Even as I see most of us jumping from one activity to another, I wonder what ever happened to the moments in between. When I teach students how to write a play, I remind them that it is not just dialogue that makes a play, but the reaction from the…
The Girl on the Cover..!
It was a sad picture I saw on the cover of a magazine lying on my table; it showed a little girl crying because she was hungry! Can you imagine how she must have been feeling when the photographer took the picture? How her stomach must have been groaning, reminding…
Sweet Music In Being Booed..!
Yes, there’s music in the booing of a crowd. A music that lies within us and will only start playing when hardship or challenges or the booing of friends and enemies stirs us to try even harder in some venture where the world expects us to fail, and then we…
There’s Peace in Books..!
And as my next book, which is short stories from all over India, gets ready to be published and appear in stores and bookshops, I wonder what sort of world it would be without books. Years ago, as a child; evenings at home after sunset were spent in a book….
Poetry in the Prose of Life…!
‘When we share—that is poetry in the prose of life…..’ Sigmund Freud Found an announcement today, that the free rations for the poor were being extended for another five years. I knew without a doubt why the announcement was being made a little before the elections. But isn’t…
Hold your Breath..!
As Mumbai and Delhi exceed pollution limits, I realise there is a master plan behind all this: That even as we teach the world, through different modules and methods, meditation, yoga and a host of other techniques, now our leaders want every citizen to excel at what we teach the…
Pretty Boys Without Makeup…!
The bearded village chief and his bald deputy walked to the edge of the village for their weekly conference. This way they kept away from prying eyes and snooping ears. His bald deputy was a little disconcerted, “Did you have to treat that village chief from the cold village across…
Insuring My Assets..!
I was surprised to see a friend’s wife grinning at me this morning. My friend, a retired colonel, was a friendly sort of fellow, but his wife acted as if I were a foot soldier, too junior to converse with. “How’s business?” she asked after the grin. “I’m not in…
Pigeons, Humans, and Imbalance…!
The initial reaction over the bomb blast in Kerala, was that it was either a Muslim or Hindu group targeting Christians, and there was a lot of furore around why they would do so. Luckily it was not a member of an outside community involved. But the initial worry over…
Stretch Out and Touch..!
One day while walking in the park I accidentally brushed past a man. “Sorry!” I said. “Thank you!” he replied. I walked on a little puzzled, wondering whether I’d heard right, and then slowed down waiting for him to pass, “Why did you say thank you?” I asked. “Because you’re…
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.