There was turmoil in the Mohan household the other evening. The kind that usually follows when cricket is discussed. Not because the TV set broke down during the Indo-Pak match, but because the Mohan parents discovered their two sons had just returned from playing cricket with the neighborhood bullies. “Playing…
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.
The Lost Art of Small Talk..!
“Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?” There you go — I’ve just started a conversation that would have gone down well two decades ago. Today, if you try that line, the fellow beside you will either whip out his phone, pretend he’s late for a Zoom call, or worse, check…
A Reason for the Traffic Jam..!
It was just a month ago, I stood at the memorial of the Twin Towers in New York. People streamed in quietly, many carrying flowers, placing them tenderly over the engraved names of loved ones who had perished in that terrible massacre. Some knelt, some wept, some whispered prayers. And…
Don’t Associate With Them..!
A few years ago, I attended a function. The choir sang like angels, and the crowd applauded like fans at a cricket match. But suddenly I was shocked, because there, on stage, smiling like a movie star at a premiere, sat a bishop who had been removed from the church….
Wanted – A Statesman..!
Our political leaders in the ruling party are getting old, and soon we will need younger, dynamic ones to lead our country. But as I watch our netas thump their chests and roar into microphones, I feel like putting out an advertisement in the classifieds: “Wanted – A Statesman. Age…
Being Human yet Invisible…!
I opened the paper this morning and there it was—big, bold headlines telling me that Salman Khan had stretched his muscular arms all the way to Punjab. Not to beat up another villain, but to rescue flood victims. The details were all there like a movie poster: 25 boats dispatched,…
Being Your Own Doctor..!
Today’s headline in page fourteen of the Times of India screamed, ‘Many Indians are treating AI as a doctor. And turning critically ill’. I chuckled—and decided to bring three people out of my imagination, one, my neighbor Ramesh who actually announced his own funeral date! Let me explain. Ramesh had…
Behind that Closed Door..!
Yesterday, it was somewhere above the Atlantic Sea, maybe higher, maybe closer to heaven, that I noticed it. A door. Closed. Sealed. Locked tighter than the vaults of the Reserve Bank. Behind that door, I was told, sat the man in charge—our pilot. Now, I’ve never seen him. Neither his…
Pretending to Play the Second Fiddle..!
Last week I wrote about people who played second fiddle and changed the world, but alongside that had written another about many who pretend to play second fiddle and find it convenient to remain doing so, because they are actually playing first fiddle. Initially I wasn’t sure there was anybody…
Nothing Fishy…!
I am inside the Chicago aquarium; one step inside and I am five years old again—nose to glass, palms flattened, dignity floating away like a bubble. A ballerina-jelly swirls past; a moody grouper regards me like a bored museum guard; a school of silver arrows turn together as though they’d…
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.