The Middle

I gaze at the tree first thing in the morning when I open the curtains in my rented accommodation. After years of abuse and being gaslighted in my unhappy marital home, I found the courage to escape and make a...

FINDING parking space at the Estate Office is nothing short of an exercise in patience. During a recent visit, I found a slot right behind a “public convenience”. As luck would have it, it was a windy day — the...

She had been standing for a while at the entrance to our building, going through the list of occupants to find the name of the person she was to meet. I asked her who she was looking for and told...

BY 1992, Punjab was witnessing a noticeable respite from the decade-long militancy. It required extraordinary synergy among the Punjab Police, paramilitary forces and the Army to conduct anti-militancy operations and bring the situation under significant control. The Central government was...

IT’s strange how an incident jogs the mind, and long-forgotten memories come surging back. When I read about the attempt on US President Donald Trump’s life during the White House correspondents’ dinner, I recalled my trip to Washington in June...

IN the beautiful, verdant mountains of Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh) in 2009, my father encountered an unusual sight — a traffic jam. This was the last thing he expected at an altitude of 10,000 feet. His Army Gypsy couldn’t move an...

MY office CCTV screen showed a woman entering the waiting lounge with her child. Soon, her husband arrived too. “Do you recognise this couple?” I asked my father. While he took time to identify them, the turbulence their conjugal life...

MY father’s words woke me up from a deep slumber 60 years ago: “Don’t open your eyes. Hold my hand and walk with me.” I kept my eyes tightly closed, afraid that I might see some object before catching the...

MY introduction to Raghu Rai came through his photographs — the searing images of the 1984 Bhopal tragedy. The black-and-white photograph of a dead child lying in the rubble brought tears of anguish to my eyes and became an enduring...

THE persistent accusation against US President Donald Trump is that he is only theatre, a gaudy carnival of excess too unserious to decode. This reading flatters our own laziness. What looks like buffoonery is philosophy with a smirk, a honed...

THE Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Jhajjar district was scheduled to visit our village that day. I rose early, packed a few sandwiches and drove to the neighbouring sector of Gurugram to pick up my elder brother, a retired Commodore. He...

THE call would come even before the bell was pressed: “Uncle, saadi ball de do, tuhade ghar aa gayi hai.” It was part request, part ready-made defence. Sometimes, it was followed by a hesitant knock or a quick step back....

IT was 3:30 am when my wife and I entered the emergency ward, carrying with us a quiet mix of trepidation and hope. We were there to get our daughter admitted. She had suffered a severe attack of optic neuritis,...

STATIONED in Jullundur (Jalandhar) in the 1970s, our battalion went for watermanship training to the Aliwal Headworks. Once the exercise was over, the commanding officer decided that it was time for a picnic. We had used the canal rest house...

FROM childhood, most of us are taught to look at people through the simple lens of right and wrong. We are told to admire the good, avoid the bad and trust that morality is easy to identify. It is a...

WE had barely settled beside our designated gate at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport when the PA system, in its most cheerful betrayal of human patience, announced that our 9:30 am flight to Chicago O’Hare Airport would be delayed by...

NEWS travels fast in offices. Facts, however, prefer a more relaxed pace. The other day, a colleague shared the sad news of his mother’s passing. Like most workplaces where colleagues become a second family, the message moved quickly through corridors...

BIRDWATCHING has brought me a lot of joy over the decades. Winter in the plains of North India is an ideal time to pursue this hobby, particularly around water bodies near Chandigarh, such as Mote Majra. It began in 1976...

IF you drive long enough on the highways of Punjab and Haryana, especially along the straight stretches between towns, you begin to notice that the vehicles ahead of you are not entirely silent. They have opinions. The back of a...

APRIL 14, 1944, was a fateful day. The great harbour of Bombay was rocked by a calamity. At the Victoria Dock, a British ship, SS Fort Stikine, was anchored. It was laden with a cargo of cotton, timber, oil and...

THOSE who want to study modern-day relationships closely should forget surveys and interviews. They should simply examine people’s phone contact lists. Behind every disguised name lies a small story — of affection, fear, mischief and sheer creativity. A smartphone is...

AS the world awaits the return of Artemis II astronauts after their lunar flyby voyage, I am reminded of my chance encounter with Yuri Gagarin, the cosmonaut who became the first human to travel into space 65 years ago. I...

CHILDHOOD was a magical phase filled with small joys, big excitement and zero EMI stress. One of its highlights was receiving an invitation to a classmate’s birthday party. Back then, there were no fancy e-cards or WhatsApp invites — just...

IN the 1990s, a mobile phone was not something you carried in your pocket. It was a rumour, a luxury, almost a fantasy. In our small town of Qadian (Gurdaspur), many of us had not beheld this device. I first...

AMID the global attention on the Strait of Hormuz and merchant mariners, I am reminded of my voyage through the Strait of Malacca. For an Army officer, a leap from the deserts of Rajasthan to the high seas was a...