The Convicts

There is a letter tucked under my pillow, a letter that I would like to read everyday for the rest of my life. It says- " If happiness is an illusion, so be it. We'll put a spell of happiness on everything we touch, feel and live. Much like the weary traveler who feels and becomes one with the desert sand, dancing with the wind and shifting from dune to dune, drinking water from the occasional oasis, marching on towards paradise. " It is a letter by my 16 year old brother, written on my birthday. Yes, I am a proud sister! ( P.S. : Towards the end, the letter says- "Ignore everything that might alter your way of life and cause your life to deviate from your concept of it." It is funny how comforting a 16 year old's faith in you can be!)

Shubha Mangala Nuptial Musings 2012-the end of the world, they told us. And it looked like it because people around me were getting married left, right and center. That was still ok. I was stunned when my father told me it is time for me to think of getting married! Now that we are all of the “marriageable” age, my friends and I have discussed it over a thousand times. Almost each one of us has a different opinion about it. Everytime we talk about it the scene looks similar to one of the sessions of parliament. Each one of us tries to convince the other. And at the end of it, we hold on to our opinions the way a fanatically religious man swears by his holy book! One of my friends, a girl, let us call her A, is of the opinion that we should leave it to our parents. They will look for a good life partner for you. And if something goes wrong, you can obviously blame it on your parents! Now, I must tell you the premise behind her judgment. A and I (that is me, and not a th...

Harry potter-the boy who lived, made news for quite a long time. Here is a story about the lady who lived- real and hitherto untold. The story is old, very old- It is so old that no one knows the exact year of its beginning. It starts somewhere in mid 1950s. A little girl, 16 years old, lived in a small village in Maharashtra. Her name was Hira. She was fair, beautiful but really short- 4 feet 9 inches tall. She had failed 4 th class and had never travelled beyond her village. She was soon married off to a handsome, young boy named Nana. At this point, I should tell you a little about Nana. Nana grew up in a small village close to Hira’s. After his father’s death, his uncles took away all the farms. That is how Nana happened to go to Mumbai. He worked somewhere in Mumbai. I don’t know what exactly did he do for a living then. He stayed in a chawl-one room was all that he had to himself. He had a younger sister.  His sister and mother stayed back in village. He was 21 when he got ...

                The other day someone made a comment-“I will never look at my marksheets ever in my life again! Why bother about these!” For a moment I thought it’s true. And then I thought- when I tell people that I have been a topper, that I topped my school, that I was amongst the top 5% in my class at the b-school I studied, it will all be insignificant. And I thought again- Actually, those marksheets were the outcome of a process, a process that was more important to me.                 I topped my school but I did a lot of other things as well- was chosen the best cadet and the best guide, won national elocution competitions and won medals in Karate. These things were more important to me. At that time, topping the school was just about that-topping! There was nothing else to it. I had to do it everytime because it had become a matter of my ego. And so it contin...

For graduation, I left Satara and moved to Poona 6 years back. My sister followed me 3 years later. I stay in Mumbai now and my sister stays in Poona. My younger brother,Vijayendra, stays with my family in Satara.Vijayendra spends most of his days alone because my mom and dad, both work. My cousins shifted to a new place. A lonely childhood is probably the most terrifying thing to face. But when I read these lines written by my li'l brother recently, I realized that he can take care of himself. title-sugar on the window sill there was a time when i was down i noticed the caramel which was was brown made from the sugar on the window sill i started laughing because i was not so feeble feeble as the sugar turning into caramel i took the oath of keeping my soul on the highest levels to do wonderous marvels the end

                The first time I saw him, his eyes were red from the lack of sleep. Or probably from last night’s hangover- who knows and who cares! I was least interested in the untidy man sitting in the corner of the room, working on a laptop. We, I and my project partners, were standing in the ten by ten (10 ft by 10 ft) room of that office to get the PCB of our final year engineering project made. Our project guide in the college was a shrewd, old man who wanted us to work on the project because he could not make a chip work. He wanted us to do it for him, fully knowing that the chances of our failure were high. Though he could not teach us much about our project, he put us in touch with Mr.Manish Gupta, the person who made the finest PCBs in town.                 Gupta Sir was a great engineer. H...