Wrong Questions, Wrong Solutions..!
The municipal elections in Mumbai are over, the banners have been taken down, the loudspeakers have finally fallen silent, and the city has returned to its favourite sport: complaining. I am part of a WhatsApp group of reasonably educated, well read, English speaking citizens who proudly discuss world affairs, stock…
The Lost Uncle and Aunty Generation..!
What troubles me today is watching highly educated uncles and aunties forwarding messages with the same enthusiasm with which they once forwarded marriage proposals and birthday greetings for their children. Take for example the recent message doing its grand parade on WhatsApp. It shows our foreign minister apparently shouting at…
My Harmonica and Our Country..!
My wife gifted me a harmonica for my birthday. Not because she thought I needed a new hobby, but because she had not heard me play for a long time. I had a few harmonicas already, but they had been lent out to my grandchildren, who, after producing sounds that…
Political Leaders and Their Pics..!
Every morning I open the newspaper, and what greets me? The smiling, smirking, sneering faces of our political leaders. I go for a walk, and there they are on giant billboards. They are there in advertisements for roads, in government schemes, even on electricity bills. Sometimes I wonder whether I…
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…
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.