Despite instructions, warnings and pleading from the government to abstain from lighting firecrackers, this Festival of Lights, the pleas fell largely on deaf ears. Dense smoke and deafening blasts of crackers bursting, clearly revealed the unconcerned people we really are. The allegory of the long spoons is a parable that…


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.