One of the most beautiful sights of my childhood was to see little flames dancing on the compound walls of my neighbors, every Diwali: Not the colored bulbs of today, so standard and artificial, but actual little flames, and as little lights danced out of small earthen pots filled with…
Faith and Work Go Together..!
Most of us spend a greater part of our lives worrying about things not going right. Right? But did just worrying about a situation ever change anything? Did it make your wife start loving you, or your husband faithful? Or did it make a test score higher? Did it put…
An Aerial View and Ground Zero..!
It’s just been an hour since I returned from an incredibly lovely holiday, and in my imagination, a local politician standing for the state elections walks across as I get out of the car. “How was the trip sir,” he asks as I rub my back, “I suppose, you took…
Growing Old and Feeling Young..!
Today I’m growing old, but feeling young! How often I meet people who fight the fact they are growing old. Old age is a gift. I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body! I sometimes…
Solomon, Wisdom and Terrible Consequences..!
Yesterday I had written about Chief Justice Chandrachud and his tryst with faith and prayer over a judgement he made. I had brought in King Solomon as an example of a person in power who had asked God for wisdom, and had used that same wisdom in memorable judgements. I…
Do You Have a Past?
Most of us have a past! Some of us could have been alcoholics, or had an affair, or done something or other, which even though we’ve repented, is used by others to remind us of our guilt! A few years ago a couple came home for counseling, where a husband…
Stop Being Wallpaper..!
“I like artists who have something to say, not wallpaper…” Yoko Ono 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, nobody will be aware of their existence. “Come…
Our Safe Place..!
Yesterday I was invited to a party and my little granddaughter was also there. Now she’s just learnt to walk and she tottered between all the tall people in the room, and maybe to her they looked like giants. I could see a bit of fear in her and some…
A Yea or a Nay..!
Lately, in my interaction with an editor of a magazine, while discussing a priest who was suddenly supporting the ideology of an extremist organisation, I remarked that many of our priests, pastors and nuns had reached a state when we had forgotten the teachings of Christ where a yea or…
Let’s Go For A Drink..!
It was at the class reunion they met. She’d been the love of his life through all the years in school, but sadly he thought she’d never known, because he thought she’d never cared to know, since she was with everyone but him. But today, she looked at him, a…
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.