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…
Dark grey stilettoes
My wife and I were just strolling along window-shopping in the mall when suddenly she asked me, “Wow! Did you notice the stilettoes that girl was wearing! Instinctively, I asked, “Which girl?” It was a genuine question. (Later social media told me that this is the best and safest response to such questions.) But really,…
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…
Life’s Lemon Lessons
I was out on my post-dinner walk. It was quite late. Under one dim street light on my street, the old man was talking to a younger man. I had seen the old man a few times, pushing a handcart with a small pile of lemons around the area. He usually parked his cart for…
Casting pearls before the swine
Once, there was this man who wanted to be the best pig farmer in the world. He had always loved pigs. From food to medicine, they provided a lot to mankind. To him, therefore, pig farming was a noble occupation. When he was young, he would stop by the pigsties in the farms nearby and surreptitiously…
Miracle in Arabia
In the spring of 2000, four couples, including my wife and I, were trying to decide on a holiday destination. After a lot of discussions, we finally narrowed it down to a combo trip – Jordan with Greece or Italy. But one couple had already been to Italy so that almost ruled it out. Two…
How I was Lost and Found!
It was my grandfather who gave me this OCD – Obsessive Cricket Disorder. The old man was crazy about cricket. He used to take me to see the Ranji matches at the Brabourne stadium. Those days Test matches were few and far between and Ranji matches were taken very seriously. The stadium used to be…
Masjid Memories!
I am sure all of us have memories of things that we did when we were younger, things that we wouldn’t even dare to think of doing today, things that make our stomach churn or our knees go wobbly. Decades back, my younger brother, his wife and me and my wife travelled by train from…
Cleaning up after yourself
Many years back, my wife and I attended SRK’s show, Temptations at the Allstate Arena in Chicago. It was one crazy show, with people screaming their lungs out, girls sobbing, crying, shouting “I love you, Sharukh!” over and over again even though there was hardly any chance of being heard above the deafening sound system.…