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Justice and its many manifestations

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Prologue: This is a short piece on justice and chicanery. Unlike my usual style of writing, this one is simpler and direct. Justice is one of those virtues which all desire but not many are willing to give. To be fair, absolute justice does not really exist in practice and God forbid if it were to exist, half of the population of the country would be wiped off. Most of us have been conditioned to believe that what is fair to us and to our interests is just. Strangely, I personally was brought up in an environment where my parents were ruthlessly just and critical, atleast on most occasions, and I never had that rare privilege of having the parental support for the slightest of the mistakes. Now this virtue of justice was gifted to me by them but even virtues have two sides to them and so was the case here. For justice, I could also turn against my own parents and fight for a case I was not even being paid for. This quest for justice has been so ardent and pressing that I ha...
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Red Data List

Over the past few months,changes were reported in the IUCN status of certain species . Among these was our adorable little Komodo dragon which moved up to endangered category and probably did a good majority of us a favour. In the same vein , the Satara Gecko saved humanity a huge crisis by getting a promotion ticket to the critically endangered bracket while its fourth cousin Yeracud Day Gecko too joined the endangered pack. While you may or may not be bothered about their IUCN statuses , I'm sure certain others would evoke your interest . Like the lesser Florican and the Finn's Weaver maybe ? And if perhaps not them still,then probably the Nicobar imperial pegion or the Mountain hawk eagle? Now if you're as cold-blooded as my goldfishes and are not affected in the slightest bit by what's happening outside the aquarium that you're swimming in, then let's do another litmus on you . They're saying that the Deolali minnow, the Deccan barb and the Nilgirimystus...
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No offense

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Last Sunday, we went for Kashmir Files. I barely ever care enough to step out for a movie but the hype and excessive promotion over and above the top around the globe got me there. Before even booking the tickets, our brains had already been conditioned enough that the lacrimal glands were almost prepared to put the best show. Honestly, I could only manage a single tear episode where Krishna failed to recognise his own parents. More out of conditioning and confirming to the amplified tones all over the internet. It was a good watch ,to be extremely precise. Highlighted the plight of Kashmiri Pandits and ventilated their long-pending grievances . More than the movie , I was startled by the crowd composition and reaction. The sloganeering and clamouring that followed appeared so brusque. The whole agenda of the movie was to acknowledge the genocide or exodus or however you would want to put it and empathize with the victims . However the whole screen-drama ended up becoming a...
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Doors

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What a creation right? Come in different shapes, sizes , colours , textures and so and so forth. They never fail to amaze me. Some can be opened and closed right away by just a little effort at the periphery of the door while others with stoppers attached take time.Some are glass transparent while others wood opaque.The best part is their utility. How safe an object as fundamental as a door can make you feel !        Here at our residence we have certain doors that serve us daily . They're a part of us now. There are certain others that we no longer turn to. That don't serve us any purpose now. Behind those doors lie some dusty snippets of past life and some  frivolous objects. For long it has been my theory that if you can go without an object for three months straight,you can go without it for life. Some say six months but I have a shorter range. I came across this T-shirt that I thought I'd never forget and never be bored of . Like always, I kept ...
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Much Ado About Nothing

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From the empty corridors of life, To the amplified crossroads .            Grandpa . 86 and counting . While I like sulking in the deserted shadows of vibrant walls ,he prefers keeping company with his sociable group of friends. While I prefer doing sleep yoga ,he goes on long walks just to keep his knees in shape or in place, whichever you find apt. While I limit my time in the Sun afraid of narking the melanin below, he basks right under ,only to end up with temperature ,on the bed next morning. While I complain about daily hitches and hiccups ,he ponders over the possibilities those hiccups could entail. While my cough stems from some undetected neurosis , his is the result of a 60 percent damaged lung. While I wake up in the morning sighing at the monotony, he opens his eyes thanking for adding another day to life . While I fail to ask him how his day was every other day, he has been adding regularly to his series of - taiyari kaisi chal rah...
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Revamping Lucknow

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Before you begin, bear in mind that this is more in the nature of a request and a teensy-weensy attempt to plant a seed in your mind,some tiny particle of thought that embodies a remnant of our inimitable culture.  To, The natives and non-natives alike, X,Y,Z colony,street,pin code. Lucknow. Dear friends, First off, hope you're doing well and even if you're not , I assure you of better times ahead.I sense you don't have much time in hand so allow me to hit the nail on the head.Of late, a lot of incidents have been occurring in the city . Incidents that shake you to the roots if you've been a part of the pristine Lucknow culture at any point of time . Incidents that push you to rethink  certain ideologies and theories . Incidents that besmirch the city's reputation as well as of its inhabitants. Incidents that finally make you think.I might sound jingoistic to some but really that will only be the case if your love for the city is any less than mine.Ever...
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Ivoried Glass Houses

 No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.Ever. That's just how most of us have been engineered and count yourself in this lot because no matter how much you deny, you must have starred in atleast one of the mentioned motion pictures.People discussing trivia at the crossroads and armchair intellectuals slapping facts ratified by the cursery readings of the elite newspapers on the faces of their nonchalant family members, alike. All it takes to create a good movie or start a war is an us and a them . Let's put the facts first and then view them through the  prisms of truth or chicanery .Last week , two state  governments came out with their population policies for the ensuing decade- Assam and Uttar Pradesh. We have had a National Population Policy for over half a century and it has paid great dividends with 24 out of 29 states having achieved total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 which is considered the replacement level (no further population growth). The remainin...
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The Economics of Friendship (s)

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 Prologue- All ye friends reading it, just in case you're wondering, it's my way of glorifying the bond we share. Please don't file a defamation suit against me. Friendship.A sweet 10-letter word , easy to buy and well easier to sell.A word that'll spam your inboxes and festoon your Instagram stories a couple of weeks from now in August if I'm not mistaken. The capital market may be incurring losses but this sprawling friendship market almost always has a trade surplus.GFP has witnessed a growth like never before.Maybe just on the balance sheet but nevertheless facts remain unchanged. Not because the value of the commodity increased but maybe just maybe because of the base effect. As I sit and take pleasure in doing what I'm doing, I see yet another example.  On the left ,you see 2 red-whiskered bulbuls and on the right 4 worm-eaters( or so I call them given that I'm not using binoculars and my glasses aren't quite pleased with me [not to mention that t...
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Odd Numbers

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  The slow motion replay doesn't show how fast the ball was really travelling-the world  watched like a hawk, the official trajectories issued by the covid hit countries and relaxed , only to get caught off- guard by the thoroughly misconstrued yorker . What then seemed like a 14-day lockdown has now been translated into an obscure inconclusive quarantine(atleast for the student community) or rather a perfunctory démarche.Three months back (when things were presumably appearing to settle down) ,all I cared about was the grass that pricked my bare feet and the noise and tohubohu around that barged in on my self-talk.Ironically, the same noise leans against the entrance of my residence today with a smirk hanging down its slender profile,chiacking me.Today as I see the sun switch shades of crimson and yellow and repeat the cycle the next day ,I wonder about the shade that would kiss the earth back to life . On a graver note, as I witness fellow citizens getting unemployed and ot...
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As you like it

 Undoing the wrongs or redrawing certain boundaries constitute those flames of desire that at some point have engulfed every aggrieved living breathing homo sapien sapien and scourged the monstrous ambitions of a number of perpetrators . In a parallel word ,some inquisitive little genes have always been hard put to stumble upon an utopian time machine that might give them a chance to probably gatecrash the Vienna conference and bring down the so-called world powers. If not that ,then some notoriously humane tasks like taking control of the "Jupiters" and "Thors" might have at least hit the brain cells of many. ‌ Not surprisingly though, if one odd morning I bruise my nose against the glass frame of a Time Machine while on my regular warp-speed morning walks around dog-legged footpaths, I would count myself in for an escapade. Honouring myself as a humanist ,I would for sure not help Japan manufacture hydrogen bombs to exact retribution from the United States of ...
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