Nature Speaks

When someone takes from youHow do you respond?Your responses may differBut mine are sealed in a sacred bond. A bond that upon redemptionWill leave humanity in a stateThat will render meaningless the best available coupon rate. You won’t stand silentWhen you are wronged.How can you expect of meA different song? I am custodian to millions […]

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Low visibility planning

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 […]

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Unprecedented

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 […]

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The Cabinet Meeting

  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 […]

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Come as you are

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 […]

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When the balloons aren’t for you

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 […]

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A stroke of good luck

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 […]

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Fork in cheesecake syndrome

Roman orator Marcus Cicero once excused himself for writing a long letter, saying he didn’t have time to write a shorter one. Ironic, one would imagine. But true. Brevity does take longer. And wordiness is my kryptonite. Going forward, I have taken on the challenge to keep blogs short and sweet. Speaking of sweet, I recently went through […]

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Pavement Legacies

“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 […]

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