Rant & Reason

The memory was thick. They were walking down a thin, winding road having a conversation that he would never forget. The year was younger; so were their dispositions to life. You could actually have these conversations back then. Father and son moments can never be in any less demand. "So have you given the future a thought", he asked. "Ummm, not really," he replied.   "You plan to?", he asked. "Well, right now everything's a rush. I'll chart my path soon", he said, not looking up even close towards his dad. He didn't receive a happy response. Neither was it an unhappy one. It was one of those you-never-know-what-he-means ones. More a but-I'm-sure-he's-not-as-pleased-as-ever kinda look. But dads will always be dads. Between them and their children, one's shoulder shrug is another's short intense gaze. They are sometimes equal their own children in stubbornness.   Then came the deathly moment of pin drop silence, except ...

(Revisiting an unpublished post courtesy the recent Tannishtha Chatterjee story ) This post is inspired by a late Sunday night viewing of a TV show on the AIB Knockout Roast controversy. I once remarked to someone about it that it was not something you would watch with your mother, and I’ll support that statement by the end of this post. First things first—the right of expression. We are all entitled to it. There are views and there are counterviews. In a diverse society, everyone is bound not to like at least one other person’s broadcasted views. It’s but natural. So then, we tolerate. Because, even without a right that has been inserted through universalisation, if we want ours as much, they should have theirs as much. Then, Value. By this, I don’t mean the moralistic condemnation of someone else’s values (note the inflection to denote the singular of “Value” and the plural of “values”). Values indicates the sum total of singular, specific, objective or subjective principles t...