Joyous Devi: Ma! Let Me Be Born...

Joyous Devi: Ma! Let Me Be Born...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In an antique land, a modern-world kingdom | The Asian Age

Image
In an antique land, a modern-world kingdom | The Asian  Jordan – In an Antique Land Arriving in Jordan is supposed to be a hassle free, visa-on-arrival convenience aimed at bestowing  a charmingly Arabic welcome to  the harried, cattle-class fatigued visitor. Mine, didn’t quite fall in that category though, preceded as it was with an encounter with a suspiciously  querying visa officer, followed by three senior ones,  before my passport was stamped.  Enough to put a dampener on one’s mood one would agree.  But I decided to shrug this irritant aside, attributing the  brusqueness to the region’s currently troubled reality and instead  decided to concentrate  on the country that lay beyond its Immigration Section. And that was a revelation. Jordan is in many ways a matchless confluence of ancient stories replete with the whispers from empires long lost, Biblical  allusions and a  kingdom of the modern world. Roads w...
Read more

The Changing Face of the Indian Family: Part II

Image
Jhansi and my mother’s larger kin   Summer in Delhi, for many of its citizens, spells the time to escape the city. A much needed respite, away from its relentless battering sun and the overhang of its polluting air. The social calendar yawns its emptiness and life seems circumscribed by temperature controlled indoors. Facebook updates posted from gloriously exotic locales tell me that most people on my contact list are unreachable.   Yet there is a silver lining to the inhospitable season, for it allows one to luxuriate in the randomly selected passages of memory.    And so it was that I remembered Kusum, my mother, Amma as I called her, and her side of the family b acklit against a town, whose cadence sang in their veins – Jhansi!                                                  Kusum, amma in the fashion of the times As...
Read more

Footloose in Bhopal

Image
Ejected from the aircraft, the walk across the tarmac terminates into a swanky, building - the Raja Bhoj airport in Bhopal. Its clever architecture and clean lines, make one take a double take, for it’s a vision of modernity most unexpected in anything other than the A 1 class cities; in Madhya Pradesh even more so, a state associated with many kinds of unflattering data. But it makes a statement, political as well as an aggressive bid to woo the tourist and capital. The drive from the airport unveils a city, which breathes easily with its past when a succession of four Begums ruled the city from 1819-1926, and its contemporary avatar – green and spread out, the waters of its two lakes uncluttered by polythene or other refuse. It’s an example other cities in India could well emulate. And while a BJP ruled state, which has very recently passed the rather hair brained order of according seven years imprisonment for cow slaught...
Read more