What are words worth?

The big season is over for the women in blue. They've had more attention from audiences in India than in all the time they've been playing, forty years or more...not in blue, of course, but in the good old whites. Despite the heartbreaking finish, they come home sheroes, having displayed remarkable spirit and doing something few women's team sports have been able to do in our country--getting prime time coverage on a major network. For the whole tournament, no less. For me, this season--as has been every season the women have played over the past twelve years--was a poignant reminder of a child's unfulfilled dream. I'm sure there are thousands of parents--maybe millions--who feel the same, but I can only talk about myself. And perhaps it is because of this that I--all of us in the family--pay more attention to the game than we would have otherwise. Each year, from September till February, the BCCI runs the sparse season for women's cricket. The senior women...

Travelling back from the new city to the not-so-new-yet-not-quite-branded-old at the hour when some buildings glitter and others take on a cold, dank hue, I am offered unaccustomed views into the life of this predatory, leaching, leaking metropolis that my daytime commute obscures. If that is a sentence too full of qualifiers, well, sorry, that’s the nature of urban habitation these days. Or perhaps habitation anywhere on this planet. Night has its unexpectedly revealing ways. It wakes you, when you least expect to be woken, and presents you with fears that you never knew existed. It can nudge you with a seductive brush into confusing dreams with reality. And it can render transparent the sheen (and the dust) that the day layers over the lives of others. So it is that one evening, late out of work and wishing to beat the roadway traffic I am persuaded by a kindly colleague to take the train that passes for rapid transit. It takes the back route that ploughs through the underb...