My Publicized Life

The following post is written as part of Indiblogger's "Go further to get closer" contest. To find out more about the contest, go to this link http://bit.ly/1epU8Uj or check the following video: They stood side by side, doing the dishes. The silence between them was pained, the air laden with the weight of things unsaid.   The sharp clanging sounds of steel and hard sloshing of water were punctuated by labored breaths. Every breath was like an exclamation, seemingly letting out that which could not be said, and that which was said so often as to lose all meaning. His thoughts were like demons screaming inside his head, the fury exponentially increased by her inability to understand anything he said, his constant inability to make her see that which he knew was right. Her mind was resigned, tired out by these frequent fights, the bouts of yelling that got so intense that they always stopped out of sheer physical tiredness than out of any mutual understan...

Close your eyes and think about travel, and chances are you’ve straightaway conjured up images of some exotic land. Coffee-table books, travel magazines, even vacation photos on Facebook, they talk about people, culture, landscapes, food and sights…essentially everything designed to get you to a particular destination. What tends to get hidden in this overabundance of information is one of the primary reasons you travel, which is the state of mind you go through while on the move. This mental journey within you is no less arduous and interesting than the physical journey to visit a place, and that is primarily what makes it addictive. For if travel was just about seeing a place, why bother going anywhere when you could see so much more, and packaged in a way you could seldom hope to achieve yourself, by simply switching on your favorite travel channel? The initial emotions are nearly always excitement and anticipation. Seeing beautiful images or reading about the trips of others...

The following blog post is written as part of Indiblogger’s ‘WeChat’ contest, which is a promotion for the WeChat mobile messaging app. To learn more about WeChat, check their youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/WeChatIndia?feature=chclk The idea of a common platform where anybody could connect – past, present or future, alive or dead, real or fictional – is, I think, brilliant, both as a brand promotion and a general concept. What messages would you leave to your as yet unborn children or grandchildren? Would Gandhi have been able to influence the views of Adolf Hitler? What musical masterpieces would have emerged had A.R. Rahman collaborated with Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar & Mohd. Rafi at the peak of their prowess? How many more Meiyappans & Vindoo Dara Singhs would Sherlock Holmes have unearthed, had he been part of the investigations in the sordid IPL scandal? The possibilities are endless. My own personal ensemble cast is an eclectic mishmash o...

Who among us has not had the odd flight of fancy, yearning to get past our daily lives and be transported to mysterious, faraway lands? Go tumbling down the rabbit hole, perhaps, like Alice into Wonderland, or walk the lands of middle earth with Frodo. Who among us has not had a lump in our throat as we watched intrepid explorers scale jagged peaks, or traverse the long grass of the Savannah? The quest for travel, exploration & nature is one of the more enduring legacies of Man, one that’s buried deep within all of us. My own secret destination, closer to home perhaps than the Shire, but none the less alluring for it, has always been Ladakh. I was hooked when I chanced upon photos of a seemingly magical land – towering mountains, pristine lakes and surreal landscapes. A place so unlike anything I’d ever seen before that it was hard to believe it existed on the same planet, leave alone the same country. But exist it does. In a little corner of Kashmir bordering China & ...