……….The compassion that you see in the kindhearted is God’s compassion: he has given it to them to protect the helpless………

                                                                             …… Sri Ramakrishna.

Maybe, as the world gets divided in its views on both the Israeli war and the Ukraine war, we need to start feeling deeply for innocent men, women and children who are being killed, rendered homeless or are living in fear day in and day out.

Many decades ago while in my teens I loved taking the double- decker bus from the city, run up the stairs to the upper deck, rush to the front seat, and enjoy a glorious ride to the Mumbai suburbs. As night set in, I would put the front glass pane up, and believe you me, no air-conditioner in the world could beat the refreshing gusts of cool air, driven in by the thrust of the bus.

And now that the elections are over, I was happy to hear the elected representatives are eager to get down to work, “We have so much to do!” sighed a newly elected representative, “First I want to rename the street I live on after my father, the chowk at the end of the road after my late uncle, and the fish market after my grandfather!”

And as the elected representatives get ready to do their laborious work, I look out and see a committee of learned citizens, “This building and this and this and this!” exclaim members of the heritage committee as they walk down the roads.

Most of the nastiest fights take place not on battlefields or war zones, but within a bedroom. Fights, which are mainly words, and I’m not going to talk about fist fights or slaps or blows because perpetrators of those methods need to be shamed in public and have no place in this column.

These are about those whose weapons are words? 

 “…Enthusiasm makes ordinary people extraordinary…”

… Bruce Barton

A man had died and the whole city mourned his death. At a club everybody discussed his life and also reminded each other of one characteristic or other that had made the departed one loved by his friends.