tera bharat ma[ha]an

we dont usually take too kindly to people questioning our fealty to our country. after all our first career option was to die for the country [or at least make others die for theirs in defence of our land - cant allow such liberties after all].


recent exposure to the land of Gs has made us wonder if the ol' spirit continues. 3 ministers / CMs in the dock, 1 PM looks about to dock somewhere and two of the 3 ladies who make indian politics so entertaining look like they wont dock anywhere at all! [the 3rd one resembles a sphinx so we will reserve comment].


we also seem to be seriously considering a murderer and a doddering right-winger as potential PM material if god forbid we turn to the right in the next elections [btw, since the chinese cannot pronounce the alphabet 'L' and usually replace it with 'R', we are not surprised they dont have democracy...]


and bombay looks like she has been forgotten in the garbage dump. we are convinced its time to make bombay a stand-alone entity with its own governance. follow the dobuy principle and allow in people with specific skills for specific periods. crack down on nastiness and people spitting on the roads. and make people from bombay the leaders of the city, not from god-forsaken village or provincial town somewhere in the wilds of the state to which she is sadly attached.


any comments...?

a 'mom'entous occasion!

we are fortunate to have a mother [several million dont]. and last week we were fortunate to be able to celebrate a significant moment in her life - her 75th birthday! coming just a day after the guv'nor's 81st, we did feel a strange euphoria that our parentage, while of a fairly advanced vintage, can manage to rock!

our mother has been a mother since she was 20 years old, so a good 55 years of her life have been spent in motherhood. making her an expert at this very confounding art! we are the youngest child and according to our siblings have been a pest between the ages of 1 month and 480 months, after which faints spots of wisdom began dawning on us. however we can assert with all the authority of our 480 months that she is a mère sans pareil! she has put up with a less than ideal son [flunking undergraduate studies, choosing career options that still don’t make sense, remaining a bachelor even after 516 months and so on and so on] without any hint of disappointment or angst [guess all mothers are good actors as well!]. she was also responsible for us coming up with the invaluable concept [flicked from a tv serial] that ‘mother is the necessity of invention’! many a time has this saved our miserable hide from punitive measures!

we have been away from home and hearth for nearly 6 years. the weekly 15-minute call and the annual 30-day hey-mom-whats-for-breakfast-lunch-dinner-inbetweens barely helps to bridge the gap.  on the other hand we feel that her stoicism and faith in her karma [inherited from her mother, who is another story by herself] make her cope with this as well, and we continue to be away with this false hope.

happy birthday mom, and for a present we can only offer you a better future!


p.s.: this is also a requiem for another mother in faraway london who is doing rather poorly but can take heart in the fact that her daughter and son-in-law are doing everything they can to bring her round. hang in there both!