In the good old days when public speaking was an art, many enrolled in classes to learn how to have confidence in themselves, how to convince people and thereby control a situation, which were known as the three Cs of public speaking. Cicero, in his Roman toga, used deft hand…
Shut Up and Start Listening..!
If there was some mechanism that could amplify all cell phone conversations taking place at once, the sound produced would be louder than an earthquake or bomb blast, a rumble worse than a giant drill tearing into a concrete road! Once upon a time we saw people walking around in…
Some Stories Never End..!
She opened the bathroom door. He lay dead inside. She called me, her voice hysterical. They had, had a drink the night before, and another and another and another, and he already with liver ailment had staggered to the bathroom and she to bed. It was not a bed she…
Majority-Minority Syndrome..!
The dog was not in his best spirits. “Anything the matter?” I asked. He didn’t bother to look up. “The dog is not in good spirits,” said the wife to me. I nodded and waited for others in the house to make similar comment. “Listen,” I told the dog, “I…
Coffee and Consistency..!
My morning coffee, which is over a jug tall, is my addiction, but about a month ago, narry a day went by when the taste of those exquisite beans did not surprise me anymore. The coffee powder was the same, the water I was sure couldn’t change much, the coffee…
Painting a Rosy Picture..!
Was at the Holocaust museum in New York once and as I walked in tearful silence, past horrible pictures of concentration camps, faded pictures of pretty girls, anxious mothers, despairing fathers and eager sons who had been murdered; six million of them in the gas chambers, I realized the weapon…
Fake News..!
Most of us constantly get different convincing audio and video clips in our whatsapp inbox: Why are they so convincing? It’s quite often a harsh grating voice of a politician and with cleverly worked out fictitious facts and figures, convincingly padded and parceled into believable packages, the audio goes viral!…
Walking or Treadmilling..!
“It’s raining in January!” said my treadmill with a black disgruntled look. “So?” “Why did you go for a walk in the rains, you could have used me instead!” “What could you have offered me, “I asked, “that is better than my walk outside? Could you have offered me the…
Taking The Easy Road..!
We walked towards the mountain, my friend and I. We knew we had to cross to the other side. We had heard, the valleys across were full of milk and honey, that jobs were aplenty, people sweet and friendly and opportunities enough to achieve our dreams. But we also knew…
Police were Mute Spectators..!
A line appearing almost daily in newspapers, after murders in broad daylight, religious places vandalized, or assaults committed is that the ‘police were mute spectators!’ I decided to visit a police station on the wings of my rather vivid imagination and find out why policemen had become mute spectators. ‘Sir,”…
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.