This cartoon by me was first published in The Friday Times, 22 years ago. It still seems to hold true.

Sharing some of my non-toxic boric acid related insect control tips. An earlier post was about how to get rid of ants. Cockroaches are a pain. Apart from the revulsion, cockroaches can be a health risk. Cockroaches have been found to be allergens for susceptible people. And this is in [...]

This picture sent to me by tweep @sairmir set me thinking about a subject that I had earlier read about extensively. Ghalib himself always confessed to his weakness for wine and mocked himself for it. “Yeh Masail-e-Tasawwuf..Yeh tera bayaan Ghalib, Tujhe hum wali samajhte, jo na baadakhwaar hota” (These profound [...]

With summer coming on, the ants come creeping in. But this isn’t like how it was in Mumbai. Here, the last belt of ants was about 6 inches wide, thick with the critters. But with a young child crawling at home, there is only so much poison you can spray [...]

(I loved reading the lovely post on Parveen Shakir . I had met Parveen just a few days before her death, at a Feminist Mushaerah in Lahore, and adored many of her shayrs. (Thank you, Rana Safvi … and also for #Shair on Twitter.)  She was great! It was wonderful to see people who responded [...]

In the 70s and 80s the mellifluous voice of Jagjit Singh did what many singers before him had not been able to. He brought transported ghazal from the elite drawing rooms and mehfils (gatherings) into the homes of ordinary men and women. Ghazal was no longer to be enjoyed by only those [...]

A girl, who was proud of being an Indian and used to salute her tricolor flag no matter where she sees it, is skeptical about her identity nowadays. Her faith was private matter some years ago, however now it is considered as her sole identity. Once she was returning from [...]

A piece published online, titled “King of Victimhood: Shah Rukh Khan bites the hand that fed him” basically accuses Shah Rukh of being dented and painted. The rhetorical maneuvers of the piece could have done Abhijit Mukherjee proud. Unpack the bluster and you arrive at core: Shah Rukh Khan is [...]

I took my son for a walk this morning. Kids dressed in new clothes were around. Loud patriotic music blaring from speakers. Paper flags everywhere. We got one too. Regardless of the wearying scams and women’s rights and human rights and poverty and starvation and shoddy healthcare and inflation and [...]

“A seven-year-old school girl was raped in a school toilet sparking mass protests and the arrest of the school headmistress. The incident was reported in the city of Vasco da Gama on Monday, when an unknown person entered the school premises and sexually assaulted the girl.” “On Friday, Ramesh Rajput, [...]

Only last week Assam was celebrating Magh Bihu. In the chilly winters, people gathered in groups around bonfire and chatted. Keep your ears on any of these chats and one topic re-emerges — Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s controversial statements and flip-flops that have been doing the rounds. In the aftermath [...]

On the 23rd January, 1998, Attia (my Baaji Jania) passed away. This year is her 100th birthday. Attia Hosain was my ideal person since I was a child. She lived in England soon after the Partition of India in 1947, although she did visit Pakistan and India sometimes to meet [...]