REFLECTIONS

" A  pub crawl  (sometimes called a  bar tour ,  bar crawl  or  bar -hopping) is the act of one or more people drinking in multiple  pubs  or bars in a single night, normally travelling by foot or bus to each destination and occasionally by cycle."  "Well, we are doing a 'Caf é  Crawl'!" we thought aloud as we sat at the cafe inside Alliance Fran ç aise, on Max Mueller Marg in South Delhi, drinking our third round of beverages for the afternoon. It was a hot summer's day in May. We were draining ourselves to the hot and humid climate walking from a cafe to another, teasing our  palates. We started at Kunafa, an Arabic café that serves an  assortment  of Middle-Eastern sweets and a range of beverages including a variety of teas and coffees presented beautifully in jars behind glass counters. Located near the Meharchand Market in Lodhi colony, this place is a small café - more like a take away with...

What have RSS and other religiously finicky groups been thinking when they declare that conversions and re-conversions have been taking place since several years and that they are now converting masses. 'Ghar Wapsi' is a shame name given to this concept and what they need is self introspection. All those who are involved in this ridiculous activity should sit back, relax and think about what religion they really belong to!  Do we as individuals ever think about why we follow a certain set of rituals prescribed by our so-called religion? What is religion in the first place? Why are we branded with a certain religion and what inside us is the real religion? Thanks to my parents' teachings and a secular schooling in 'Fravashi Academy' I have grown up with friends from all religions and faiths and have always been taught at home to inculcate radical thinking about all faiths. To me, Religion is faith. Something that can keep me going in the worst of my days in life...

The drama over the former civil servant, Aam Aadmi Party chief and most recently the chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, has erupted too high for the simplistic common man. I saw some news channel creating news out of the posters of "Arvind Kejriwal 'missing'" being put up around New Delhi. Mocking Kejriwal for all his follies as a political fore-figure and going to the depths of ridiculing his ailing physical condition this poster literally rips Mr. Kejriwal off all the respect and following that he had earned over a period of a few months. People seem to have unthinkingly deemed him a failure and evidently have failed to look beyond what the media has to offer. India seems to have lost it's analytical brain to the business of media and 'entertainment'. Let's look at the sequence of events from a different perspective for once. Surely Arvind Kejriwal made a promising attack on the ever prevailing Congress government. His approach in unravel...

On 26 th April 1564, a legend of the literary world was born in a small English town called Stratford-upon-Avon. William Shakespeare doesn’t need any introduction. For me, he has been a man who draws awe and reverence from the remotest corners of the world through his writings, even centuries after his existence. Till date his written word is worshiped in the theatre and literary world. This place couldn’t be missed by a publishing student. Stratford-upon-Avon, as the name suggests, lies on the banks of Avon. It is very close to Coventry and falls under the Warwickshire County. This place doesn’t even qualify as a city. It is a simple place still basking in the glory of Shakespeare and feebly promoting itself to the tourist population. The city centre hosts a building that says ‘1564’ in big bold font on its front. I’m not sure if it stands there for centuries but it pretends so at the least. On the high street itself, there is this old wooden villa that stands tall amidst al...

Finally winter gave way to spring and it warmed up in UK! At the onset of spring I decided I wanted to see the cliffs of UK once more and this time without the fog and frozen air. I’m sure some Norwegians, Russians or Americans would be laughing at my description of cold UK considering they are acclimatised to the extreme negative 30 deg. of temperatures in their winters but we Indians are happier when it’s hot… atleast those of us from the central and southern parts of India… and minus 5 deg. is the coldest that I’ve experienced so far. Seaford is a place on the southern coast of UK with the longest range of white cliffs along the coast. They are called the Seven Sisters. The journey to Seaford was long. The rail transport in UK is designed in a peculiar manner. The rail network is routed via major cities instead of creating direct tracks from one place to another. So if you want to go to the south of London from anywhere in the north or west you need to first go to London an...

Dover in its entirety has only been captured in my memory. I have not a single photo of it. Reason being, I visited Dover at the peak of March when the spring is still breaking the winter and the fog doesn’t budge. The fog was so thick that we ourselves couldn’t see 10 feet ahead of us. Clicking photos in such weather was absolute waste of time. Dover is a small town in the county of Kent on the eastern coast of England. It is host to a major port and is one of the links of England to France. So much so that the sign boards on the streets of Dover are in both English and French. Despite the trade route, Dover is a small insignificant place. Everything is at a 20 min walking distance. The roads are narrow and the people are simple. Mind you, the city wasn’t laden with fog as you would have imagined but the main attraction of the place was. The cliffs! Dover has chalk cliffs all along its coastline. Formed out of millions of years of deposition of different kinds of sulphates a...

Student life in UK is very different from the student life in India. Most students work part time in order to earn their living and very few hang around with friends after college hours on campus. Social life is mostly active in pubs and clubs and no one is bothered about how the others are coping with their assignments. Vacations are used to earn as much as possible or to go back home, by almost everyone. With this backdrop, we Indians from Oxford Brookes University or rather from Crescent Hall (student residence) were planning to go to Cardiff for New Year’s 2013. It was supposed to be six of us including two of my friends from Coventry. So we booked our bus tickets for the 30 th of Dec and our hotels for two nights. There isn’t any direct bus route to Cardiff from Oxford. It goes via Bristol where it changes service. Ironically, it takes five hours to travel from Oxford to Cardiff, but just half of it to travel from London to Cardiff. That’s because the service from London is ...

Once you have gone around London in those tube trains and learnt your way around them, it becomes an adventure to travel to different places through those zones of London and choosing the shortest route from all the railway lines. It is fun to figure out which line would take you there fastest and what combination of lines would work the best. Sometimes some lines are down and that’s the best adventure day. Working your way around broken railway lines and finally reaching your destination through the maze of the London tube is one hell of an experience. On the other hand, when you see professionals rushing past you on those escalators trying to reach the platform before the escalators do, you can’t help but feel that they are missing out on the fun. Daily life on those tube trains in the rush hour of the office goers could be lacklustre. So Greenwich was on mind this time around. What could be the best way to reach Greenwich from Paddington? Now Greenwich does not come under ...

Excitement, anxiety, boredom and impatience defined me as I killed my time in the long 8 hour flight to London Heathrow. I knew my sister would be waiting for me at the airport long before the flight lands. Noone could be more particular than she is in maintaining a well-planned buffer of time while receiving or meeting someone. So I waited … until finally the plane screeched to its landing. I stepped into London with a rush of excitement to explore this new country, new people, new culture and new life. Tai had good plans to take me around London as soon as I arrived. My university was due to begin a week after and I had plenty of time to acclimatise to this place. This is where my journey around this country began… London As a typical Indian would, I knew London by The Big Ben and The London Eye. These landmarks are frequently used in Bollywood movies and they still don’t fail to strike you with awe when you first see them for real. They are magnificent and very strategica...

"Whether you are open minded or not,  really, depends where your mind's walls are built." Did Einstein think of this while formulating his theory of  relativity? You ask any Indian and the answer you'll get is that 'The west' is open minded. Ask them why and they will tell you that, they openly speak about relationships and sex and they don't have a conservative society that they need to fear like we do in India. They are open to cross cultural marriages and they don't have to seek their parents' permission for major decisions of their lives. Really? Is that open mindedness? I care to disagree.  What we have said just now is not open-mindedness. It's just a culture! This is how I look at it: 'The west' in general are wealthy countries with high per-capita income which means that their standard of living is better than 'the east' in general. They get many privileges since childhood in their country. Just as an exampl...