If you want to drive a auto-rickshaw in Mumbai, they don’t test you for your driving skill, or your politeness with passengers, but pass you if you know Marathi. If you want to send your child to school in the same city, parents have to produce a domicile certificate saying they belong not to this country, oh no, but to this state!

“Attach their properties!” shouts a shrill voice. People shake their heads as they hear these orders and many including me hearing those words or seeing the headlines think it comes from a state which uses bulldozers and such techniques to still dissidents.

But this was no powerful ruling party leader, flush with brawn and muscle, giving these orders. They came from Mamata herself, an opposition chief minister!

Women wrestlers of India, sit in silent protest against sexual molestations and advances of their coaches and even alleged sexual harassment from their federation chief!

This is the second time they are protesting in Delhi!

Raj’s breakfast was burnt! and the coffee tasted like sludge. Furious, he got into his car to drive to work, and a few kilometres down the road, heard the loud sound of a bang.

The old man at the puncture shop, looked at Raj with quiet patience, “Quick!” shouted Raj, “get the puncture done! I have a busy day ahead!” The man gave Raj a mile, and beckoned him to sit on the bench, next to some old tires. “I have no time to sit” Raj shouted. “I have so many things to do!”

The house I grew up in was an isolated one, and though it was fun to have huge fields outside and even a vineyard at the edge of those fields, for me, a youngster, not yet into his teens, the nights were scary. What was most scary was the whining, screeching, sometimes thundering sound of the wind outside and one of my duties as the eldest was to walk to the rear of our home and shut the back window.