Blog@GraceJunction

December 2009, one place that captured the imagination and attention of the whole world: Copenhagen, Denmark. Representatives from 183 countries met for a 12-day Copenhagen Climate Summit to try to come to agreement on how to best reduce mankind’s “Carbon Footprint” on our world. Though they finally ended up making a toothless and non-binding “Copenhagen Accord”, the summit was largely a failure. Despite a big and expensive build-up to the summit and long negotiations, they could not even agree upon or set targets for emission cuts of greenhouse gases! The developing countries were not ready to commit themselves while the developed ones had too much at stake! China, the world’s biggest polluter played the waiting game and made no commitments, thus frustrating everyone! (more…)

Recently while going through an article, I came across a statistics that made my eyes pop out! A game show on one of the TV channels received as many as “nine crore” (ninety million!!) phone calls made by people across all age groups from all over the country, just to take part in it! What would invoke such a response! (more…)

Coming home to be greeted by an empty house, eating the lunch pack arranged from the neighborhood, playing video games and talking to the characters inside the game, sleeping off in the middle of the loitering around, rushing off to catch up with friends and sports at dusk, coming in late for dinner to see the parents go off sleep for the day were the ‘almost predictable’ routine events in the life of the young man sitting before me in the Soul Café. He was about 19 years of age. (more…)

Johnson had a blessed marriage. I got an opportunity to speak at the wedding and it was a memorable event. The place where he got married was about eight hours by bus from where I lived. On the eve of the wedding, as we were traveling towards the destination by a bus, I sat by a young man I knew well. He had his phone in his hands and every couple of minutes he was looking into it. Suddenly it would buzz and he would start punching into it again and then repeat the waiting ritual! This was continuing since the time we got into the bus. He was only in his late teens and so he was certainly not finalizing the terms and conditions of some commercial deal for sure! But the communication via the ‘SMS’ was keeping him as engrossed as a big business deal would! (more…)

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The loud music coming from inside the huge canopy, huge halogen lights all around, smell of excitement rising above the small stench of animal presence, vendors selling popcorn, wafers, cold drinks, balloons, toys etc, and anticipation and excitement of my elder daughter and even myself are some of the first few things that come to my mind when I look back to the evening a couple of days back. I had never seen a circus for real. There were huge gates to greet us and to make sure people don’t barge in. The show inside was still on and we could hear faint sounds of announcements by the ringmaster rising above the din of music and the murmur of hundreds of people.  Suddenly, they appeared. Hordes of them smiling, talking, some amused, some with a look of disbelief and most only thinking about the next chore on their list. They kept trickling out and I was surprised by the number of people that tent had accommodated! (more…)

In my recent trips to down south, Kerala, I had the several opportunities for trysts with the laidback lifestyle of the Keralites. Except when they are on a strike or on a protest with loud ‘zindabaads’, the Keralites are noticeably very laid back.

I have my reasons for the same. For example, the workers in the fields; supposed to report at 8.00am; nearly idle their way to their work spots well past 8.15am and then you can suddenly see them resting again after ‘kanji’ at around 10.00am and then, though none of them carries a watch (at least they don’t show they have it!), invariably you can find them “all”, suddenly leaving their posts at 12.28pm. Such an impeccable and awesome sense of time! Though post-lunch period starts at 2.00pm, you can see them coming slowly to re-occupy their posts by 2.15pm. If you are at the spot, supervising them, you won’t even realize how and where they vanish suddenly at around 4.00pm for the ‘chaaya’! Around 4.50 pm you can see most of them lining up to wash themselves up before their procession back home! Perhaps they sigh and tell themselves, “At last, the end of another arduous day”! Yeah, arduous for sure, but arduous because of watching them! Oh what a life! (more…)

I had just returned from a long trip and was visiting the Soul Café after a long time. There were some visible changes to the place but most of it was only rearrangements. However, they were giving away Cold Coco at an almost ‘throw away’ price. I was surely going to try a couple of cups. I took the corner seat, ordered the Coco and took a relaxing position to make a review of the place. So many long discussions had ensued in that place! (more…)