Raining Thoughts

 A fond farewell to the old, as a bold 2022 unfolds. Power naps are super productive! It’s after one such snooze that I woke up to the impulsive, yet intense resolve to publish my first book. I don’t think I ever foresaw myself accomplishing the mission until that moment, when the thought almost exploded in my head like a supernova.  If 2020 was about surviving the colossal disorientation, 2021 was all about re-building the bridges & re-connecting with the self (that seemingly had been paused), as well as, with others. It was also about giving in to the now unpaused otherworldly biddings of the brain – in my case, resulting in Earth Sky – my first book of poems. The burning desire within, finally transformed into reality.  2021 made us work hard, & hope harder! The Cabin fever state-of-mind apprehensively gave way to a sneak peek of the mountains, the rivers and the back waters too - perks of working remote from God’s own country for a whole year! The post-pandemi...

  Guess life is never complete without rewriting a fairy tale. Scouring away cinders off the cold hearth at night, Ella wondered, ‘Will there ever be an end to this misery?’ As if negating her hopes, Ella heard her stepmother thunder from upstairs. "Ella, are you dreaming? If you have scrubbed the kitchen, come upstairs, make my bed and wash my feet." Ella lived with her stepmother and her two stepsisters who had always been mean to her. Days passed on in drudgery. Deep within, Ella knew she was meant for something better in life. “What is my true calling?”, Ella would ask her reflection in the water barrel, to the squeaking mice in the barn and to the scudding clouds in the sky. “What do I really really want?” One day, an envoy from the palace arrived with an invitation for the young ladies of the house. A royal ball at the palace! The crown prince was looking for a bride. Ella helped her sisters prepare for the ball. The ladies were particularly careful in keeping Ella ...

Sorry, I was talking on mute! Yes, this monologue thrived on, until one fine day the mute button on my phone decided to take a vacation during an office call – opening the floodgates of cacophony emanating from my household to the other side of the cosmos. Microcosms, rather! Each family, a little universe now – with its own chaos and controls.  The new normal is creating novel ways of doing everything – from launching the next big technology that can transform lives, to chopping onions. The world stands transformed. The world is working from home - as the only ‘home' we’ve cohabited in this universe takes a breather. A COVID-19 medical leave, maybe! Pigeons crossing the street, peacocks patrolling the alleys, lions snoozing on the tarmac and roosters out for a walk in the park giggle teasingly at us from our digital screens, as we gaze on wordlessly, mute buttons still on, juggling the chaos of an overwhelming shift in our day-to-day lives, devising new ways to numb the ...

Millions of years ago, inspired by the flames and sparks of nature, humans set forth to reinvent the idea of fire. The turning point came when he mastered the blaze, and controlled its use to redefine his own existence. What made all the difference was of course execution, and the continual process of its betterment, without which we would have faced extinction as a race, long before.   The noted American scholar Mark Van Doren once quoted, “Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.” Ideas are ubiquitous. Nonetheless, the worth of an original idea lies in how scalable and innovative it is. And the only way to bring out the true value of an idea, lies in its execution.   Not everyone can make an idea work. Take, for instance, the case of the rise and fall of the internet pioneer, Netscape. In spite of being the browser that introduced the world to the web, they were beaten in the long run, first by Microsoft with their strong ...