She smells of jasmine, Medimix soap, and incense sticks, and she smells better than my mother. My mother smells of sweat and Cuticura powder. I don’t recall exactly how my dad used to smell, but probably of liquor, and the punching smell of some spicy curry which he would have had with his drinks. I know that I hated it when he tried to kiss me every time he came home, fully drunk and going zig-zag all the way from the fence to the kitchen. But Jaanu smells nice, the odour she carries can metamorphose itself into fond memories at…

I did not understand anything when Normal Stansfield (Gary Oldman) said the iconic words, “Death is… whimsical today”, in the 1994 feature ‘Leon: The Professional’. I did not even know those were iconic. It would take years before I know that it is iconic. It would take even more for me to finally understand the meaning of it.

Now I understand perfectly. Death is whimsical. Today. Every day. Two days back, I saw a forward in Whatsapp, where a guy said that the obituary in a local newspaper was many pages long for that particular day. Death! A lot of…

That’s what Rihanna tweeted. It is no big deal. Celebrities have always raised their voices against such issues that exploit the common people. This should not have created a huge blow out, except it did. A lot of people became uncomfortable in one of the largest democracies in the world. To give you all more context- farmers from the northern part of India have been conducting protests against the government for several weeks now. They wanted the Narendra Modi lead government to withdraw the new farm laws that it has passed in the parliament. …

It has been awhile since Tania has travelled. Around this time last year, she was in the central forests of India. It was something that she did that was truly wild for the first ever time in her life. Camping with total strangers in the wilderness made her anxious. A multitude of thoughts crossed her mind that night. “What if danger awaits us?” “ Would any of these strangers step up and look out for others?” “ What if it were my friends?” “Would they have looked after each other?” But what had confused her the most was whether she…