His last message to me was a literary joke about what Shakespeare said to a Nurse, when she came to vaccinate him. On April 10th, I was pleading with him to get vaccinated and not to return to Delhi.
He was in Shimla for a short visit to his hometown to sort out a property matter. But as Chanchal was known amongst all — in his bindaas style, he told me — he will instead take a vaccine of his own (a peg of Scotch).
Born on June 8th, 1975, Chanchal had an amazing zest for life. He had big…
While working in Noida’s Film City, a couple of years ago, I was ashamed to watch the tele-prompters playing hate filled scripts by some of the anchors who happened to be my media colleagues, and some good friends, sitting across in cubicles.
The studios were being used by a few anchor-editors, mostly of Hindi news channels, to give communal colour to their stories in a shrill pitch.
After a hate filled debate, the same panelists could be seen sharing a sumptuous lunch banter, thereafter.
But the bad odour from the played drama would slowly seep as poison in the gut…
The Unforgettable Agony That The Virus Gave This Generation…
As the pandemic fades away in a couple of months or years, there will be seldom a person we know who who may not have been infected by the virus or fallen prey to it.
The year 2020 has taken lives, created disruption and also imprinted on it’s name — The pandemic — which will be remembered in headstones of history in the decades to come.
However, the current generation will have also experienced an agony and unbearable pain of not being with their loved ones, in their last days or…
I’m sitting in Gurgaon’s Hard Rock Cafe with 35 fans of Indian cricket idol Virat Kohli. They’re the lucky ones invited by FanBox, a social engagement app by tech startup Privy Plex. Some cops enter and sanitize the place.
The cafe is in the heart of Cyber Hub, where about 250,000 professionals work or visit each day. Virat enters the cafe from the back door. Any hint of the presence of India’s Test cricket team captain would have led to chaos in the food court, which alone sees a daily footfall of 20,000 people.
That’s a price you pay for…
(Written on March 2, 2018 — The Day of Holi).
Dateline: New Delhi.
Location: Domestic Lounge of Indira Gandhi International Airport
As am writing this post I can feel a congestion in my nasal passages. Last night was worse. Woke up at 3 a.m. from persistent coughing.
Apparently the air purifiers weren’t helping as they would dry the air and the coughing would become worse.
As I venture out in the polluted air of the capital during the day, things would become worse.
My coughing is getting really bad even while am writing this article, even as the world outside…
“Are you scared,” I ask Rizwan, my colleague, who has turned up at work almost five days after Friday’s incident, where 49 people were killed in a local mosque.
“To tell you the truth, Yes I am,” he confides in me. “But not for me, am scared for my wife, who wears a headscarf,” says Rizwan, a software engineer, who arrived in New Zealand from Chennai, two years ago, to join his brother, who was living in the country for several years.
His sassy wife, who loves to hold a glass of Pinot Gris, carries skirts and jeans with headscarfs…
As the protagonist slithers the throat of a villain in cold blood, a crowd full of Indian students, erupts in claps. Am watching a film on surgical strikes in a multiplex in New Zealand and perhaps it’s the first time I’ve seen an Indian audience erupt in cheers, while watching a manslaughter, even it is for revenge for the country.
This is a different India, a character in the film blurts out. This is also a different India, that people of Indian origin, who migrated from the country, decades ago, are experiencing through the film. An India — which is…
It’s a toy for short distance joyrides that’s being sprinkled by unicorn startups across hundreds of city centres and tourist hubs around the world. And it is dubbed to be the next big disruptor in last mile transportation around the world, even giving competition to the short distance taxi rides.
But the more you ride the e-scooters the more you realize something amiss in them. While some have a loose break, some have a loose wheel, some are simply rickety, due to vandalism. …
As I write this blog, I wonder whether my job as a business writer will be overtaken in the future by software programs.
Already, the job of business analysts and financial report writers is in jeopardy. Quarterly reports can now be sipped out of annual or quarterly results of companies by software scripts and apps.
Machines are useful to man in a way that they can make his life easier, do repetitive tasks with accuracy and free up his time to let him find his true purpose.
An automated drill can unscrew faster than a human, for instance.
They should…
An old Indian lady of over 90-years old, wheelchair bound, crawls past me in an alley at Eden Park, even as a crowd of over 42,000 people is shouting ‘Dhoni….Dhoni!’.
She has the Indian tricolor in her hand. The atmosphere in the stadium is electrifying with almost the whole stadium having turned blue, despite being the home ground of Black Caps.
Then I realize, it’s not just a ‘game’. It’s a ‘festival of Indianness’ — which the woman has come to celebrate.
People from all walks of life — students, overseas Indians, tourists, and other immigrants with roots in South…
Harsimran Julka
Encouraging Entrepreneurship #Ideas #Innovation #Dreams on #Save the #Planet. Loves to Write Here — Occasionally.
