On a visit to New York, while doing my morning quick walk along the East River in Manhattan one morning, watching fancy boats cruising down, the water gently flirting with the riverbank, and on the other side, fast cars swishing down roads at breakneck speed, when I saw ahead of…
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.
Known by Friends We Keep..!
Have been watching our foreign minister, with serious, unsmiling, professional face, meeting world leaders, and having our newspapers report, how he’s told some world leader off, or put some other diplomat in his place, and we applaud, forgetting our news will never report the response he’s got, or mention how…
My Miss World..!
Two months ago, Krystyna Pyszkova from the Czech Republic clinched the Miss World 2024 title at a grand ceremony held in Mumbai, but today I remembered my Miss World: She lived behind my house in a hut for just a year. She was leader of her little gang. I’d watched…
Make Mistakes and Learn..!
Singing in one of the best choirs in the country and under the illustrious Coomi Wadia, I think I have been spoiled silly. A point she emphatically enforces is that in case a choir member makes a mistake during rehearsals or even during a performance no other member is to…
Our Soft Terrorism..!
Let’s not mince words but during the last few months, our country has been going through some pretty bad terror attacks! Yes, there’s a soft terror that’s going unchecked in our country! As I watch politicians in our country speaking what they want and getting away with it, I’ve often…
Holding the Inked Finger Up..!
It was a gathering in the country of a billion and a quarter, There were murmurs and sharp words, but no smiles, chuckles or laughter. The people were fed up, all those who’d gathered there, “What did you do for us?” they cried to those who sat on the chair….
Even Death had No Room..!
“You’ll have to move out, the building is unsafe,” the municipal engineers at the Gaza Strip had told her after the last missile attack, as they stood at her doorstep staring unashamedly at her buxom form as she cradled the baby in her arms. “Where?” she had asked silently as…
First be Faithful with Small Responsibilities..!
Ten years ago I sat on the board of a religious magazine, where a priest was the treasurer. I found he had signed eighty-seven blank checks and left them in the trust office. Doing that he felt he did not need to travel all the way to the trust office…
Life is a Boomerang..!
Last evening I was at the club and saw a man at the next table who tried to avoid my eyes. I knew why. He’d been abandoned by his friends and others because of the way he had treated them while he had held a post. Which reminded me that…
Crushed Under a Billboard..!
There’s only one purpose a billboard or hoarding serves; to be noticed! It cannot be hidden! It has to be glaringly visible! Telling the world, ‘Here I am, look at me!’ And that is exactly what the ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FEET BY ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FEET giant illegal…
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.