The Idea-smithy

He called me the gatekeeper of the great suburban conscience of Mumbai.
Am I? Each time I write something serious about the city, I’m reminded of a friend bitching about the ultra-intellectual types who eat at McDonalds and come out and talk about the poor people in the country. Am I one of them? Does the [...]

The Raja family took the flight out today. Uncle has retired so they’re moving to the house they bought in their native city awhile back, in anticipation of just such a time. They leave behind a spacious flat on the top floor of a building at the end of a leafy, shaded lane, a company flat in [...]

This is the first of a series of posts on my artistic experiments. I realised that since each work is a story in visual form, I can write a post about it too. This is one of my recent success stories. I’ve only worn it twice!

~o~o~o~o~o~o~
Purple was an unusual colour for a background. This was [...]

I’ve written about my uprooted office spaces. I knew that would be temporary so I didn’t put down roots.
This Monday morning opened with the official announcement that we were moving offices. Not the months-in-planning location across the city; unaccounted for delays have cropped up. But in the meantime our, our current lease is nearing end [...]

I wasn’t a cool kid. I wasn’t a hip teenager. I was perpetually confused, secretly angsty and with no Lakshya. I had no life. But I had a plan. A decade later I look back and wonder, How ever did things turn out so differently?!
Here’s how.
I dropped out of college for a year so ended up [...]

One of my landmark conversations with my boss started off with,
I have a plan.
He smiled and said,
I’m always glad to hear that. Let’s hear it.
And in that moment I knew he had assessed me (right) before I’d assessed myself and he liked what he saw. I like it too. I like being prepared, I like [...]

While everyone in the accounts departments sits heavy on numbers and does a stock-taking quarter-by-quarter of the year that was, it occurs to me to do the same with my life. Except this is a three-quarterly review. Of my 29th year.
I’ll be 30 this July and it’s an odd thing but instead of feeling 29, [...]