The gutsy fighter, the dynamite man of yesteryears, is no more, having just passed on with two fat ladies (tambola language) at 88. I first met George Bhai in July 1990, when he was the Railway Minister in the V.P. Singh cabinet. I had just been elected as the National President (NP) of the All…

“The child is father of the man” is the seventh of the nine lines of the poem “My Heart Leaps Up” by William Wordsworth, written in 1802, when the poet was 32 years old. It is a line that has intrigued poets, philosophers and psychologists. I had never bothered about it, till a recent visit…

Knitting yarn is always in balls or skeins.  Leave the yarn untended and in no time it is knotted or entangled.  If you are not an old lady with yarn at the fireside, you could be a young lad who likes flying kites.  Here again the kite-string must be rolled on the latai, to prevent…

Pallu, neither Pappu nor Lallu, was a simple villager. He longed to see the Taj Mahal in Agra, one of the seven wonders of the world. All foreign dignitaries visiting Delhi are taken for a mandatory visit to the Taj. Borrowing from Dr Eric Berne’s book “What do you say after you say Hello?” the…

“Pappu Can’t Dance Saala” was a hit song from the 2008 Bollywood movie “Jaane Tu ya Jaane Naa”, a cute romantic comedy featuring the fresh faced Genelia D’Souza and the boy next door Imran Khan. It was also the title of another movie with the same name made in 2011. While penning these thoughts I…

It was a cold winter Beijing night. Joseph Xi and Mary Li were expecting their first baby. The ultrasound test showed that it was to be a boy, a wonder boy. So they had decided to call him Ren-Zi (pronounced Zuh), Mandarin for “Son of Man”, a title that another “wonder boy” had used 82…