Captain Blackadder, “Balderick, plans haven’t gone this wrong since the mighty Viking King Olaf the Hairy received 80,000 helmets he had ordered for battle, with the horns on the inside.” Sometimes plans, no matter how meticulously thought out, can go pear shaped. We may be left clueless as to how to get from point A to point […]
Read more "Low visibility planning"Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So without any semantic frills, the message rings loud and clear – if we want life to produce different results, we must start doing something different. Given that the path to achieving something different may be strewn with […]
Read more "Unprecedented"After Shakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment, he held a meeting with all his cabinet ministers or disciples. This was called “The Ceremony in the Air.” It was time to hand over the baton for propagating the Mystic Law. Rather than entrust it to bodhisattvas from other worlds, the Buddha decided to entrust it to the ordinary people or […]
Read more "The Cabinet Meeting"For anyone who has listened to the rather baffling lyrics of “Come as you are“, I’m quite certain you’ll agree that Kurt Cobain didn’t mean to convey a Buddhist message through the song. And yet, the phrase does, at a slight stretch, bear significance in the context of increasing self-awareness. While listening to Robert Harrap’s “Pause for Thought” on […]
Read more "Come as you are"Balloons are normally associated with festivity and levity. Not for all. For the below street children in north Delhi, balloons are their sole means of livelihood. When the traffic light turns red, and the relentless zigzag of vehicles comes to a fleeting halt, bunches of skinny little children leap out from behind concrete islands of […]
Read more "When the balloons aren’t for you"My mother definitely was an alarm clock in her last life. If a wedding card says ‘7.30pm onwards’, she will be there just as the clock strikes, come hail come storm. Such Nazi punctuality is laudable in most instances. However, given that ALL Indian weddings operate on Indian Stretchable Time, she has often found herself […]
Read more "It’s time"The last week has been an utterly useless one for me, when viewed in terms of concrete work done. Down with an awful flu bug that robbed me of my voice (my husband didn’t seem too displeased at the rare silence), I lay flopped on the sofa burning with fever and feeling absolutely miserable. Though all […]
Read more "Christmas Stockings, Fairy Lights and the Gift of Flu"Good luck comes in many guises. Sometimes we may be outfoxed by the mask Fortune wears and not recognise it immediately. During my recent trip back home, I was sitting with my grandmother one afternoon, chatting as we did, when she suddenly began to complain of an inexplicable kind of malaise. She kept asking me to […]
Read more "A stroke of good luck"“A seed in the crack of a pavement grew into a tree that tore up the sidewalk.” Anonymous I had the good fortune of meeting some very interesting people and hearing some fascinating stories on my trip back to India this time. Many years ago, a very dear family friend was driving down his usual route […]
Read more "Pavement Legacies"Skyfall. M addressing Parliamentary Committee: “Well, I suppose I see a different world than you do, and the truth is that what I see frightens me. I’m frightened because our enemies are no longer known to us.” Most fear is born of uncertainty or is related to the unknown. Speaking of unknown enemies, take a […]
Read more "The Greatest Danger"
The Highest Frequency 