Seventy-four. In most families today, that’s the age you’re expected to finally go on that Europe trip, take up pottery, or chase your grandkids around the living room—not resign from the second-highest office in the land! But that’s exactly what happened. Our Vice President, seventy-four and still sharp as a…
A Country Crippled by it’s Past..!
Quite often—no, delete that—very often, a good psychologist, especially the expensive kind who has a couch and not just a chair, goes deep into a patient’s past. “Tell me about your childhood,” they murmur soothingly, while you clutch a tissue and recall how someone snatched your lollipop in class three….
Woman Caught for Shoplifting..!
Have you seen that video? The one where an Indian woman in Los Angeles is caught shoplifting, her cart bursting at the seams with loot not paid for? No expression of guilt. No whisper of remorse. Just a flustered, frantic face—because she had been caught. Ah yes, that scared expression:…
A Catastrophe is Not Bad Karma..!
Someone turned to me the other day and said with great philosophical finality, “Well, it was his karma, no?” The statement was in reference to a young student who had plunged to his death as a footbridge gave way in his town. Karma? Really? Not poor maintenance? Not substandard cables…
An Indian Makeover Is a Must..!
Was chatting yesterday with an editor of an American magazine. Now she may have looked like the average Manhattan professional—coffee in one hand, laptop in the other—but she was born in Taiwan. “My country,” she said, “is tiny. But look how the world guards us.” Guards them? You’d think she…
The Captain, Compassion, and Suicide..!
The world, it seems, is no longer whispering. It’s murmuring loudly, speculating wildly, and pointing fingers with grim certainty at the cockpit of the doomed Air-India aircraft. “Suicide,” they say. “The Captain was depressed.” And with that, the captain of Flight 171 becomes both accused and judged—without trial, without evidence,…
Andy the Ant..!
“Humans,” sighed Andy the little Ant, flattening himself against a cracked tile, “have only one purpose in life: to kill us!” His mother, veteran of many a kitchen swabbing raid and the Great Pest Control Genocide of 2025, didn’t flinch. She calmly adjusted her feelers and said, “Come, Andy. Climb…
Hugging the Wrong Curve..!
It was a line I read years ago, tucked away in a traffic police safety article: “He crashed because he was hugging the wrong curve.” You see, he wasn’t steering into the curve on the road—he was busy canoodling with the curve beside him. Yes, that’s right. One hand on…
A Bhangra ‘Abide With Me’..!
The other day I was humming “Abide With Me” under my breath—yes, just quietly, reverently, in my usual out-of-tune baritone—when someone at home (I won’t mention who, but she’s usually quite fond of my ‘music’) wrinkled her nose and said, “Could you not sing that? It sounds… mournful. Like you’re…
There’s Dirt Beneath Your Feet..!
Over the years, I’ve felt rather smug about my eyesight. Never needed glasses for anything except reading. While friends began peering over bifocals, I’d flash my eyes proudly and hit a four in local cricket matches. So, there I was, strolling down the genteel streets of Manhattan’s Upper East Side,…
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.