When the Baby of the Family Got Married

“You just watch when Monty gets married,” he’d said as he brushed away his tears, “Then I’ll really cry.” This was vintage Sher Alam. Over the years, in multiple retellings of this incident, which happened when the eldest of our four siblings got married, the love and genuineness that Sher Alam, self-titled as Baati, the baby of our group, wanted to convey has never been lost amidst the laughter and mirth. As sisters and brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews came, they all developed their special equations with ‘Baati Dada’. I won’t lie; when the announcement of Sher Alam’s wedding finally came, there were definitely mixed emotions.  On the one hand, there was elation, excitement and curiosity even as to how the erstwhile kid, who, until recently, […]

A man standing in front of tank

True Power Lies in Never Having to Use Force

Let’s talk, for a moment, like the armchair analysts we are, not like the Pulitzer prize winners we pretend to be. Let us ignore the precedents it would have set and the precedents already extant for it for a moment. Let us try to differentiate between de-politicizing a situation and dehumanizing it. Let us fade out the colored lines. Forget red, blue, green. Let us revert to black and white. Let us all take a collective step back. Exhale. Let me recount an incident that happened a long time ago. When I was thirteen, I got a room of my own for the first time. It was the high point of my existence until then. I was the master of my domain, the king of […]

Ernest Hemingway writing at a table.

How to Avoid Procrastination and Write Productively

Not a great way to start your day, I’ll admit. In my defense, I was half asleep when I stepped outside to begin the morning school drop-off. If it hadn’t been for my daughter—bright and alert after an hour of Roblox while I drooled all over the couch in my bid to catch a few more z’s—I would’ve humiliated my Rafa tennis shoes, already relegated to school and grocery runs, with the occasional tennis match thrown in. Thankfully, the danger was averted. Whatever creature made the effort to climb over our motion-detecting gate and then position its posterior on the small, worn-out welcome mat—talk about taking things literally—outside our door to leave its opinion on the sudden change in London weather, has my grudging respect. […]