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, […]

Roadside Buddha and the Meaning of Life

What is the meaning of life? How does one attain happiness and, more importantly, hold onto it? These are the type of introspective questions that are bound to pop up in one’s head when you forget to bring a book along, your phone is about to die, and the person in the seat next to you has made it clear that they would rather pretend to fall asleep than talk to you.  As the sun is a sullen red ball about to dip over the horizon, traveling by bus during the afternoon is perhaps the best time to indulge in actions, lazy cousin: introspection.  Just make sure to fulfil all the requirements mentioned above in addition to a window seat. Because no amount of explanation […]

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 […]