A man goes to a shrink to check if he has gotten over his ex. Shrink: Do you get jealous when you think of her with another man? Man: But I have always wanted to see her with other men. You get the drift when the jokes go like this. We were three guys, slightly drunk or stoned, or both, all of us caught in challenging phases of relationships – jilted, starting off or in one. Connected by different aspects of filmmaking, we used to bump into each other at
Will he? Won’t he? Festivals remain popular and stay relevant when they don’t try too hard to reinvent themselves as something else, say, a youthquake. Nothing much has changed in the over two centuries of the Thrissur Pooram: a throbbing, vibrant face-off between two ancient temples, Thiruvambadi and Paramekkavu, in addition to eight smaller ones. Everyone assembles at the Thekkinkadu Maidan, a 65-acre park in the centre of Thrissur town with the iconic Vadakkumnathan temple sitting atop a hillock presiding over. The Maidan once used to be a dense forest
The GPS assured that we had arrived: in place of the curving, lengthening arrow mark, there was the sprogged onion. The famous toddy shop was supposed to be on our left side. Instead of – as I imagined it to be – lit up like Merryland, parking attendants struggling hard to find space for customers coming in and harder to aid those leaving, lungis flying high mast, politics discussed in bigsie voices and people gathering around in an impromptu belching contest, it was a desolate stretch swamped in pitch dark.
#instatravel #motorcycling #heritage #dhaba #nh2 #royalenfield #incredibleindia #travelogram And finally The city gives up. Hauz Khas, where I stay, conurbates into more highrises and flyovers, reverberating underpasses and fringe residential areas before thinning out into open mandis – wholesale marketplaces. As I passed by these throbbing centres of humanity, big boned jolies laides were making a beeline to collect the stock of vegetables, fruits and flowers from the previous day that were unsold. These would be, through the course of the day, hawked at traffic signals with snotty kids saddled
Vanity thy name is not woman anymore. It is man. A study published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction puts the percentages of men and women exhibiting ‘selfitis’ – the condition of excessive selfie-taking – at around 60 and 40 respectively. One of the authors, Mark D. Griffiths, PhD, informs ‘From a psychological perspective, the taking of selfies is a self-oriented action that allows users to establish their individuality and self-importance; it is also associated with personality traits such as narcissism.’ I am not very sure about
When polity develops accountability and corporatedom grows a heart it becomes Twenty20. This is practical Utopia: organisation, skilled manpower, resource and vision meet people. Being first of its kind, everything is not honky-dory; then at every turn there is a new learning. Posing a threat to established norms, hierarchical bureaucracy and lucrative red-tapism, obstacles are aplenty. But addressing each and surmounting them are exercises in cohesion; when people come together to ascertain their rights, democracy flowers and its roots go deeper. What was at worst dismissed as a philanthropist’s dream
Jump / AIIMS “On the bright side, the ride to the mortuary will be considerably shorter,” she said as she stood with one hand on her plump hips. She looked at her husband and even though she didn’t detect any mirth she laughed as she breathed hard. “We are going to die woman and you cannot be quiet for a full minute?” He asked gruffly, succeeding with some effort to suppress a smile that crept into his lips. He had always marvelled at his wife’s funny sense even though he
Aligned in glistening beads of sweat along an open oven the men pause briefly to look up at people like me – those from a halcyon world. They are on the basement floor of a twin-storey ramshackle lit up by fire from gigantic wood-fired furnaces with little passageways that opened at ground level for ventilation. They seemed amused, some almost smiled, at my effort – I was bending over and peering hard at their world. It was also the freshly baked bread – the waft of which was driving me
‘It was my first outing with Airbnb.’ Any write-up that begins on a note like this you know where it is headed – yes, spiralling down. So before I proceed and make my case (the host had, while I was writing the Facebook post, threatened to give me such a terrible review which would make Airbnb tremble seeing my requisition for future stays – probably just like the crazy who totalled a pad which made Airbnb start with host insurance), I will stake a disclaimer: I had read ‘The Airbnb
Photographs taken to bring tourists. And photographs taken by tourists themselves. Some minor details are always missing between these two. In my case it was a long line of big-boned women clad in ghaghra, choli and odhni or the veil, balancing earthen water pots on arcing hips tracing a colourful line like the Madhubani-painted Bihar Sampark Kranti Express pootling along the platform. I saw this in some tourism literature while attending the Jaipur Literature Festival and was instantly enamoured – equally by the women as by the setting. Coy heads
