The Middle View More

THEY say laughter is the best medicine. Medicine is mostly bitter, but thankfully, laughter comes in different flavours. At one end of the spectrum are those who laugh as though they are consuming medicine. It flows in a trickle, in...

EVERY country has its set of cultural preferences and idiosyncrasies, which may be embarrassing or bizarre to people belonging to other cultures. In China, you shouldn’t ask for a second helping of soup because it’s deemed to be against table...

IN Punjab, your regional identity often defines who you are. If Malwa is famous for its cool kakajis, Majha is known by its fierce bhaus and Doaba for its gentle bhajis. Nestled between the Beas and Sutlej rivers, Doaba is...

EVERY year, I recall a tragic incident that happened in 1966 when Air India Flight 101 crashed into Mont Blanc in France on January 24. All 117 people on board were killed, including Homi Bhabha, an eminent nuclear physicist from...

THE other day, my nephew came home. He had been living in Canada for almost a decade before family commitments made him return to India. He always greets me with a hug, saying ‘hello, maasi’ with a wide smile. But...

MY regiment celebrated its Raising Day at Dehradun recently. Christened ‘Rendezvous 2024’, it was a soul-rejuvenating homecoming for over 250 veterans and serving soldiers, ranging from the 1960s to the 2020s. People travelled from places like Guwahati, Coimbatore, Pune, Ahmedabad,...

OF late, Indians have been travelling in droves to Uzbekistan, thanks to the proximity of this landlocked country, which is just a two-and-a-half-hour flight from New Delhi. What’s more, food and accommodation are cheap there due to its weak currency,...

INDIAN Air Force (IAF) helicopters are ubiquitous in our elections. My first tryst with this exercise was in the Tripura Assembly polls in January 1983, when I was posted in Guwahati. We ferried an election party to a remote polling...

WITH the abrupt announcement of the summer vacation due to soaring temperatures, most of the children’s books were left behind in the classrooms —much to their relief. Parents promptly received messages from class teachers, imploring them to collect their wards’...

WHEN I recently suggested to Venkatraman, my 71-year-old brother-in-law, to wear a smartwatch so that he could keep track of the number of steps walked in a day, monitor his sleep pattern and health parameters, he not only politely turned...

DIPLOMATS posted abroad, whether in friendly countries or inimical ones, know that they are being watched — at home, at work, on tour. In many countries, surveillance was not so much in your face. In Karachi, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)...

ELECTIONS are called the ‘dance of democracy’. Or is it the dance of politicians? Unlike professional dancers who usually have harmonious relations with each other, political ‘dancers’ don’t see eye to eye with their rivals. It is a dog-eat-dog world...

DELHI voted in the Lok Sabha elections on May 25. Many of my batchmates from the IAS and the IPS and their spouses residing in the Capital posted images of their inked fingers in our WhatsApp group, proudly proclaiming the...

MY father often quoted a Bengali proverb, Kom khao, beshi khabe. This oxymoron of a phrase, which meant ‘eat less, you will eat more’, would whet our curiosity. Recently, I came across a study involving rhesus monkeys, conducted by the...

IT was a June evening. My friends Prakash and Soumitra barged into my house and persuaded me to join their expedition to the forest range at Basdevpur village to enjoy a moonlit night. I restrained myself from pouring cold water...

BACK in November 1974, as a Deputy Superintendent of Police, I was commanding a company of the Central Reserve Police Force in Tamenglong district of Manipur. Around midnight, my Commanding Officer (CO), Surjeet Singh Gill, told me on the phone...

IN the mid-1990s, I was posted to Rajkot Rural district in Gujarat as the Superintendent of Police. I had never met the incumbent Chief Minister and it was not mandatory for an SP to call on him. However, within a...

DURING World War II, Queen Victoria’s Own Madras Sappers and Miners rushed more units to Malaya in 1941 to check the advancing Japanese forces. Answering the call of duty, Marimuthu of Kokkalai (Tamil Nadu) bid farewell to his wife Mariammal...

RIGHT from childhood, we are told to run fast, since we are in a rat race. Whether we are appearing in the Class X exams or climbing the corporate ladder, these are all mini-races within the bigger race. What makes...

IT was a bustling summer of 2004, and Delhi was like a huge circus on wheels with traffic snarls everywhere, thanks to the construction of the Delhi Metro. On one such occasion, I was driving from Batra Hospital to RK...

ONE afternoon in April, I was having a cup of tea on the verandah when the gate of my house clanged open. A woman with a big smile on her face handed me a flyer which carried details of a...

LIVING in a Noida locality, I was fortunate to witness a remarkable transition towards green sustainability initiated by our close-knit community. It all started one monsoon evening during our monthly neighbourhood gathering under an expansive banyan tree, where the aroma...

A few months after my promotion to a flag rank in the Army, I was allotted the Pune brigade. As it was located next to the Southern Command headquarters, I assumed that this would be a challenging appointment. Soon, I...

AFTER a hot cuppa at Narkanda, Himachal Pradesh, we headed towards Baghi, our weekend destination. It was early June. The heady aroma of the ripening apples filled the crisp air. At one bend, the road bifurcated and for want of...

ONE of the blessings of living in Mumbai as compared to Kolkata is that you can travel on a bus in a dignified manner, without being sandwiched between co-passengers, without having to hang precariously on the edge of the footboard...