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Baajlo Tomar Aalor Benu!  Today is Mahalaya, the official opening of the Devi Pakkha or the Fortnight of the Goddess Durga. The Goddess has been ushered in,....She is about to grace the earth with Her divine footsteps.  Let us all clear the dust and cobwebs of our minds and homes, and spruce these to host the Divine Mother. She Who is the Destroyer of Evil and Sloth, She who brings with Her, bounties of Peace and Wellness.  These are trying times on this planet, and we desperately need divine aid and assistance in restoring the balance and sanity of things. The Devi, who is blessed with the Third Eye, and who is Omnipresent and Ever Alert, needs to tackle several asuras in Her short stint. Her home state lies in shambles, and Her people could never be more devoid of optimism and cheer.  May She bless us mortals with Her Infinite Grace and Dignity, and lead us to awaken the Mahishasur Mardinis within our souls.   May this Durgotsab bring Joy a...

Doctors and teachers, once held in the highest esteem for their service to society, have become the new mercenaries in India. Both these noble professions have been demeaned by the current breed of money hungry medical and academic practitioners today. In India, teaching, particularly in schools, is not the preferred profession of the brightest academics. Instead people take it up for the weirdest of reasons. Women have a tradition of preferring this profession for the convenience of timings and vacations. For others, it is often the last career option, after being rejected in the selection rounds of other, more preferred, corporate or administrative positions. So we have a situation in which most school teachers are either frustrated wannabe scientists or historians, mathematicians or linguists. Since teaching is not their first love, how can they withstand its rigours and challenges? Most teachers are an over-burdened lot, with 40-50 students to manage in one class. So compassio...

Tomorrow India celebrates her Independence Day with the routine parades and speeches. A remembrance of past glories and the extreme sacrifices made by our nationalist heroes and heroines only to see the dream of freedom come true. A dream which came true eventually, albeit at a great cost and the loss of many precious lives. However, whether freedom actually came or not is still a big question mark. Freedom, yes, we had from foreign domination, but we stepped into the domination of our home-grown netas. Who have been exploiting and oppressing the common people endlessly, perhaps even more than our foreign rulers did. The poor remained poor, dying of starvation and exploitation; and some people fattened up at the cost of the ignorant masses. Women and children continue to be tortured, and beaten into suppression; religious animosity continues, ready to flame up at any instant; education still remains a distant dream; and healthcare services and sanitation still remain exclusive. We...

Another mindless Hindi flick becomes a blockbuster, crosses the 200 cr. mark. Salman Khan's Kick, hailed by everyone as a supreme no-brainer, expectedly sets box-office afire. Its really amazing, the Indian viewer's tolerance towards, and endorsement of Bollywood trash. Cocking a snook towards critics and reviews, filmmakers laugh all the way to the bank on the basis of their masala pot-boilers. A little of everything: superhero gymnastics, social message, violence, revenge, romance, eve-teasing, item song and dance, bicep flexing, and voila, you have a readymade recipe for a hit. Add an ageing hero, with a massive, crazy fan-following, and you have a blockbuster on your hands. No logic, no rationale can explain this phenomena. I wonder about it again and again, after Dabangg 1 &2, Chennai Express, Dhoom 3, Krish 3, all go down in Bollywood history as top grossing blockbusters. What is it about these films that people flock to see them? Is it the ageing hero, who epi...

Sometimes a mere moment's oversight or neglect can cause you to regret incessantly afterwards. It happened with me, when a preoccupied mind caused me to miss a step and slide down the stairs, eventually breaking my right foot bone. So now I am stuck with a heavy plaster cast starting from under the knee and stretching downwards to cover my entire foot. My orthopedic thinks it is the best guard against further damage to the injured foot. I think it is the worst load to be stuck with, and would gladly trade anything to get rid of it much before the stipulated 6 weeks time is over. But that is not to be. And so I go back again and again to the scene of the accident, and wish and wish that I had been more careful. Why was I not more alert, why did I not watch my step, what was I thinking, and so on and so forth. But one's regrets cannot bring back the lost moment, nor can one rewind and tweak life. So one has to live with unpleasant reality, however inconvenient it is. And o...

Shocking statistics as per census data, reported in Times of India (July 3, '14): Nearly 160 million women in India, 88% of whom are of working age, just remain at home doing "household duties"!! What a colossal shame! The newspaper also reports that  this is partly due to social pressures, and partly the result of economic policies that have offered no opportunities for women . Which means that even women who are willing and qualified to work are not employed because of lack of proper openings. So all the talk of equal opportunity and creating an all-inclusive workforce cannot be taken at face value. While economic policies are certainly to blame for poor growth and dwindling employment opportunities, it is also true that corporate houses have obviously not made an effort to go the extra mile. Employing married women entails making certain adjustments and tweaking HR policies, which most organizations are unwilling to do. Who wants to ruffle feathers and seem b...

A complex saga covering three generations, and vast spans of time and space – that’s how one can describe The Lowland.  Heart-wrenchingly real and relentlessly honest, the story evokes strong emotions in readers. What is right, what wrong, what is real, what imagined, what is proper, what improper, all lines get blurred. What remains is a very humane story of very relatable characters, of people who seem to come alive on the pages, who remind you of people you have met somewhere. Jhumpa Lahiri has always handled complex relationship tales in her past literary forays, but this tale is at a different level altogether. Here we have a tapestry of the complex socio-political backdrop of 60s’ Calcutta, which triggers all events and eventually shapes the fate of the characters. The Naxalite movement in Calcutta, is described in so much accurate detail, down to its gory, misplaced ideologies, how it stamped the collective consciousness of an entire generation of youth in the country,...