Upgrading your problems

It was a little over 5 years ago. A couple of friends, 2 years older than me physically, but far more advanced in their understanding of life, were having a quarter-life crisis. They were thrashing it out with an intense but intelligent discussion, peppered with puns and self-deprecation, as was our wont.

Notes from home, or thereabouts

The riddle of the expat: Is this a trip home, or a trip away from home? There was a time when Delhi was unquestionably home, but such certainties are a thing of the past. As Pico Iyer put it, home has less to do with a piece of soil than a piece of soul. And […]

What you need to know when visiting Hampi

Hampi is an excellent place for a history lover to visit. It has huge medieval ruins, and has the basic organizational apparatus of a large tourist site. It’s also surrounded by greenery and rivers, which add to its appeal. This is meant to guide anyone who wants to visit the ruins of the capital of […]

The 2nd wave has already been forgotten

2 years ago, the Covid 2nd wave struck India, leaving absolute carnage in its wake. Rare was the Indian family that was not hit during that month and a half, and many lost their sole breadwinners. My immediate family was hit brutally – all of us were infected; my father, father-in-law and sister-in-law underwent a […]

Book Reviews

I made an ambitious New Year’s Resolution: to read a book every week (on average) in 2023. That’s 52 books, a figure I haven’t reached since my school days. Since I can never do anything without overthinking it, a follow-up question swiftly kicked in: does every kind of book qualify? It’ll take a week to […]

Current (and usual) Mood

© Marvel

The RW can’t make or break a film (yet)

I’m not sure when or how I lost interest in Bollywood. Maybe it was around the same time I lost interest in cricket, in the early 2010s. Probably it had something to do with the shuttering of Shakuntalam, a very student-friendly theatre in the Pragati Maidan area in Delhi. Watching films for Rs 70 (and […]

2022 – Milestones and Turkeys

Milestones in 2022 Turkeys in 2022 That said, there’s no question that the annual balance sheet is overwhelmingly positive. Fingers crossed for the year ahead. Happy New Year!

Akhand Ireland and related things

Today I learnt about the concept of Akhand Ireland. (Not quite what the Irish call it, but that’s what it is in essence.) It’s the idea that the Irish island is destined to be united under a single flag, and neither the Republic of Ireland in the south, nor the British fragment of Northern Ireland, […]

What is the correct price to pay for a phone?

(This has been written more as a question to my (non-existent) readers, than as a proper blog post.) Every few years, I wake up and reluctantly accept that my tech products have a shelf life. I used my first laptop, an HP, for nearly a decade (it will probably still work, if I try). My […]

A decade on, Sherlock feels like Sheldon vs The Joker

I was perhaps 8 or 9 years old when my father introduced me to the Sherlock Holmes stories. He had a set of 4 novellas with a red hardbound cover since his own childhood, which makes it a family heirloom, and I proceeded to devour all 4. I didn’t understand some of it – what […]