People & the Ordinary

My four-year-old granddaughter has recently taken charge of my career. This happened during one of my visits to Washington, DC. She had already understood the broad pattern of these visits. Grandpa comes, stays for some days, plays with her, reads stories, goes for walks, occasionally buys things that her parents may not have approved, and then one morning appears with a suitcase. The suitcase, in…

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” So declared William Shakespeare. The Professor looked at me over his cup of coffee. “Clearly,” he said, “Shakespeare never attended an Indian naming ceremony.” “What difference would that have made?” “He would never have written that sentence.” A child is born. In many countries, the parents choose a pleasant name. In India, we first assemble…

My Professor friend has recently developed an interest in conversations that are not really conversations. “These are exchanges,” he explained, “in which everybody knows what will be said, nobody listens carefully, and yet all participants leave feeling that the necessary communication has taken place.” He calls them  "Conversation templates" According to him, human beings invented language to express thought. We then became busy, discovered ready-made…

What happens when it rains torrentially? The answer depends entirely on where the rain catches you. Rain is never the same rain for everyone. It is a nuisance for one person, a memory for another, a danger for a third, and sometimes, if life is generous, it can be a small private experience. When rain fills Mumbai's reservoirs, people breathe easier, because water cuts may…

It happens more often than we admit. Two people meet in a meeting room, at a conference, over dinner, in an airport lounge, on a train, or in the strange intimacy of travel where strangers sometimes speak more honestly than friends. The conversation begins ordinarily. A question is asked. A story is shared. A joke lands gently. Something in the eyes changes. It is not…

Estate sales are strange affairs. A house is opened to strangers, its cupboards inspected, its drawers pulled out, its books handled, its porcelain turned upside down to check the maker’s mark. Objects that once carried the intimate language of a family are now arranged on tables, each bearing a small handwritten price. A silver bowl: forty dollars. A reading lamp: twenty-five. A framed photograph: perhaps…

I have often wondered whether writers truly choose places, or whether places quietly choose writers. We speak endlessly about writing habits, routines and rituals, discussing notebooks, preferred pens, software, morning disciplines and increasingly complicated systems intended to organize ideas like AI LLMs before ideas themselves have arrived. Yet surprisingly little attention is paid to the question of where writing happens, and that omission feels strangely…

Picasso 1905 Lady with Fan I did not expect a fan to follow me out of the museum. A few days ago, while walking through the galleries of the National Gallery of Art, in Washington DC, I stopped before Pablo Picasso’s Lady with a Fan from 1905. I must have stood there for nearly fifteen minutes. At first, I was simply looking. Then slowly, I…

I first met Anil Date in the central library at IIT Bombay. I was in my first year of the undergraduate programme. It was 1973. Anil had just joined the Mechanical Engineering department and looked nothing like what one expected a professor to be. Corduroy jeans, long hair, a remarkably young face. More like a student trying to issue books than a faculty member. At…

What Is Identity? Identity is often the first thing we notice. It reveals itself in small, almost ordinary ways. A pair of sunglasses. A familiar fragrance. A style of dressing that seems effortless, yet unmistakable. We begin to associate people with these signals. Steve Jobs :  He adopted a uniform of black turtlenecks, blue jeans, and sneakers. This was not merely aesthetic minimalism; it was…