The label at the neckline, which should have been inside by rights, looked as it was winking happily at all and sundry for having got a chance to see the world!

We talk of food, blog about it, exchange recipes, and discuss the plus and minus points of eateries. But how many of us can honestly say we have experienced hunger – not the hunger pangs we feel at stipulated mealtimes but real hunger that goes on and on.

I was agonizing over leaving the little one behind to attend the blogger meet. Fortunately for me, non bloggers were being allowed this time due to the social cause it espoused. Blanket of Relief, an NGO dedicated to protect the homeless of Delhi from the biting cold of the winter was a partner to this meet. This allowed me to tag the little one along to save even that time to be with her. The L&M came too.

Hey folks! I am going to be very busy with my little moppet who is visiting us this month. I am not sure how much of blog posting I would have time to do. I will be spending all HER waking hours with her. It is so wonderful to have her order us around asking […]

We have heard so much about conmen and cheats, that when we meet a sincere and honest person, we not only fail to recognise him or her for what they really are, but also attribute ulterior motives to their actions.

The power of mobility can’t be quantified. In the early 90s, Sheela Rani Chunkat, the then district Collector of Pudukkottai, in Tamil Nadu had brought about a virtual revolution by providing the twin impetuses of mobility and literacy. And armed with the two, the most downtrodden of women – mostly stone quarry workers had formed cooperative societies to become owners of the very same quarries they mined as underpaid labourers!

He still made unannounced nocturnal entries but I began recognising his friends’ clothes soon. In fact, when he came back in his own clothes one time, I actually enquired as to whether he had quarrelled with his friends. And that bag of laundry!

Blessed are the parents who get to raise their kids, but twice blessed are the grandparents, because they have experienced the joys of raising their children and then enjoying THEIR children.

There are many names and nicknames that are rather descriptive and sometimes amusing. But often the nicknames stick and it is not uncommon to find a grandfather called Laddoo or a grandmother called Baby.

Joey was getting to be three much for us to handle. If you have seen the film Marley and Me, you’d know what I mean.

The boys had always wanted a pet – a puppy. But one thing and another prevented us from having one. We were both working, lived in small flats, and the most important reason of them all — I felt uneasy with animals — even adorable, domesticated ones. And then Joey came home and I became a surrogate mother!

Everyone knows that technical gizmos become obsolete faster than you can say ‘obsolete.’ True to his nature, I caught the L&M staring at his first mobile phone reflectively one day. I did a handstand and a cartwheel for good measure in the next room. I was going to get his old handset now!

Lal Bahadur Shastri’s convocation address to the students of Aligarh Muslim University delivered forty six years ago in 1964, is uncannily relevant to a nation today that stands polarized on trivial issues, when larger nation-building challenges are facing it. Jai Jawan! Jai Kisan!