Musings

Coming from a Hindu family, rituals have been a constant through my life. Not necessarily happening with any defined frequency, these ceremonies take up different forms and ways. My father was never a person who necessarily believed in God, or at least he did not make his feelings known to us. My mother, on the other hand, is as pious as they come. Her ultimate, argument-ending dictum on every topic where we push her to do something is “If He is willing, it will be done”, or “I have put my faith in Him. He will make it happen”. Once that is said, there is no force on earth that can budge that immovable stone of faith. So, in all the cases of rituals and religious ceremonies, my mother has been the driving force. She, of course, firmly believes that she does not know enough to perform one, so she would simply say, “whatever we do, is for Him”, thereby

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Very many people have dealt with loss of a loved one in their lives. Death is inevitable and irrespective of how much anyone may have read about it, when it comes calling on someone close to your heart, confronting the loss square-on and dealing with it, is entirely another matter. Theory is so easy. It is practicals that is more challenging. How much anyone is missed, I think, comes down to each individual. Some cope with it far better than others. We are often quick to judge others on how they are looking and reacting following a loss. Many of us are quick to the draw in being judgmental anyway, regardless of the situation, but I will leave that topic aside for another blog post another time. Is the person crying? Is he looking forlorn? Is he looking the same? Is he/ she able to remain stoic after the event? So many questions and like so many other things, the

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News channels and media outlets have been awash with reports of the sad demise of a 8 year old boy inside the school premises in Gurugram. As can be expected, there is an outpouring of indignation and anxiety from many quarters all across the country. Times like these spark a conversation around security in schools. The bigger problem, to me, seems to be that this happened in a private school, which has a majority of students from middle to upper middle-class families only. There may be many such incidents happening throughout our country in schools in the hinterlands. Those go unreported and perhaps, happen to the less privileged, hence the lack of media coverage. As parents, even my wife and I will inquire about the measures that the school that our kid goes to, is taking, in the wake of such an incident. We want our child to be safe. Over the past many years, news of sexual abuse of

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Off late, there have been so many instances of intolerance in our country that it has become a daily news item. There is anger at seemingly innocuous happenings such as a very normal tweet by a celebrity politician about how people in a neighboring country are “just like us”. It is another matter that that nation could take umbrage at this comment! In Bengaluru, we have the intolerance against the Supreme Court verdict of granting water from the Cauvery river to a neighboring state. The city has been witnessing strikes and shut downs intermittently for a few weeks now for a number of varying reasons. It is quite a fashion nowadays to seethe at injustice and display the anger at soft targets. Sonu Nigam was the victim of social media trolls for airing a Point of View on loudspeakers and their misuse in India. I am reading the book “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari. He makes such poignant remarks on

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Recent events that played out in Tamil Nadu following the demise of the erstwhile Chief Minister proves how power hungry people can be. To even suggest otherwise, to think that the only motivation that contenders for the Chief Minister’s post had the welfare of the state or the people in mind, would be to live in fool’s paradise. The assembling of the MLAs at a resort, cut off from the other faction, the drama surrounding each person worth his salt visiting the grave of the deceased CM, oh boy! If this wasn’t all played out for power, then I am the King of La La Land! The entire episode, which is still not done, lasted for a few days and shows, once again, the insatiable thirst for power in so many of us. And who can be blamed for wanting it? I am reminded of a story that I used to listen to as a kid, in Kannada. The narrator,

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