Aha to Ha Ha Moments in My Life

“ Silent night, holy night” , we sang in chorus shattering the silence of the wet and cold Christmas night in Madras over 30 years ago. My throat was sore after singing “ Joy to the world ” at the top of my voice to wake up the carol weary but faithful church members. Our songs surely had the desired effect. Doors opened and we were given a warm welcome and the chukku kappi soothed our sore throats. Our carols even woke up the neighbours from other faiths, who gladly invited us in and treated us to home-cooked goodies in the unearthly hours. Our hired vans ferried us faithfully throughout the night right up to the wee hours of the day. We would encounter vans carrying Ayyappa devotees on their pilgrimage and shout halleluiahs to them and they would greet us back with Swami Saranam … Christmas also brings back memories of the greeting cards that we used to pick up from CLS – that was THE default stop for buying those lovely hallmark cards. Inserting them into their respective pas...

She buried her face into her cupped hands and cried uncontrollably. Her exam results were just out. She had failed in Math. Worse still, all her classmates had passed. Because of her failure, her school could not publish 100% results this year! "OMG, what will I do? How will I face my parents, my teachers and my friends?" Her inner voices grew stronger, the demons woke up inside her tender head…she ran out of the house.. Next morning, they fished out her lifeless body from the broken well. The dark waters had once again claimed another innocent victim. From a promising life ahead, she had become yet another faceless statistic. Buried deep inside the world of politics and glamour that had taken centre stage of the media these days. Her parents were inconsolable. “Where we went wrong?”, her parents wailed. They wondered why their only daughter had taken such an extreme step. They had given her everything that she had wanted. The latest mobile phone, her own laptop, i...

There is nothing more painful to hear in this world than the cry of a baby. The sound reached my soul above the commotion at the food distribution site in a remote village in South Sudan. My ears looked across the humanity milling around towards the direction of that incessant cry. My eyes captured the sound and the source of that cry. It emanated from a feeble baby lying on the lap of her mother. With mouth wide open near the exposed nipple of her mother’s breast, the tears had dried up on the black cheeks of the child. The cry became louder as the young mother frantically switched her baby to her other shrivelled breast. The helpless mother hugged her baby tightly to the now empty breast. Exhausted at the emptiness, the baby’s cry grew into a shrill scream.     The other women in the long queue waiting with their own babies to receive the ration of the day turned their heads away unable to watch anymore. As the cries turned into deep sighs of anguish, the dis...

After a long day in the field, I decided to wait in the shade near a small shop. Following overnight rains, the sun was out in full vengeance. While, I was waiting in the quickly receding shade of the shop for my colleagues to return, I started reflecting on the days I had spent in South Sudan. I was here for the past few months working with an International Relief Organization. Every day in line of my work, I encounter ordinary people, very poor people, suffering people. The other day, I was in an IDP (internally displaced people) camp. The people had fled their homes and had settled down in a new environment. As they narrated their tales of woe one by one, it was distressing to hear….Some of them have not eaten for several days, some of them wanted clean clothes to cover themselves up, some wanted blankets…some even mentioned that they missed drinking tea which apparently is a luxury for them. It is overwhelming to say the least to hear these stores. As I surveyed the motle...

Coming from a still conservative Chennai where she had to cover up her whole body every day on her way to college on a death mobile that is eerily named as share-auto, my daughter found Bangalore or Bengaluru if you may, to be the stuff of her dreams. Having escaped the sweltering heat of Chennai for a cool summer internship in Bengaluru, after few days she declared “ Dad, I feel like I’m in a foreign land” Stepping on to Lavelle road or la-velly road as the locals like to call it when I see  Lamborghinis zip by and Porsches parked everywhere I nod in agreement. Really? Does Bengaluru qualify as a foreign country…let us  find out: Epicurean delight The King of Good Times may have flown out, but he has left the good times intact as Kingfisher still gives the craft beer scene a run for its money. After your fill of draught beer by the pitchers, you can walk into Empire hotel well past midnight to have piping hot saadi-ka-biryani and wash it all down with a ...