Priti Talkies

Photo credits @Colourbox A couple of summers back our daughter, looking a picture of perfect morning dishevelment, came tearing through the door, running her daily-designated path to our room with as much impatience as a ten year old could muster. Her holidays had started and we had yet to decide where to go. It was sacrilegious that three days had already been wasted and the confusion continued to persist when our daughter’s insistence on seeing sand dunes finally settled the matter (thanks to the chapter “The Great Indian Desert” in her Social Studies book). She was very curious for the experience, so Jaisalmer it was. We set off to feast on the blazing sunsets and golden sand dunes crossing places like Dechu, Chacha and Pokharan on the way. Jaisalmer, a cairngorm in the barren vastness of dust, is undoubtedly one of Rajasthan’s most beautiful cities that blends so perfectly with its natural surroundings that are so gracefully annotated with the pristine calligraphy of cac

There’s almost a pattern to it. Every time we get too cushy about the peace in our lives and that of our neighbours, we are rudely awakened to the reality of terror. Terror that is basically aimed at derailing the peace talks between India and Pakistan but ends up shattering the lives of hapless victims of such tragedies. This is exactly what happened on the fateful night of February 18th when two powerful bombs ripped through the boggies of the Samjhauta Express. The tragedy left 68 people, including women and children dead (charred beyond recognition) and several grievously injured, all this two days before the arrival of the Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri who is in India on a three-day official visit to take the peace talks "hopefully" to the next level. The perpetrators of the crime couldn’t have picked a better timing and an even better target, the “Peace Train” that runs between Delhi and Attari before proceeding to Lahore in Pakistan. Till las

It could have been me.  It could have been you.  It could have been anyone.  But it wasn’t. It was her.  A woman with one dead child, a teenage daughter, two young sons and a baby in her arms when her world literally came crashing down. Till then, she had lived her life like a queen. After all, being the wife of a police inspector wasn’t bad at all. That’s what everyone thought, mindless of all the challenges it entailed. They felt she had it all, especially her husband's three younger brothers, whom she had cared for like her own sons; getting them married, getting them jobs, getting them settled, only to be later cursed by the lot. Nothing new or unusual about that, one would say. Then why even tell this story? Well, for starters, it's a story about quiet resilience that we see around us, but never really stop to pay attention. It's a story about a woman who not only fought and prevailed, but did it all with immense dignity and pride and a smile that never left her face