“Hello!” The voice came from somewhere near the floor. Now at my age, hearing voices is not something one admits easily. If I told my family I had heard a voice from the ground they would immediately stop discussing my health insurance and start discussing my mental insurance. So I…
Diplomacy and Compromise..!
There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding about diplomacy. Many people believe diplomacy means compromise. They imagine two leaders entering a room with strong opinions and walking out with weaker ones, each holding half of what they originally believed. That is not diplomacy. That is simply splitting the chocolate bar…
Be A Worthy Product..!
The Anti Conversion Bill has been tabled in Maharashtra and suddenly the air is full of panic, discussion, and the kind of serious expressions usually seen only when somebody realises the tea has no sugar. People are worried. People are debating. People are forwarding long messages on WhatsApp written by…
Uplifting our Lift Conversation..!
There is something very mysterious that happens to us when we step into a lift. Outside the lift we are one of the most talkative civilizations on earth. In trains we discuss politics. In buses we analyse cricket. In queues we offer medical advice. Sit next to someone for three…
Hammer Test or Visual Inspection..!
Yesterday morning I received a rather urgent phone call. “Bob,” said a voice on the line, “the engineers have come to check the beams and pillars of my flat.” The caller was a visually impaired gentleman who lives in a building not far from my house. In Mumbai these days,…
No Cooked Food on Our Table..!
War has finally arrived at our dining table. Not with tanks, not with soldiers marching past our windows, but with something far more terrifying. The possibility that tomorrow morning our kitchen gas cylinder might refuse to cooperate. Nothing unites a nation faster than the fear of uncooked food. Until yesterday…
No Heatwave In Greenland..!
Around where I live the temperature has climbed to forty-two degrees centigrade. Forty two. The kind of temperature where the sun does not merely shine. It interrogates you. You step outside for three minutes and return looking like a man who has just completed a marathon in a pressure cooker….
Teaching the World Cricket..!
India won. Not in kabaddi, not in gilli-danda, but in cricket. We thrashed New Zealand, and a few days earlier we had done the same to England. And that is where the comedy of history begins. Because cricket, in case we have conveniently forgotten, is a colonial game. It arrived…
A Powerless Silence..!
Something quite extraordinary has happened in our country this week. Silence. Not the peaceful silence of meditation. Not the calm silence of a choir rehearsal. Not even the slightly suspicious silence of a child who has stopped making noise and is probably drawing on the wall with a permanent marker….
A Samaritan Women’s Day..!
Today is Women’s Day. Across the world speeches are made, flowers are distributed, and social media becomes a garden of inspirational quotes written by men who still cannot locate the kitchen sink. It is a beautiful day. But as I thought about Women’s Day, my mind did not travel to…
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.