Marry go round

How time flies! Just five years back I had written a blithe article about ‘How to stay (happily) Unmarried’. I was young(er!), at college, enjoying the process of academics and marriage was the last thing on my mind. The usual things that we discussed in those days were who got hitched with whom, who was having a fling on the side, and who will (are they that serious really?) tie the knot. 

Why would you read Time's Lost Atlas

                  

A book is a lot more than just a book. Everyone has his perceptions and his choice of books. Your choice of books reveals a lot about your personality and taste. The books which you find at the Kashmiri Gate ISBT are targeted for a specific audience and those kept in a lavish coffee shop in Connaught Place are targeted for a thoroughly different set of audience. So, it is pretty difficult to give a set of reasons for a choosing a particular book. Everyone has his own reasons! Still, we tried figuring out a few of them.

Moral policing on Social networks

Social network has become the outlet for rants which can be shared with at least 500 odd friends and get little solace and peace. However there has to be little control on what and when to post. There were many social network crimes or cyber-crimes since the advent of Facebook , twitter, Myspace and many more social networking sites in to people’s lives.

Public Libraries

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”  ~Mark Twain

I could not have agreed more to it. I cannot imagine a world without public libraries, a world without beautiful books all piled up systematically, waiting to be sniffed, felt and read. My earliest memories of childhood are of a 5 year old me with my nose into an Enid Blyton book I found in my father’s bookshelf. I can still remember how I used to stand outside my school library as a kid, waiting for the lunch hour to strike so that I could get free access to all the books inside. The day I got my membership card for the local public library was perhaps one of the happiest moments of my life.

Voices of a Commuter

"Kidhar utarna hai? Door kyun block karke rakha hai?"

"Zara sarko bhaiiya, fourth seat pe baithna hai."

"Khaalipeeli machmach nahi karneka."

"Thoda push karo, jagaah ban jayegi."

"Dus ka paanch, gaanvti santra lo!"

"#*%^... #%*+..."

Mumbai local train is not called the lifeline of the city for no reason. It is the heart and soul of the city echoing the most common phrases used almost every day by almost every commuter. The train journeys aren't just from Point A to Point B, but are journeys in one's lifetime from youth to the ripe years. And through these journeys, many commuters make friends for life.

Emancipation of Hijras

The term “hijra” is very widely used term in Hindi (and a few other languages). But when it comes to finding an equivalent term in English, it is a tad bit more complex. Terms like transgender, transexual and asexual all refer to a set of people with a non-specific sexual identity but are not exactly equivalents of “hijra”. A simpler way of defining them would be to say that they are a set of people who do not fit into either of the two genders that are officially accepted in most countries, male and female.