What are words worth?

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...

It's a weekend, and so the burden to think and write academically is off--or is it? Some might say the very act of writing is academic; it involves a three-step (at least) translation, from thought to word to type, mixed up with processes of selection, analysis and synthesis, creating or inviting meaning by placing certain sounds, pauses and images in specific order. No matter. Here I am, on a Sunday morning, looking out from my small rectangular windows on to a quiet Somerville street. Cars wait attentively in driveways, while cellphone-toting walkers are being energetic in activewear, and the stone-walled church at the end of the street waits for the faithful to break their weekend fast to seek prayer and peace. Now I hear the strains of the choir waft down my way: a pleasant opening to the day. I have cleaned up my small apartment, done my morning stretches, listened to the news on public television, had a granola cereal breakfast, and feel virtuously productive, having e...

This is not a review. It is not an attempt to critique or summarise a film that many have been talking about in different ways. But yes, it is a response of some kind, to a movie that I watched in an serendipitous matinee moment. I found myself a completely willing participant, happy to be taken in by the melodramatic retelling of what is undoubtedly a motivational story, even without Bollywood's embellishments. I found myself choking at the appropriate junctures, shedding a tear and wringing my hands at others, smiling and cheering mentally when things went the right way for the protagonist. I found myself heaving a sigh of relief when the almost-moment yielded to complete victory. All sports movies finally do this, and Mary Kom was no exception. When the national anthem was played in the movie to her final win, the entire auditorium stood sharing the pride of victory, much like the way they clapped when the Chak De girls scored their goals or the boys in Lagaan beat the vill...

Sometimes, one is assailed by a hopelessness, a frustration born out of the fact that one cannot do anything about the way one feels. You open the newspaper and are bombarded by a dozen stories that speak to the horrible things that go on in this world. Anger, disgust, sadness...and despair. Of course, there are also the many stories of hope and survival that cause one to smile. So we retreat from the assault of the news into a space that is our own, cushion ourselves in conversations about this and that, surround ourselves by the tedium of everyday decision making. Which outfit to wear? What to make for breakfast? Should I do the groceries today or tomorrow? And what about that meeting I need to prepare for? Should I call the electrician to come fix the stairwell light that's been out for weeks? In the middle of all this, when (and if) we allow the consciousness of the world to intrude, we run the risk of being blanketed again by that old feeling of " what can I do about i...