our perception of,  and insight into, the minds and personalities of fellow humans - has been benumbed. We have started treating people like apps.  J ust as we choose themes on our devices, we are expecting people around us to conform to templates too. We are trying to customise humans .  It is 2023, in supposedly modern India, and here is our society still brutally judging people for simply and honestly being themselves.  I cannot recollect the last time I saw an  introvert being...

..when 'keeping in touch' meant picking up the landline telephone to actually have a real conversation; when you tried to understand a person's character by getting to know them over time, rather than forming an impetuous first impression after a cursory glance at their social media handles..   ..when school classes didn't have Whatsapp groups; when, if you had been absent from school, procuring the missed 'notes' meant visiting a classmate's home to copy it, or hurriedly gobbling up your lunch to make time for copying from the borrowed notebook of your bench-mate..  ..when having nothing to do for a while would have led to sitting and gazing over whatever was happening outside the window, rather than tinkering with Windows..  ..when the opportunity to look at someone's photo came only when they showed you the glossy print of the tangible physical copy (while you tried not to smudge it too much with your fingerprints); when there was no notion of a '...

The other day, in a bookshop, I saw a kid browsing eagerly through the comic and fantasy fiction sections, after which he picked a few of the books, when his mother came upto him and replaced them in the rack saying he should read "real books". She tried to draw his attention to the non-fiction section, chose an autobiography and read something off the dust jacket, with the kid all the while gazing at it with as much distaste as if it were a jug of bitter gourd juice.  This instantly reminded me of the time during my pre-teen years when one of the adult guests at our house read the back-cover blurb of a Robin Cook thriller I had borrowed from the library, and advised me not to read "such books".  It also brought forward several similar memories to my mind, including one of my son, at six, finding an old book of mine on black holes. The breathtakingly realistic pictures having made him very curious to know what it was all about, he had flipped through it, read and at...