The Deshmukh home in Pune had slowly turned into a pressure cooker. Not because of money. Not because of chores. But because of opinions. Every evening, the living room became a battlefield of loud voices and louder judgments. Baba and Ma argued about policies that neither fully understood. Rhea, home from college, dismissed everything as…
Dussera, that radiant festival of right action, arrives each year with the crackle of burning effigies and the age-old lesson blazing brighter than any firework: good must triumph over evil, and our actions… not just our intentions… reveal our true values. It is a time for clarity, for moral courage, and, one would hope, for…
For ten vivid days, the air thrums with a fervour unlike any other. One witnesses countless men….. fathers, brothers, sons, husbands….. fold their hands, bow their heads in profound obeisance before towering, resplendent idols. Durga Puja unfolds in a spectacle of devotion, a vibrant celebration pulsating with energy, artistry, and a powerful symbolic narrative: the…
It was a Tuesday. The kind of day that smells like diesel, disappointment, and the faint whiff of my own irrelevance. I was in Chembur, sipping my overpriced black plum juice…..yes, black plum, not jamun. I say it that way because the fancy café near my house calls it “black plum juice” and charges triple…
The chalk dust in Masterji’s classroom was the smell of dreams, and for a long time, Rohan felt he wasn’t allowed to breathe it in. At ten years old, his world was a silent scream of frustration. The letters on the page were a malevolent swarm of black ants, shifting and swarming, refusing to make…
In our residential colony tucked into the folds of suburban Mumbai, where I spent my childhood, the Ganpati festival was not just a religious observance…….it was a transformation of space, spirit, and sound. The lanes, usually humming with the quiet rhythm of school-going children and evening news bulletins, would burst into life. For ten days,…
This June, after the horrible dowry death case of Vaishnavi Hagawane in Pune, I wrote of the dowry system not as a relic of tradition, but as a living wound …..festering beneath the surface of domesticity, masked by rituals and respectability. Today, that wound has bled into public consciousness once again. In Greater Noida, on…
The rain wasn’t falling; it was a solid, shuddering wall of water. For three days, it had bludgeoned Mumbai, turning streets into raging, brown rivers. For Arvind, the test was simple: find dry land. The pavement he, his wife Priya, and their two-year-old son Chotu called home was gone, submerged. Their cardboard shelter was a…
I’m not one for religiosity, nor do I seek to promote any faith. But epics like the Mahabharata, Bhagwat Purana etc. speak to something deeper than belief ….. they speak to the human condition. On this Janmashtami, here’s a reflection on Krishna ….. not as a deity, but as a quiet presence in our everyday…
Seventy-nine years free. The flag flies. Pride swells. We breathe sovereign air, speak unchained minds. Yet beneath the anthem’s echo, a deeper tremor: shame. Our freedom is scarred by self-inflicted wounds. Look…….. • Women, revered as goddesses in myth, stalked as prey in streets. • Animals, embodiments of grace, met with casual, crushing cruelty. •…
