What are words worth?

--> It’s not supposed to be this way. But then, one way to look at it is--the way it is, is the way it’s supposed to be. Barbara Kingsolver, in what is one of my favourite books of all time, Poisonwood Bible , says (paraphrasing here) that if there is one thing that all cultures, everywhere wish, it is that the young should outlive the old. But we all know only too well that this is only a hope, and there is never any certainty about who departs first. This part week brought this home rudely, with two young people I knew passing away much, much before their time (and I wonder even as I write this, what is that hubris that suggests we know or understand what ‘their time’ might be?). One of the great joys and promises of working in a university is interacting with young minds that are full of ideas, plans and promise. While most of this engagement is transient, there are occasions where one forms connections that are more enduring, offering intellectual s...

Driving in any large city these days is fraught--with frustration due to delays in driving, with potholed and beaten up roads, with the sight of exclusions of all kinds and the spectacle of development gone crazy. In Hyderabad, driving west is particularly fraught. That's where the city is bursting forward...with promise for some and pressure for others. Of course there is promise that often creates pressure even for those who ostensibly benefit from it--the building of new roads, the breaking of small mountains to make way for traffic helps us get to work somewhat faster and sets up expectations of increased efficiency and the submission of even more time to the growth machine. Maybe all this sounds like so much we hear all the time. What do we do once we (or some larger force we have unwittingly set in motion) are on a certain path? How do we stop to take stock when stopping implies we might have to see, understand, and take into account the real meaning of this high-speed jou...

Windswept. Cold one moment and blazing hot the next. Fear of capsizing and being swallowed slowly by the turbulent sea or a consuming, gnawing anxiety that the night will close on you before you’ve reached a place where you and your children might be able to sleep a few hours before you started off again. Leaving with no idea of where you are going except that it is away from everything you’ve known, everything that you have owned. Grabbing a few things, if at all possible, before you set off on this unplanned journey without destination. Forced from home. That’s the title of a travelling exhibition from Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) that catapults you into the lives of the millions of displaced persons, from Honduras across Mexico, from South Sudan circling inwards desperately in search of refuge from ethnic conflict, from Afghanistan to Pakistan, from Burundi to camps in Tanzania, and yes, the thousands fleeing Syria through Lebanon and Yemen, or across...