Lair of thought

There was a time when my life was measured in days, weeks, months and years. Life was much simpler then. Things measured in small quantities and against small comparisons. Pleasures and sorrows presented smaller signposts in the path to growing up. I remember the time when I measured a decade in terms of lightyears and equated multiple decades to space travel. How times have changed. Today as I completed a decade at my workplace, it seems surreal that everything in my life these days seems to be measured in decades. Graduation, leaving home, moving here, marriage, kids; everything seems to have a larger scale in time. Age is a funny thing. When you are living it, it does not seem like it is happening to you. You still feel like a kid inside and wonder why people have started taking you much more seriously over the years. Until one day you wake and realize that while you still feel like a kid, everything in your life has scaled up. I am by no means regretful. As a matter of fact,

One of the more dramatic moments in "When Breath Becomes Air" is when the author, Paul Kalanithi, laments that he always thought he had Twenty years to be a neurosurgeon and another Twenty to pursue his dream of being an author. But after he was confronted with a life that had only but a few sunrises left, he was torn between the choice of becoming an accomplished doctor and an author. This quandary encapsulates what most of us are chronically aware of but unwilling to confront. Time is fleeting and we, for the most part, sacrifice a great deal of our passion in the quest for the more commonly sought out goals such as career, fame and fortune. When my father retired he was a man restless with his new found freedom from the corporate lifestyle that he had grown accustomed to over the preceding 35 years. A freshly minted Engineer who found his way from a rural town in Kerala to a jet setter traveling around the globe as a corporate executive, he had become all too comfortab

Duplithingal was the name I was given by Saju. He had somehow obtained information that my last name was inherited from another source and hence I was not the "original" but the "duplicate" and hence he Called me Duplithingal. Funny how that is the thing I remember most about him apart from the fact that he was probably the one person who was cheerful most of the time. But as the cliche goes, it is the good souls that are called upon first. The call was rather jarring for a rainy, dark morning in Chennai. Saju had been in a motorcycle accident and passed away, said the caller. His body is in the morgue. Standing outside that morgue I still couldn't believe what I was there for. how can a 19 year old die. That was unfathomable to me. As the daily commuters went about their business unaware of this catastrophic event, I realized that what shakes one world goes unnoticed in another and just like that he had left us all and we continued on with life. Dhavinder wa

The phenomenon that is Trump is for all to see. Everybody waited with baited breath on that cold Tuesday night, each with their own small prayer. As the night grew darker some sobbed while some cheered and that is how Democracy works. Like the words of the fake president in "The American President" - "You gotta really want it". Democracy is a very humbling experience. It is the great equalizer between the high tower elites to the small man on main street. At the end of it all, it is the power of the voters that speak. You may or may not agree with it, but the power of democracy is in its ability to reshape history as dictated by the masses and not necessarily by conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom states that Trump should have been out of the race about 16 months ago. For every atrocious thing that he has said, there are several examples of people who have fallen on the wayside for having said or done way less. But then conventional wisdom and Trump do not

Last month I relived my summer vacation. When I say that I relived it, I mean I saw it through the eyes of a five year old once again and it was fabulous. Over the last couple of decades, in my 20s and 30s I have found myself not enjoying summer vacations as much as I remember enjoying them when I was a carefree child. My memories of summer vacations are in such a happy part of my mind that it almost hurts to recollect the details of it. The loitering through my grandfathers grounds, the adventures with my brothers, the slew of movies, the visits to a plethora of people, visit to the beach and everything else. This summer I once again saw glimpses of that joy. The only difference was that I was seeing it through the eyes of my son. I had pushed them to stay in India longer this time around and boy did I see what I wanted to see. The complete joy of kids in a new, warm and loving environment where every day is a discovery is something to cherish. Even my daughter seems to be showing

Today, after two days of continuous briefing from a judge regarding the rules of Jury Duty I was excused as they found the 14 jurors they needed for the case. Though I was not looking forward to serving on the Jury for a month, I have to admit I am a little disappointed by the fact that I was not selected. As disruptive as it might be to my daily routine, the experience of watching criminal proceedings is something that I think would be an eye opener regarding how the world works. We are so caught up in our daily lives that we never stop to think about the world around us. But the last couple of days made me stop and think about it (as I had nothing other than that to do in the court while the proceedings were in progress). The fact that there are people in going to the judicial system with everything else in their life at a complete standstill makes you wonder how much you take your daily life for granted. As I watched the defendant sitting there I wondered how odd it would be if