O P o t B

Is it not amazing that we have become accustomed to having conversations in sentences that are no more than 160 characters in length and that never before have we typed on a keyboard as much as we do today.  We are surrounded by a myriad of texting applications-SMS, Twitter, Facebook, BBM, WhatsApp and many more-and whats more is that they have all gone mobile.  Would the Remington company, who developed the QWERTY keyboard layout, have imagined that their design would become ubiquitous?  To be able to communicate using only 160 characters, you have to pack more meaning into your messages or attempt to get more words into the limited space that you have. The younger generation seems to have got this down to a tee and trying to decipher one of their messages would require the modern equivalent of the Rosetta Stone and a concise dictionary of hidden meanings.  Believe it or not but, more often than not, entire conversations are carried out in just one line of text...

I have always considered my life to be quite ordinary and, well to put it bluntly, quite boring.  That was until I took a closer look and discovered, if anything else, it has been rather quite eventful if not exciting.  In these forty odd years, more closer to fifty than I would like to imagine, I have done many things and like an obsessive collector, I cannot seem to get enough.  Even though, looking through a critical eye, I cannot claim it was all good, and dare I say not all bad either. The thing about the life experiences, as I call them, is that it is often the least profound moments that have the most effect on us.  Like the Buddha sitting under a Peepal tree, contemplating life, a seemingly mediocre event, that turned out to be so profound that it changed the life of billions to this day. While on Haj(pilgrimage), after the evening prayer, the punishing heat rising from the ground while throngs make their way to grab a bite to eat or a refreshing drink b...

Is it not amazing that what we did not have a few years ago has suddenly become quite pervasive and we find that we can not imagine how we were able to do without them.  A couple of them come straight to mind email, cell phones, SMS messaging (texting),  BBM (for the Apple users out there WhatsApp) and FaceBook.  And these have changed the way we interact with the world in ways we cannot imagine. Remember the days when the only mail you received came in an envelope and was usually delivered twice a week to your doorstep by the Mailman? While this type of mail is still available, it has been largely replaced by that electronic companion that most of us today live by, email.  Never before has mankind written so much to each other as we do today.  I have seen emails that have been written by aspiring novelists that explain everything in excruciating detail, and others that say so little that hours are spent trying to decipher what the person is saying and that...

5 a.m. in the morning, Wilson's Warf, and I was getting ready for my aventure on the high seas in an attempt to land the "big one".  The skipper looked confident that although there was a significant wind, the seas were much calmer then the last few days when the deep ocean swells, visible from the shoreline, were white capped.  Filled with confidence, despite the internet weather report of two meter swells, I boarded the rather small boat and swallowed a tablet to prevent the onslaught of that scourge of the seven seas that lays waste to the strongest of men.    The boat could not have been longer than eight meters from bow to stern, and by four meters across at the stern.  Two rows of bunk seats, that doubled as storage hatches, reached from the bow to the bridge,  approximately halfway to the stern.  The bridge was the size of a wardrobe with its back facing the bow and a door opening the port side of the boat.  T...

In recent months, after many years of absence, I decided to start fishing again.  In the hope of landing the "big one" I have kitted myself out with some nifty fishing tackle-although there are a few bits and pieces that still need to be had-and a good dash of camping equipment to make life a little more comfortable at waters edge.  After arriving and setting up I cast the lines in and settle down to enjoy the day. If there is one thing that I cannot not seem to get right is the placement of equipment.  For the rest of the day I would be stepping over things and bumping things over negotiating a maze of stuff to get to where I want to be.  In spite of the wide open space, I successfully manage to economize on the little area under the gazebo to mine own detriment.  All hope faded at finding a solution to this problem. That was until a few weeks ago when everything changed.  I was looking at the gentleman fishing next to me and I could not believe mine ...

Happy New Year and may your days be filled with love, peace, happiness and prosperity!  I know its a tad late, however I did resolve to get this blog written on New Years day however I just could not get around to it.  This year I have taken a new spin on the resolution issue and have a list, approximately five A4 pages in length (double sided) of new years resolutions.  This will increase the probability of achieving at least one of my resolutions.  Like the guy who bets on every number at the roulette table, he has got to win something, even if his net position remains the same, well almost. In the past I would pen at least ten resolutions believing that the small number of resolutions would be easily obtainable, but you guessed it by the time I reached the end of the first week of the new year, or even sooner, the list would be filed in some prime estate in file thirteen. In an attempt to find the reason for this failure to achieve these few simple ...

Now if there is one secret you need to know about Indians, or as we so often fondly refer to ourselves charos, is that we love airports.  Don't believe it, next time you at an airport, take a look around and you will see what I mean. In India, if you do not have a ticket, you are not allowed into the airport. Security they claim, but I know better.  If they allowed people into the airport freely, people would spend days in the airport lobby basking in thought of international travel.  Filling up the eating places and leaving no room for those passengers who are waiting to check in or waiting to catch their connecting flights.  I strongly suspect that this is the same reason they locate airports far from residential areas. I have thought long and hard about this tendency to gravitate towards the airport, have spent hours nay days meditating on this trying to figure out what is it that draws me to airports.  I must admit that even now the reason eludes me. ...