As a student of Logic in my younger years, the first two examples of absolutely positive and negative statements I stumbled upon were, (1) Man is mortal. (2) No man is perfect. So utterly true are these sentences and so…
Category: Such is Life
Exit Motherboard
One fine afternoon a fortnight ago my desktop Titan slipped into a deep sleep, ignoring all attempts to power it on. Having mulled over the lull, the wilting grey lump in my balding skull concluded a malfunction in the circuitry…
Beyond I, Robot
It was in the early Nineties that I started reading Isaac Asimov. Goaded by lingering childhood urges, I picked up I, Robot, a collection of stories about evolution of robotics, sometimes supervised by Dr Susan Calvin, a phenomenal Robopsychologist, never…
Fungus on the Filter
The opposite of time is memories. Memories, a span with no beginning, no end, no periods, only nebulous swaths of consciousness. Memories don’t tumble terminally like the sand in an hourglass. Or tick away with the finality of the arms…
Dear Father of the Nation
“Leave India in God’s hands, in modern parlance, to anarchy; and that anarchy may lead to internecine warfare for a time, or to unrestricted dacoities. From these a true India will arise in place of the false one we see.”…
A Sliver of Platinum
I have paused for a siesta on the promenade, Faakir, Hush up the gathering commotion, that I live still.. ~Sudarshan Faakir I guess it is a pale shadow of the original. I have always had this problem with translations. But…
Breeze on the Grass
“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamouring to become visible." ~Vladimir Nabakov My dear readers, we have been together these past years. I have known…
Sam Was Sad
It was a sultry summer morning when I first met Sam twenty five years ago. My roommate was groveling for an omelet, sprawled in his bed. He had been missing his turn at cooking breakfast for the fourth day in…
A Mélange of Monologues
I was young when my family pulled out of a city to the backwaters of the country. Of the many heartbreaks I weathered, the loss of my small book club was the most debilitating. The civilisation I was uprooted from…
Flames and Ashes
It is a Sunday morning and folks are huddled up in sheets. The protesting whine of autos whisking the unwilling souls to their workplaces has been lulled for the interregnum. The birds are a riot of notes and I am…
Cold Cross Buns
“Hot-cross buns! Hot-cross buns! One a penny, two a penny, Hot-cross buns! If you have no daughters, Give them to your sons; One a penny, two a penny, Hot-cross buns!” ~ A popular Nursery Rhyme All right, then! You are…
Unreliable Skunks
Having entered a phase of life where I tend to reflect more in retrospect than in prospect, it has dawned upon me why I’ve been in love with the character of Sherlock Holmes all these years. More than his prescient…
