Desperate men and women all over the world, look with stricken eyes at each other, the rich keeping a social distance and the poor, having no place to keep that luxurious space between. “God SAVE us!” people, the world over cry. And then hush, I hear my mother’s beautiful voice…
Love, During This Virus Time..!
Two members from my housing society have decided to lend a helping hand to those in the colony, the elderly, sick and differently abled who are finding it hard to manage in today’s lockdown. They have identified twelve such families and even as I write, they are going from house…
Make Loud Mistakes..!
A few years ago, I was invited to sing for a choir, for a concert they were practicing for! It was a whole new lot of choristers and very new music I was going through. I followed what I’d always done; sung out and in doing so made a mistake,…
Police, Beating Up People..!
I’ve been seeing videos of policemen thrashing men and women venturing out of their homes during curfew, beating them mercilessly with their lathis, and under the forward of one such video was a comment from the sender, “I support the police for this action!” I wanted to send a rejoinder…
Soap..! ( A True Story )
’Twas the most unusual of gifts, a hamper full of different soaps! Now, don’t make fun of me dear readers for receiving this gift, I’m sure there be many who will, say, ‘Bob, you must have raised a stink with the speech you gave for them to have given you…
How to Handle the Lockdown..!
What’s it, you’ve been doing the last couple of days of the lockdown? Played some of the board games recommended on WhatsApp groups? Heard jokes over the phone from husbands about ‘housework’ they plan to do? Or seen music videos circulated, most of them religious music, by some who had…
Clap! Clap! Clap! at 5 pm..!
And as I joined my nation at 5 pm, clapping, what I heard were not just the sounds of two hands joining together to produce applause, no, what I heard was unitedness, togetherness, a singleness of purpose, a collective positivity, a unanimous feeling of bonding, shoulder to shoulder, hand in…
Barn Building and the Corona Calamity..!
Suddenly, arrogant, loudmouthed leaders of the world, some closer home, who with sneers, jeers and taunts, poked fun at others, have changed their tone. Some had great plans to reshape demography, recreate borders and rebuild their nations, using cunning, clever and Machiavellian ideas, they had even stolen from the handbook…
Happy Inside Your Heart..!
A beautiful brochure caught my fancy; there was a picture of a blue river, with villas on either side, and each villa having its own swimming pool. As I looked at it, I thought of my own villa in Lonavala, I’d sold, when I’d got into full time writing a…
If His Eye Is On the Sparrow..!
She was over ninety years, yet prim and proper, and still as lovely as I remembered her during my years in school, she sat at her dining table, waiting for us, her students of a half a century back, to come and join her for tea. “Bob,” she said, after…
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.