It’s only 6 in the morning and already Manhattan is in a frenzy. Cars honking, buses groaning, and joggers zooming past like they’ve got to beat the stock market before breakfast. I do my morning walk beside the East River, wondering whether this city ever sleeps, or if sleep here…
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.
They are Not Weak..!
There’s something about silence from a smaller person that emboldens the bully. Gives him a sense of victory. Makes him think his sticks, fists and false cases are powerful. With growing disbelief I’ve seen nuns—yes, those gentle, sari-clad sisters who’d sooner cradle a child than carry a protest sign—being bundled…
Handling Disappointment..!
So, there I was, staring at my phone, waiting for the “ding” that never came. The email? Never arrived. The contract? Not mine. The publisher’s call? Silence. Disappointment! Oh yes, that old friend. Shows up uninvited, sits on your chest like a cement block, and refuses to leave even if…
Tall Men Don’t Bend..!
There’s something majestic about a tall man or woman walking straight and proud. And no, I don’t just mean the ones who make you crane your neck at the airport. I mean those whose stature lies not in centimetres but in conviction. But what do we see today? People hunched….
You Who Survive..!
Oh how I relish my morning coffee, and it was while I was into my third cup this morning—that I stumbled upon a video that made my heart pause mid-beat. There he was, Dr. Jonathon Blake from Pennsylvania. A firm atheist, logical to the point of clinical coldness, the kind…
Pushing Past the Too’s..!
It was a few days ago that I visited my cousin in New Haven, Connecticut, and met his fifteen-year-old granddaughter. A tall, graceful young lady with a confident stride and a sparkle in her eye. “I want to play professional basketball, Uncle Bob!” she said, her voice brimming with youthful…
The Arrogance of Our Nation..!
Arrogance, my dear reader, is not a trait you’ll find in confident people. It’s what you find in people who haven’t found themselves. And unfortunately, it’s become the new national dress code. Not khadi, not cotton, not even designer FabIndia—just pure, unadulterated, pompous arrogance stitched with a rope, not thread…
A Vice-President Resigns..!
Seventy-four. In most families today, that’s the age you’re expected to finally go on that Europe trip, take up pottery, or chase your grandkids around the living room—not resign from the second-highest office in the land! But that’s exactly what happened. Our Vice President, seventy-four and still sharp as a…
A Country Crippled by it’s Past..!
Quite often—no, delete that—very often, a good psychologist, especially the expensive kind who has a couch and not just a chair, goes deep into a patient’s past. “Tell me about your childhood,” they murmur soothingly, while you clutch a tissue and recall how someone snatched your lollipop in class three….
Woman Caught for Shoplifting..!
Have you seen that video? The one where an Indian woman in Los Angeles is caught shoplifting, her cart bursting at the seams with loot not paid for? No expression of guilt. No whisper of remorse. Just a flustered, frantic face—because she had been caught. Ah yes, that scared expression:…
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.