As I watch my youngest grandchild slowly using her left hand more than her right, I wonder whether she is going to be left-handed. I watch her pick up a toy with her left hand, transfer a biscuit into it, and occasionally wave it about like a politician who has…
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.
Old Men, the World Has Changed..!
“Speak to the youth!” said one old man to another. So, they found a radio, adjusted the microphone, cleared their throats and began speaking. Unfortunately, most of the youth listening were over fifty. Old man, while you were travelling around the globe, hugging and shaking hands with other old men…
The Examination We Will Never Pass..!
“Papa, how do you know this news is true?” My friend looked at his twelve-year-old son, then at the WhatsApp message he had just forwarded to his family group, school group, building group, prayer group and one bewildered plumber. “It was sent by a very reliable person,” he said. “Who?”…
Silencing a Fifteen Year Old..!
A fifteen-year-old girl uses abusive language while speaking about the Prime Minister. Immediately, the machinery of power allegedly swings into action. Threats are made against her and her family, and soon the child appears before the public saying that she was forced to use those words. Perhaps she was. Perhaps…
Walls That Build…!
As this government insists on building walls between people, here are two walls worth mentioning. The first belongs to an old hospital building in a Karnataka village. For eighty years it had watched people come and go, until one day it looked sadly at its cracked walls and sighed. “Once,”…
Controlling Death and Life…!
One of the smallest organs in the body is the tongue, and yet there has been so much that has happened in the world because of it. In Proverbs 18:21 it says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its…
Ours, Not to Reason Why..!
A poem that fascinated me in my school days was Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade. “Forward, the Light Brigade!” came the command, and six hundred British soldiers galloped courageously into a valley surrounded by Russian cannons. There was only one small problem. The order was wrong….
Belted, Thrashed and Walloped..!
“Did you always thrash your children?” I asked an elderly father. “Of course not!” he replied indignantly. “I only used my belt when words failed.” “And how often did words fail?” “Every Saturday!” There was a time when many fathers believed that a belt was an educational instrument. The child…
Harmony Gets Softer..!
Choral singing has a habit of opening doors in the most unexpected places. Sometimes it opens the door of a concert hall. Sometimes it opens the door of a church. And sometimes, as I discovered in Chicago, it opens the door of your own rather oversized ego. I saw an…
The New Cockroach Spray..!
The White Bearded Chief and his deputy, the Bald Round Head, walked solemnly towards the edge of the village. “We have a serious problem,” whispered the Chief. “I know,” said the Deputy. “Your latest talk to the nation had hardly any listeners. Heard you are blaming the teleprompter!” “Not that…
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.