The great Indian store room has everything — all the things you can think of and millions you can’t even imagine — waiting to be summoned some day. We never need 99.9 per cent of the things. In my house, we still have the galla that my grandfather started his business with more than 50 years ago and a kadhai, the size of a bathtub.

I went to a pretty decent engineering college in Kerala, and my batchmates are doing all sorts of things outside of engineering, from management to music, from content writing to software start-ups. For most engineers, the four years of college was just to figure out what they wanted to do in life.

Eighteen years after the September 11 attacks, even as the spectre of terror fades from our day-to-day lives, its shadow is cast over our minds, a constant threat that, for all our vows of “never again”, seems impossible to check.

From being used to heckle Opposition MPs in Parliament to providing the soundtrack to a mounting number of public lynchings, sayings like Jai Shri Ram that once provided us comfort and united us, now create fear and sow division.

Fake news has become a scourge, publications are more beholden to advertisers than readers, and it’s more lucrative to cater to echo chambers than to actually inform and guide. The time has come to resume paying for news, irrespective of political leanings.

At a time when we are divided over politics in Kashmir and Assam, ravaged by floods, and crushed by the economy on a freefall, Chandrayaan 2 has ushered in a dash of positivity we so badly need.

In his acceptance speech ahead of receiving the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Ravish Kumar’s appeals to the citizenry’s sense of pride in their rights, despair at being conned, and frustration at being lied to repeatedly. It’s time to pay attention.

If you can drive in India, you can drive anywhere. Our pitiful reputation for unsafe driving has led to the steep fines for traffic violations in the new Motor Vehicles Act. But despite the public outcry over sky-high challans, is money the only language we will understand?

After I flunked a dozen-odd kindergarten interviews, I was told by my parents that I’ll spend more time with my preschool tuition teachers – Julie Miss and Rosy Miss. I may not have learned my letters and my poems, but I learned something – and that something was imagination.

The minute a couple tie the nuptial knot, their relatives descend upon them and start demanding a baby. When they’ve had one, the family begin chasing them for the second one. Thank God for the “Hum do, humare do” slogans and overpopulation problems, or else this would continue ad infinitum.

What Assam and the rest of the world need is a new idea – or a new messiah that reminds its people of values beyond consumption and per capita income. One that can remind its people that once you’ve achieved the means and wealth to cover your needs and some luxuries, it is alright to let others, less privileged, brown or black, Syrian or Bangladeshi, to have a go at it.

Our loved ones live on in us and in our memories, but they also live on in the little and not-so-little things they leave behind. Discarding the things that belonged to my mother and father has been a wrestling match between sentimentality and practicality.

My parents have adopted the television as their own child. From 8:00 am to 11:00 pm, there’s a constant hum of static in the background, punctuated by a laughter track every 10 minutes. It’s ironic that the biggest consumers of the television today are the same parents who hated it.

Have South Indians really earned the right to claim the moral high ground when it comes to sexism? For starters, comparing stats on women’s rights in developed states to the rural cowbelt, is like lauding India for having a stronger record on human rights than Saudi Arabia.

Freedom, to most of us, still dates back to the political independence of 1947. But like poetry, freedom too is defined by its individual interpretations. To be free would be to accept everyone’s claim to the same poem, and by extension, the same freedoms.

In a world obsessed with the new and uncharted, with moving on and around, I’m the kind who likes the idea of home and history. And now when it’s time to leave my childhood home behind, I wonder... How do I pack in all my memories? How do I take all this history with me to a new house?

I am not going to debate whether the revocation of Article 370 is going to be good or bad for Kashmir and India. The result of this action will only be clear with time. But what we must consider is the way this whole manoeuvre was orchestrated. And what that might portend for the future of our democracy.

Going by social media posts 48 hours prior to Article 370’s abrogation, Kashmir was either dealing with the worst genocide since World War II, or in the process of liberating itself from the clutches of “evil separatists”. With so much speculation, we’ve actually ended up with very little idea of what’s happening.

I received a forward with a picture of a ready-to-move-into 6 BHK house overlooking the Dal Lake priced at ₹3.5 crore. Though the image was fake, the desire most Indians have to own a beautiful holiday home in the mountains is very real. But are we ready for a “Kanakia Paris” in Srinagar?

Anne Frank’s tentative forays into her feelings about girls, blurring the lines between the closeness of female friendships, and the desire for something more, mirrored my own. If other girls had felt this way since forever ago, did this mean there was nothing to be confused about? Frank, who made her last diary entry on August 1, 1944, taught me that I didn’t necessarily have to choose.

When you live with chronic pain, the illness makes you less accessible to the world and the world less accessible to you. In the past year, the conditions of surviving my chronic pain has slowly dawned on me. One of them is not having the luxury to desire with abandon.

Ensuring food is prepared according to your order is Zomato’s responsibility. Ensuring the delivery driver’s religion meets up with your regressive criteria for whom you will accept food from, is not their responsibility. Got it? Good.

Back in the day when most of us didn’t know the difference between a filter kaapi and a latte, Café Coffee Day was the place to be. An everyday hangout place where you could always find a good use for whatever little pocket money you had saved, spending hours hogging a table, nursing a single cappuccino.

Recently, an elderly relative took it upon himself to personally message me a “quote of the day” every morning. Soon I started to notice a strange coincidence. All these quotes started magically reflecting exactly what was on my mind at the time.

A collision with a speeding truck with a blacked-out licence plate is the third time the Unnao rape victim has emerged as a survivor. A murder case has now been filed against the accused, BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar. But what’s stopping the party from expelling him?

Dog-eared pages are a sign of love, the physical manifestation of the connection between the reader and his book. Leaving a dog-ear on a book you’re reading is like kissing your partner goodbye. It’s a promise to return and continue the romance. And that’s not a shameful thing.

I grew up receiving the best of education, surrounded by the most loving friends and family and never being treated as “different” because of my speech impediment. But ever since I entered the “shaadi ki umar ho gaye hai” phase, my stammering has been viewed as an imperfection.

My mother belonged to a time where the kitchen was a woman’s prison and her call of duty. She has spent, what seems like, an entire lifetime inside the kitchen. It’s why I seem to have spent the better part of my life running away from it. Choosing to not have a relationship with cooking, almost felt like the only way to protest.

I laugh when my daughter tries to squeeze herself into a dress she has long outgrown, but it is similar to what I have been doing with the friends I’ve accumulated over time, holding on to those who deserve to be shelved.

After a nightmarish high school party, where I hobbled with every step, I abandoned high heels. Grounded in my flats, I have travelled through the ups and downs of life, comfortably and confidently. Some say stilettos are sexy, they add to your stature, but how can you feel glamorous or powerful when you are uncomfortable?