Tid Bit from My Diary

All eyes or to be more realistic many eyes and ears had been focused in the direction of Copenhagen during the last two weeks. I would feel left out by not making a statement about this much talked about “Climate Summit” as it had a grand closing yesterday. The climate summit was not surprisingly given contradictory ratings by various countries as some terming it an unprecedented outcome while other saying it a good start and a few terming it an outright failure. Probably they have to come back to Copenhagen or maybe Mexico to take this further. What does it really mean to us lesser mortals? We quite do not understand the difference between 2° temperature rise and 1.5° rise and how can a nation control that. It is particularly difficult for someone like me to perceive this extremely relative affair concerning temperature. I feel cold at 15° while my friends live comfortably at -25°. I guess it will be prudent to leave this complex issue of climate ...

The New Year is synonymous to change as we bid goodbye to the old and welcome the new. This year I am very nostalgic about the Bajaj Scooter as we bid farewell to this icon with a heavy heart. The scooter has been a part of the life of every Middle class Indian and even if they did not own one. The Message from the president said: “ We have sold the last of our Chetak scooters and Bajaj Auto will not be building any more of these classics. Bajaj Auto has"retired" the Chetak tooling and closed the plant ……” I remember those teenage days as I first learned to ride a scooter and it wasn’t easy to synchronize the clutch and the gear and the accelerator. A smile crossed my lips as I thought of the college days when a friend wanted to try the scooter and nobody was ready to ride his pillion. I had volunteered and he managed to get us airborne followed by a nose dive to the amusement of all others. A few years later I moved to Delhi and I had my own scooter, a Bajaj chetak an...

Over the past four decades that I have been roaming this planet Christmas had been part of my life bringing new flavors in new ways and had rediscovered this most celebrated Birthday everytime. My early memories are of more traditional celebrations in my first school “The Holy Cross School” which was run by Christian missionaries. In Kolkata the Christmas day is known as “boro-din” a popular belief that the days starts to become longer and night shorter from this day. This day is ear marked in all Bengali’s calendar as a day to go out for picnic. Our college campus which is on the bank of the river Ganges and adjacent to one of the oldest Botanical garden in the country used to have hundreds to visitors mistaking it to be the botanical garden, which turns into a family park during holidays. In Bahrain I have some very dear Goan friends and we had great time together during the whole week leading to 25th and without a doubt had the best Christmas of my life. Bu...