Let me tell you my dear readers that it is easy to write about certain issues, but quite often it is difficult to practice what you preach, and one area for me was forgiveness. One day a friend of mine, heard me angrily talking about someone who had done me…
Don’t Rust..!
The other day while singing ‘Abide With Me’ I felt the power of the lyric enveloping me completely. I returned home and wondered who it was who had composed such a powerful hymn. The little book I referred to told me it was Henry. F. Lyte, who lived between the…
Be Shy and Still Sell Well..!
It was at my cousin’s office in the business district of Mumbai decades ago that I met him. He was, according to my cousin, a star salesman, “Hear him Bob,” said my cousin, “He has the gift of the gab!” Which meant he could talk fast and easily because words…
Sunrise, Sunset..!
As my daughter left back for New York last month, my eyes were moist, was this ‘the little girl I carried?’ I wondered, and my mind went back a few years: All you fathers having daughters know that when they want something from dad, they suddenly become all child again….
If Hitler Had a Coach..!
No, not a coach to have taught Hitler to paint better, though I do believe if he’d had one to show him how to paint houses better, he would have been the richest house painter in Austria, and the world would have missed the dastardly deeds of a despicable despot!…
Let’s Go Fly A Kite..!
It was a week after the funeral. She had buried her hard working accountant husband, who had painstakingly worked from morn till sundown, risen from clerk to bank manager, sent two children to college and jobs abroad with the income, and given her a comfortable life style. It was a…
And The Land Goes To..!
Bridges can’t be finished, because they can’t get back the land from squatters, and even railways can’t expand to more tracks, because hutments have taken over railway land even as the authorities argue, whose fault it is: The senior official from the state government and the senior officer from the…
Catch Hold of the Moment
Many people I know put off something that brings them joy, just because they feel they have no time, don’t have it on their schedule or are too rigid to depart from their routine. I thought of all those women on the Titanic who did not eat their dessert after…
Lord, Abide with Me..!
Thank God for hymn writers! In the year gone by I have sought solace from the hymns of yore, playing them again and again, and the hymn I must have sung, listened to and embraced, more than a hundred times was, ‘Abide With Me.’ Fickle are the affections of men…
The Pillion’s Head..!
This morning as I looked out of my window, I saw a scooterist skidding. No pleasant sight as the bike rattled like a helpless animal and the rider fell heavily to the ground. Luckily, he was wearing a helmet, but the box he was carrying in the rear flew in…
Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.