There have been many teachers who taught me the alphabet, numbers and the laws of Physics and Chemistry. I was never a good student, so I have no fond memories of teachers – I suspect most backbenchers don’t! But every teacher’s day I think of that one teacher who taught me to be ‘me.’ When …
Azan, specially if the muazzin is besura, is a torture for auditory senses. Unfortunately, it’s very rare to hear soulful azans these days. In Aligarh, in our early childhood days, the masjids were somehow never too close to the kind of places we lived in. A strain of Azan would float by unobtrusively, through the …
I grew up in a fanatically secular home, with no gods but lots of festivals… Still the idea of God and reverence was all around – so, as a child I wasn’t clear who stood for what but knew that some figures were special – Ram, Muhammad, Christ, Gandhi and Lenin, they had to be …
Fifteen-year-old Junaid’s lynching in Ballabhgarh, while he was returning from his Eid shopping, had interfered with the joy of Eid to the extent that I didn’t even feel like celebrating. A day before Eid some of us went to Junaid’s village, Khandwali to meet his mother. Grief was palpable in the entire village – you could reach your destination from two villages away, by …
It’s messy. And throws up many questions. Was it killed, murdered in cold blood? Culpable homicide or reciprocatory violence. Was it kidnapped and made to disappear? or was it a case of plain suicide in sheer desperation. Every corner has a story to tell, every chipped dish and decoration piece gathering dust is an eyewitness. …
Here’s a video of my TEDx talk at Sushant Lok, Gurgaon. “I wanted to walk, but the areas I wanted to explore were not safe to walk through alone… So I decided to get Gurgaon to walk with me!” Sehba Imam is the reason behind Let’s Walk Gurgaon; Let’s Walk Gurgaon or LWG in short …
One of the lovely things about Susmit’s guitar style is that he does not play in any other style. When I was a young professional I still had thoughts of being the next Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix. It took me quite a while to realize that even if you could reach that standard, you …