Blog@GraceJunction

‘Love Marriage’ is perhaps unheard of for some of our readers! In India, there used to be a time when almost all marriages were ‘Arranged Marriages’ wherein the parents chose the bride and the groom, at the time they thought apt and got their children married. Often, the couple would never have met before the marriage, and some times only for a brief time. But there were some bold couples who decided things for themselves and got married, often without the blessings of the elders, mostly because they were from different faiths, financial or social status, or castes. These marriages were called ‘Love Marriages’. These couples were often ostracized and abandoned and such a move was branded as unacceptable. (more…)

“Aaj kal key log pehley kapdey dekhtey hey (Nowadays people look first at your clothing)”, says the punchline on a hoarding.

I was wondering what did people look at in earlier days?! Were they looking with eyes that could penetrate into the soul??! Could they see through? Didn’t they look first at clothes too?

Haven’t clothes and apparel always made fashion statements? Haven’t clothes always rode on the winds of change in society? Have they not represented rebellions, revolutions and new worldviews and philosophies? Have not clothes almost always expressed the views and opinions and allegiances of people? Have they not always been associated with bit of controversy? (more…)

It been some time since I blogged. Well, I didn’t have any withdrawal symptom for sure. I wanted to ensure that too because of the way I was blogging, I had a feeling, whether it was becoming a compulsion. Gladly, all is fine.

During the time of this hiatus, however, I did have my urges to blog over certain issues that came up, but then I was really held up with some or the other work.

During the week, two figures firmed up significantly enough to impact thousands of people.

One is the inflation in India. It is almost becoming a sinful indulgence to buy simple fruits and vegetables. The Alphonso Mango has become unapproachable. The vendor showed me four pieces and said with absolutely no feelings at all, “one hundred fifty”!! I mean, almost 38 for a mango! Gold is firming. Good. Realty is firming. Good. Deposits in bank are firming. Ok. What about liquid cash? We need cash for our regular routines and its power is surely draining away. We can’t sell gold everytime and eat the profits! Inflation is hitting everyone hard. I am buying Kesar and Badaam mangoes to make up for the Alphonso vacuum! (more…)

The world has become very busy. Everywhere people are running. Running for what? Status? Money? Fame? Success? In this mad rat race people have surely forgotten who they are and what is it that they really and truly want. Are the things that they run after, the things that they really want or are their real needs something else? Do they stop running once they get what they were running for in the first place?

In some of our metros, people don’t have time even to meet their children. They meet them on Sundays, because on weekdays, when children leave for school, parents are sleeping and when parents return home in the night, the children are sleeping. So what is it that is so big that people are running after it at the cost of their family life and even their own lives?! (more…)

Somethings, they say, are contagious, and one of them is a smile. One of the things that we have lost or forgotten in our daily lives is, how to smile!

I was once getting my shoes polished by a cobbler on the street. After his work, I handed over the money to him and turned around, and somebody immediately said, why don’t you just say thank you and smile? My first reaction was Smile and that too at a cobbler on the street who is getting his money? Why? Well, we men more often tend to keep the macho image in us and we often think it is cool to have a stern face and it fits the image of an achiever, which we have so many times borrowed from our bosses, the hard task masters, the super achievers and many times people who personify all our dreams!! (more…)

It was mid April when I read about the elaborate plans of the Chinese government, on how they are preparing themselves for the upcoming Olympics. Frankly, I was quite impressed about the level of thought & effort they are putting in, to make the event a success. If you’ve ever been to China and if you had a glimpse of what they have built it to be, you would surely bow down to their achievements. In everything that they did, they’ve shown it to the world.. what sheer human grit could achieve!

The news article read something like this “The Chinese government hopes launching shells containing silver iodide pellets into clouds will curb rainfall and ensure clear skies for the 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing. According to the plan, 100 staff at 21 stations surrounding the city will have 10 minute window to blast away at the clouds so that they can be dispersed before they come near the stadium. Three aircrafts will also be on stand-by to drop catalysts on the clouds…!! (more…)

Three weeks before Christmas 1993, Wolfgang Dircks died while watching television. Neighbors in his Berlin apartment complex hardly noticed the absence of the 43-year-old. His rent continued to be paid automatically out of his bank account.

Five years later, 1998 the money ran out, and the landlord entered Dircks’ apartment to inquire. He found Dircks’s remains still in front of the tube. The TV guide on his lap was open to December 3, the presumed day of his death. Although the television set had burned out, the lights on Dircks’s Christmas tree were still twinkling away.

It’s a bizarre story, but it shouldn’t surprise us. Each year thousands of people are found accidentally days or weeks after their solitary deaths in the affluent cities and suburbs of the world. If a person can die in such isolation that his neighbors never notice, how lonely was he when alive? (more…)