He got up with the sound of the atom bomb. Sensing something unusual, he frantically looked for his mom. As she cajoled him from the gallery, he got up and ran to the window to understand what was happening. Still too small to reach the window pane, he struggled by standing on his toes. The air was filled with smog and a pungent smell - not a smell which he had sensed before. Overwhelmed with the sight, he turned to look at his mom for comfort. It was merely 9 am in the morning, however for the first time in months, she had already showered and her soggy hair was now neatly wrapped in a towel with a fruity smell emanating from her due to the heavenly strawberry body wash. She wasn’t dressed in her casual pyjama set which was the norm for all these days. Rather she was impeccably decked up in a lovely chudidar set from Fab India with a red bindi on her forehead being the only missing element in order to complete her look. As she stretched her lower eyelid to smear some kajal, she saw he...

She was haphazardly running towards the bus stop after swiping her card at the office exit gate. She noticed her bus from a distance as she limped while balancing her dupatta with one hand and her laptop bag with the other. This was the last bus for the day & hence she had to board it at any cost. Luckily, the driver noticed her and decided to wait until she had hopped on safely - a very rare perk of being a woman in a country like India sometimes. The bus was crowded beyond an imaginable point. People struggled to chat/converse or play candy crush on their phones while attempting to balance themselves by dangling from the handles. The bus was supposed to be equipped with air conditioning - which was only in theory and certainly not in practice. The only respite - it was filled with the educated IT lot.  As the bus progressed its journey one bus stop at a time, the seats too started getting vacant one at a time as people started to alight. I looked at my watch & realised I ...

No one understands this better than one in a situation we all are grappling with - the pandemic. While we have a tendency to adopt a myopic scope of vision on this, i sincerely urge you to step back and look at the bigger picture. To cite an example, remember how people were losing their jobs early April because several companies were on a firing spree? The very same companies are now on a hiring spree and one would have never known this if we did not have the patience to stick around. As humans we are bestowed with the ability to think. While this capability should suffice to make us feel special, very often we use it to our disadvantage. How? We overthink. We visualise the worst outcome.  We brood over our past. We worry about our future. Plants & other animals do not question their motive of existence. A seed germinates and grows into a plant. The leaves synthesise sunlight & chlorophyll to create food whilst consuming carbon dioxide & expelling oxygen. Some plants b...