Many years ago while doing my Masters in Literature, we had a professor named after an eighteenth century English poet. Now, this professor loved to dissect poetry, and I didn’t. I loved poetry for its fullness, whereas he, like a surgeon operating on a patient, looked for its soul in…
Robert Clements is a journalist and newspaper columnist. With an estimated 6 million readership, his column, Bob’s Banter is published in over 30 newspapers and magazines in nearly every state in India, as well as in the top newspapers of Bangladesh, London and Dubai and is also translated into Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu.
Doctored Discounts..!
With hospitals competing hard for business, I see the day fast approaching when their marketing departments may start working overtime to get customers. In my very vivid imagination, the phone rang at home this morning. “Who was it?” I asked my mother, as she put down the receiver white faced…
The Right Touch..!
Two ‘touching’ scenes come to my mind: One is a national leader going round the world intent on touching everyone he meets internationally by hugging them, and another, again a national leader but in the opposition going round the country, first in a walk across the nation and otherwise just…
Arresting Journalists..!
Many, many decades ago, while riding my motorbike as a teenager, I crashed into a car and was badly injured. At least the blood all over made others feel I was terribly hurt and the ones in the car, who were actually mechanics and were testing the brakes of the…
Don’t Shoot the Messenger..!
In the good old days when kings sat in their castles and sent their men into battle, quite often, guards from his fort watchtowers would shout, “Lone horseman riding to the fort!” And soon, they would identify him through his banner as one of their own, coming from the battlefield…
Man In The Arena..!
His name was Kumar and he was my best friend in school. A little fellow, compared to me, who was lean and lanky, he was short and squat. Kumar was a fighter, he could knock out any guy in class, and most kept away from his tough hands. But one…
Fig Tree or Mustard Seed..!
Many of us think that having faith is an option. We quite often envy those who have faith saying we wish we also could be like them. But if we were to go into the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus encounters a fig tree, we will find to our shock…
Cutting Vegetables..!
I wrote this as I sat at a home for the aged and someone I’d come to meet over there hadn’t turned up so I had a little time, and I pulled my iPad out and started to write. ‘As I look up I see the most serious activity going…
No, Never Alone..!
Many years ago God gave my wife and me a wonderful anniversary gift. Our younger daughter had been selected for the Miss University contest. She was only sixteen, the youngest among a group of eighteen, nineteen and twenty one year olds. There had been two thousand applicants, narrowed down to…
Interviewing a World Champion..!
My phone rang as I drove home one night many years ago. It was from a newspaper I wrote for, “Would you like to interview Evander Holyfield, the boxer?” “Ofcourse,” I said and images came to me of a badly bruised boxing heavy weight with a part of his ear…
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.