Quantcast
Channel: Time Traveller's Log
Browsing latest articles
Browse All 46 View Live

Are our children fast becoming beasts of burden?

There is only one significant point of difference that my wife and I have been having over the past decade: whether or not it makes more sense to move our daughter to schools that follow the...

View Article



Competing with a country called Phelps

Eight days after Madhura Nagendra, the mysterious girl in the red top, blue slacks and closely cropped dark hair joined the Indian contingent at the march past at the inauguration of the London Olympic...

View Article

Happy birthday, Junior MasterChef!

For the past month or so, my wife and I had been consumed with one thought: how should we celebrate our 11 going on 12’s birthday this year? And, more importantly, how would do we make it special?...

View Article

Disappointed – a dangerously powerful word in our cultural lexicon

Culturally, as Indians, we are all programmed to please someone else from when we are very young. We grow up seeking to please our parents, our siblings, our teachers and our classmates; as we enter...

View Article

Life begins at 40

In my early teens I found my uncle and aunts, who were in their early 40s, seriously old. After all, I was still in school and looked upon life from a different perspective: the freedom of college, the...

View Article


Can I register as an ‘angutha chhap’ please?

For centuries, graphologists around the world have written treatise and pored over samples of handwriting and signatures to unravel the deepest secrets of a person’s being, the intricacies of his / her...

View Article

Arrogantly yours…

Have you ever noticed how some people are determined to always get the last word in in every argument, discussion or debate? How they seem to wait till everyone is just about finished, when everyone...

View Article

Ganpati Bappa Moriya!

As someone who has lived in three and a half countries (I spent a couple of years travelling in and out of a country in Europe) and three metro cities in India, I have always believed that you only get...

View Article


The conditionality of human friendships

Last week I did something that I always intend to do, but rarely get the time to do: call upon friends from the past in a city that I am visiting with no reason or motive other than wanting to know how...

View Article


Thinking about brand ME

I have always been slightly in awe and slightly dismissive of people who are – or at least portray that they are - in complete control of their lives. People who always knew what and where they wanted...

View Article

The fireworks families of Sivakasi

Yesterday, my 12-year old and I were talking about what she wanted to do during Diwali… “I am not going to buy or use fireworks.” she said rather emphatically. “Why not?” I asked quizzical by the...

View Article

Should lavish buffet lunches and dinners be banned in India?

We were on holiday last week. We landed in Chennai over the weekend prior and then went on to spend the following 8-days exploring the little known gems along the East Coast Road, which arguably is...

View Article

Re-living an act of terror. Why should we have different approaches to justice?

Driving back home yesterday evening a strange realization dawned upon me as I stared at my reflection in a car window at a traffic light: other than the bereavement of my parents, there are few things...

View Article


India 2013. A time for New Year resolutions?

Come end December and people the world over start to think about the year gone by – the highs, the lows, the achievements, the failures, things to laugh about, things to worry about, new friends made...

View Article

Mandatorily philanthropic?

A shade over two decades ago, while conducting a study at Tata Steel, I remember being astounded by the work the steel major was doing in the area of community relations, social development and tribal...

View Article


By Heart it.

There are many examples of Indian English that one comes across in schools across the country. One of the most outrageous uses of the language, for a number of reasons, is ‘by heart it’ - an expression...

View Article

Run!

I always find a visit to the gym very interesting, but seriously frustrating.  As the husband of a self-acclaimed ‘people-watcher’ I have over the past 15-years come to appreciate and hone the skills I...

View Article


Is there room for social etiquette in India?

Frankly, I am tired of holding doors open for others to pass through before me when I see them approaching from the other side of a room. I am equally tired of stopping doors from swinging back too...

View Article

Confessions of a ‘shopaphobe’ husband

I must admit that I haven’t a clue what the antonym of shopaholic is. I tried looking up the word or a similar expression on Google and in the dictionary, but couldn’t find anything even remotely...

View Article

Take a break from life.

Three years ago my wife and I took a decision: rather than working ourselves into the ground – literally and metaphorically – and spending all our money on healthcare, we would use the same money...

View Article

“To sleep or not to sleep…

…that is the question”, I asked my somewhat bewildered friends rather emphatically one evening after dinner a couple of years ago. Fresh from a programme that laboured the merits of consensus building...

View Article


Can we ask for a little more sensitivity please?

If you were asked, “What do X-men actor Jim Byrnes, glamour model and former Lady McCartney, Heather Mills, Everest summiteer, Tom Whittaker, Jazz diva, Ella Fitzgerald, champion surfer, Bethany...

View Article


Why should we politicize every human tragedy?

The horrendous mid-day meal tragedy has brought to the fore numerous questions around access, affordability, morality and quality control. After all, however laudable the intention, and in this case,...

View Article

Dubai and lessons in organization building.

As the plane took its last lazy swoop towards the runway I looked out of the window again. Nothing much had changed. All we had seen over the past 15 minutes was mounds of sand dotted with the odd...

View Article

Should we find a way to better balance our people exports?

Recently, I was asked to speak at a business conclave in the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal. After a rather tiring day and grueling evening, I walked up to the concierge at the Soaltee and asked him what I...

View Article


Not under my roof!

One of the biggest problems of travelling frequently across time zones is that your body clock at times fails to recognize which time zone you are in. Consequently, there are times when you tend to...

View Article

G1253

When we moved to Delhi – barely 7-days after we got married – a decade and a half ago, my choice of home was dictated largely by a couple of considerations: my wife had never lived away from Calcutta;...

View Article

Looking back wistfully…with perhaps a tinge of envy.

Recently, we spent a wonderful Sunday afternoon at a friend’s penthouse that overlooks a lake in the suburbs of maximum city. I say ‘wonderful’ not only because of the rapier wit that our hosts and...

View Article

Why change is sometimes crucial

How often have you talked of people stating that a particular place has a ‘marvelous, old-worldly charm about it’ or that it ‘feels exactly the way I remember it from 20 years ago’? Well, I have just...

View Article



Is this really February?

How many of you have asked yourselves this question in the past couple of weeks? Well, I definitely have, and with increasing frequency at that. Caught up with the intense pressures of work, deadlines,...

View Article
Browsing latest articles
Browse All 46 View Live




Latest Images