by Manju Gupta
Sometimes I wonder how things would have been without it. Would I have turned the other way at a crossroad? Been too late for a meeting, a tryst with destiny? Would I have tread a different path and met other people ? Would I have missed out on friends and opportunities or had better ones? Would I have not become me and become someone else? Intrigued? I’ll explain. I depend…
A couple of years ago I stopped watching the news. I couldn’t bear the sight of seemingly intelligent newscasters make a fool of themselves trying to fill in awkward silences with meaningless blabber. To say something when there is nothing to say. After all, how many ways can you break the same news without looking like an imbecile. How many times can you put an ill shot video clip on…
Of the many nuggets of wisdom my patients have imparted, this one is my favourite. An elderly tau once told me the secret of a happy life. With a twinkle in his eye he said,” Zindagi neh badhiya banane khatir do unche, do suche aur do lucche dost chhavein”. ( for a happy life you need two well placed, two enlightened and two unruly friends). He insisted that I shouldn’t dwell…
Two states were in the news last week and established that corpulence is rampant across the country. One posed a problem the other offered a solution. A recently concluded study pointed to the growing girth of the average Punjabi and India’s wellness hotspot Kerala became the first Indian state to impose a “fat tax”. A fat tax is a surcharge that is placed upon fattening food, beverages or overweight individuals…
Medicine is the only profession which relentlessly toils to eradicate the reason of its existence. Death is the sole certainty in life and yet doctors continuously strive to fight it. A doctor spends the better part of his youth pouring over books, borrows money to set up a health facility , seldom attends social functions, is rued for missing family occasions, skips countless meals and spends sleepless nights treating patients. …
Last week on Environment Day when the world was reaffirming its intention to save the planet, my mind wandered to Bhutan and how this Carbon negative country is different from the rest of us. I had a chance to visit this quaint land with college friends recently. We were making good a promise we had made to ourselves three decades ago. We had plenty of reasons to rejoice on this…
Universities, college campuses and students have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. A wave of unrest has hit the youth across the country. A certain amount of dissent is expected from young blood and is necessary to make educational institution a nurturing ground for new ideas. Sadly with the rise of intolerance, disagreement has been equated to betrayal. Nationalism, patriotism, and sedition have been redefined. Loyalty is…
Right at the outset, I insist that only the believers read on. Sceptics and cynics please stay away. After alerting the spoilers and grabbing the attention of the discerning few, I will recount this incredible story but first some background. We live in a small town and our Nursing Home occupies a small part of our vast compound which has a garden, vegetable patch and fruit trees. Monkeys are frequent …
She was a lowly maid. And yet thirty years after she exited my life I often remember her when there is talk about duty and honour or when incense fills the air. As a fourth class employee in our hostel her job entailed sweeping and mopping our rooms. She would also wash our dishes and clothes for a paltry payment and run errands if we asked nicely. That day I asked…
As the dust on the sedition saga was settling “Bharat Mata ki Jai” stirred fresh nationalist fervour. Patriotic and constitutional implications have been invoked by the ‘great debaters’ of our country but for most Indians the slogan is simply a salutation to the mother figure. This paradox of women worship calls for a revisit on an issue recently raised by the Union Minister for Women and Child Development. At a…