Of worms and chaff

We recently were put in a position where we had to make a trip to Chennai. I wish this had happened under more happy circumstances. A close family member had taken ill and was admitted to hospital. Thankfully, he recovered, and is now in the phase of a slow but sure recovery. Our flight was long and neck-ache-inducing, but we got through it. Chennai smelled good when we got off the plane. That familiar smell of plantain leaves and dosais wafted through the air. I do not remember Chennai smelling this good. Maybe the new mayor was doing a good job keeping the city clean. It certainly was in Chennai's favor that our port of entry was New Delhi - where Instagram photos of an early morning in the airport looked artistically foggy, but in reality, that was smog - and the fog was clearly the lesser part. Where's the cursed mask when you need it. But not at the Chennai airport - which also looked nicer than when Ange and I left...9 years ago. Visiting the city one spends one's fo...

In his poem based on the fifth "O antiphon" - O Oriens , Guite plays on the word "Dayspring" as having the sense of "light" and "water". This is quite striking. Dayspring has always been one of my favorite words in the bible that refer to Christ. Guite's play on Dayspring is one that refers to essence or maybe form or maybe a state of being - "the eternal Prima Vera". Dayspring is something we can't see fully now but we will see it at our "waking" - Guite seems to be calling attention to an inversion of reality before and after death. Although we seem to be "alive" and "awake" this side of death, and death seems to be "sleep", in another sense, the other side of death is where we shall be fully "awake" when we shall be able to see Dayspring clearly because this very Dayspring has overcome death and it's darkness. This is not to say that the darkness we face on th...

There's something about "rising" that makes me stop and wonder. The sun rising over the horizon, a monarch butterfly rising out of its chrysalis, a loaf of bread rising in the oven. There's this whiff of otherworldliness to the act of rising that I just can't seem to put my finger on. Its almost as if it this process of rising is not meant to happen. That somehow it just doesn't fit in this world. Contrary to what my dear wife claims (and exclaims), I am not a pessimist. I consider myself, for lack of a better phrase, a critical realist. And my experience (short as it may be) weaves a narrative of this world, this mortal coil, as the bard puts it, winding down.. drowning.. imploding on itself. The Psalmist was right when he said that thousands fall on one side, only to be worsened by tens of thousands falling on the other. In the midst of so much falling, is my analysis of "rising" being odd, peculiar and downright ridiculous that far-stretched? I...

The Ayanavaram Tea Company This is the story of tea Made by a girl you see For a guy who didn't like it very much But the tea itself was pretty good as such. Now this guy didn't like tea at all But what could he do, to his appall This girl didn't have a coffee stall But sooner or later, for her tea he'd fall Chai tea means tea twice In the land of masala and spice So just say Chai and you'll be fine And teach the Starbucks staff to get in line Now back to our main story Of blood and guts and glory Oops sorry, that's another one I've probably had too much Lipton The girl was in her house many miles away The guy was in his, on the bay Thank God for cellular phones you might say Rollover minutes every month? Hell No way! Their first flirtatious chat some five years back Was about the different kinds of tea and snack they would serve at their wedding reception If they would ever get there in their wil...

(Originally published on Thanksgiving day 2013) That astute thinker and commentator on issues of race - Russell Peters, who also happpens to be a comedian, said something very interesting in one of his routines . He said, "The whole world's mixing. There's nothin' you can do about it. Eventually we're all going to become some sorta hybrid mix of Chinese and Indian. Its inevitable. They're the two largest populations in the world. So you can run from us now, but sooner or later..." you know. Yea, you know, you pervert. As funny as that sounds, its got that weird ring of truth to it. Maybe 300 years from now, we might all be ... beige. However, what strikes me is that Russell Peters, who has half Indian DNA, has never spoken about the racism so prevalent in the second largest democracy in the world. My country has probably the largest socially and culturally sanctioned institution to systematically segregate people on the basis of color and...

As I read this article , I wept. I wept for my nation's capital. I wept, hearing the thousands of women who had unimaginable injustices done to them. I wept, seeing the brutality with which women are treated by both men and women. I wept, stricken by the lethargy which has overcome the government in protecting women. But more than anything, I wept bitterly, seeing the apathy with which men deal with the injustices committed against women. I remember going to church one Sunday, and hearing one of my favorite pastors preach. I distinctly remember Rev. Mike Peppin's exhortation of the book of Jeremiah, chapter 17. "The heart of man is desperately evil." he said. As on that Sunday, even today, that phrase, desperately evil , sends shivers down my spine. Just think about it - Desperately Evil - that somehow a part of our ancient evolutionary instinct is to be horrendously self-seeking. That was the first thought that came to mind when I read about the grue...

Its true. Sad isn't it? Yesterday being Independence day and all. I mean, what exactly are we celebrating? 100 years of struggle to overthrow the British Raj, only to be bogged down by 67 years of self-directed oppression? The common human being in India is oppressed in many many ways. Sometimes I wonder if my fellow citizens actually invent ways of oppression - desi ishtyle, forming special oppression sub-committees and all. But you know the form of oppression that really really ticks me off? The prejudice against each and every melanocyte of dark-colored skin. Its like there is this hidden graph somewhere, that shows there must be a positive linear (almost exponential) correlation between the color of someone's skin and their worth. The lighter your skin color, the more popular, sexy, hot or generally awesome you are. And don't even get me started with how this mostly applies to women. Just thinking about this is making me punch a hole in my keyboard, which ...

Dear Mr.Swamy I recently heard that Harvard dropped your summer courses covering economics in Asia. I also heard that your article in a local Mumbai newspaper titled "How to wipe out Islamic terror" (no more available on the newspaper's website) was the cause of this exclusion from Harvard's summer course catalog. While I am sad that you, as an Indian were excluded from one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the world, I uphold their decision to remove you, sir, from their faculty. I believe anyone with a conscience would deem your article as supremacist snobbery at best and plain ol' bigotry at worst. And this underlying attitude of yours which showed its ugly face in the above-mentioned article of yours was perhaps simultaneously your worst professional move (Harvard and all..) and your best political one. Who knows? Why I consider this to be your best political move is the fact that you've roused a number of hindu nationalists in the ...

What is this thing called hope? Where does it come from? What is it made of? Having confronted an answer to these questions many times before, I presumed it would seem petty and trivial to revisit the theme. Little did I know that a singular experience would make my most colossal version of this entity that I knew well, seem almost facetious. Sometime back, I had the privilege to visit, with my friends, a home called S.H.E.L.T.E.R. (Don't mind the acronym; it stands for something I couldn't remember past the first time I heard it). There are three reasons for which I would grant a visit to be a privilege: 1. If it involves Eric Kandel 2. If it involves Eric Kandel and 3. If in retrospect, my mind seems to be reduced to a state of utter humility and "smallness" - for lack of a better word. And as you would have rightly pointed out, this particular visit fell in the third category. For this was one of the most beautiful homes I've ever been to; One filled with all t...

If "sunk in" is a feeling of being exactly what it literally means.. then I haven't been the object of anything sinking in yet. The only place i sank in was when the pilot of Air France flight AF201 made such a beautiful or gross (take your pick) dip when he took off from Chennai International airport. Air France - doesnt it remind you of the french air, french babes and french wine? No. It makes you realise that you're in cramped seats with no leg space whatsoever...took me back to the good ol' days during ayudha poojai when all the buses would be full, but no matter what, you could always depend on the Rs.105/- bus at 1130 hrs IST(Indian Stretchable Time)... Ah.. Air France..the state transport bus which could even fly overseas....what joy! Its a pity.. the air hostesses didnt look all that great.. bu they had zees francais accent zat seemz so delctable zhyou could zhus eas ees aap! one air hostess looked ok though..reminded me of greta garbo. Food was nice...if...

Who could ever forget those golden words of Tyler Durden , “You are not a unique snowflake; we are the all-singing all-dancing crap of the world.” The brilliant soap manufacturing modern revolutionary of Fight Club fame got it right in many ways… I wish I could leave it at that. OK, let me play genie and just leave it at that (for now). C.S. Lewis, in his essay Lilies that fester speaks with unabashed repugnance (quite rightly so) about culture -mongers who are so caught up in being “cultured” that there is no real acknowledgement of a Don Giovanni or the Orestaia but just some feigned rubbish worth less than nothing. Culture, in CSL’s England was the collective term for a whole set of “certain very valuable activities” like appreciating (or feigning to appreciate) literature or the arts. It was something, in a sense, attainable. But travel half way around the world and one realizes the multiplicity of the English language. “Culture” means something seemingly completely unrelated...