It was many years ago that I had first met him. He was the best pianist I had ever heard: Brilliant with his playing and fantastic as a composer. But it was a lot more than that; he talked with wisdom and it was a joy to listen to him…
I Can’t Breathe..!
Even as I hear the dying cry of George Floyd gasping, ‘I can’t breathe!’ I wonder who it is that cannot breathe? Is it the black minority that gasps under the weight of a white majority? Or is it the white majority that sees African Americans enjoying their same freedom,…
Anger Management During the Lockdown..!
“Anger blows out the lamp of the mind,” Robert Ingersoll. Just before the lockdown I was at a police station trying to keep a son of a friend of mine out of jail. The boy had been driving his dad’s car when he was hit by a school bus. He…
Yesterday’s Cyclone and YOUR Anchor..!
There was more fear yesterday over the imminent cyclone lashing Mumbai, than the coronavirus! Locals, spent all their time, finding out how close the cyclone was while barricading their windows, charging their phones and white faced phoning those who lived outside the city, telling them how afraid they were! A…
Turning Veg..!
After reading a full page advertisement in yesterday’s newspaper, advising everybody to become vegetarians, my millionaire neighbour a diehard non- vegetarian decided he would become a veggie. “One might as well get used to something before it becomes a law and takes you by total surprise,” he said as he…
My Nose, Her Cheeks, His Heart..!
There’s two little fellows, twins, who came into my life just over two years ago, and now as they and their mother, my daughter, are stuck with me because of the lockdown, and can’t return to their home in New York, I hear neighbour voices, “He’s got your nose Bob!”…
The Missing Link..!
Nobody had seen the boy before. “He must have come in from the forest,” the villagers said. “He is not the Mowgli type,” the wise headman said, looking at him. “Let’s take him to the city, they will know!” “He’s the missing link,” said the man at the city university….
The First Covid-19 Victim..!
“You know something,” whispered Democracy, sitting at the Lincoln Memorial, and looking ruefully at Autocracy and Monarchy, “I feel small, insignificant and very inadequate at this moment in time!” “Inadequate in handling the Covid-19 situation?” laughed Autocracy. “No!” said Democracy, “I feel that during this whole world wide Coronavirus panic,…
In Bed With A Mosquito..!
“If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve obviously never been in bed with a mosquito.” …Michelle Walker Quite often I see people who don’t want to be noticed. It’s not that they are not noticed, it’s just that they feel that by blending into the background,…
Patience with the Elderly..!
Some years ago I was trying to get an inhouse magazine ready and suddenly the printer told me he couldn’t deliver. My dad who had a small printer attached to his computer said he would get thirty copies out for me, if my mother would help him. As I watched…
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.