Happy Mother’s Day

Just a few days back, my brother was reminiscing about when he took Mom to Breach Candy Hospital for her first MRI for a condition that would painfully take her life very soon. An MRI machine was something totally new and seemed like a space-age, scary machine and my brother was worried about how Mom…

Instant Life!

I happened to be looking at my Savings and Credit Card account statements today and all I can see is Amazon, BigBasket, Amazon, BigBasket, Swiggy, Zomato, FlipKart….repeat ad infinitum!  And I don’t think it’s just me. If I stand at my gate, I can see these guys dropping off package after package through the day…

Why not? So what?

On a Saturday evening stroll, my wife and I caught sight of a woman walking about 15-20 feet ahead of us. She had one of the most astonishing figures we had ever seen on a woman. She was very tall and beautifully built, and her superbly stitched evening gown shimmered like liquid silver on her…

Put the pedal to the metal, man!

We remember the Red Sea trip for many reasons – the extremely long drive in the summer heat, the superb road through the beautiful and ever-changing desert landscape. And then the lush greenery of the hill station of Abha, which came like ice cold relief after driving under the harsh glare of the sun for…

Doubting Thomas!

A doubting Thomas sent me a message questioning the unavailability of a camera on my Red Sea trip. He probably lives in Saudi Arabia now and it may seem inconceivable to him that we didn’t have a camera on us. I can understand where he is coming from though. This was almost 25 years back…

Beizzati on the beach!

Long back, our group of 3 couples and children undertook a long driving trip in peak summer from Riyadh to the Red Sea via other places. We landed up at the Al Birk beach, a stretch of sand with a few bare tents for rent and nothing and nobody else in sight. An Arab guy…

Me and my darn lawn mower

You could say machinery is my Achilles’ Heel. So not surprisingly, by the time my wife and I huffed and puffed our first lawn mower out of its box, it already looked like a monster emerging from its lair. I skimmed through the assembly instructions nonchalantly, not wanting my wife to know that I had…

Honeymoon Dampener!

We made a quick dash to Mahabaleshwar, a hill station near Bombay, for our honeymoon. It was short mainly because I couldn’t get leave but more importantly, that was all we could afford. We had made meticulous expense calculations for travel and stay, even choosing an all-inclusive hotel which would give us three meals on…

Biscuit Lessons!

I was buying some milk and curd kind of stuff from my corner shop when an old beggar lady appeared asking for something to eat.  I live very near a temple, so I am familiar with the beggars in the area as they are with me, especially their children. Many of them take shelter on…