There was this story that I read when I was about 12. It was about this boy who was not a good student and this was the cause of his unhappiness. But he was determined to do well.

It’s said that a man often sees his incomplete dreams in his child. He wants his children to fulfill these dreams and give him that sense of achievement. Something similar happened to me.

"Observe…" whispered Silvie, with his eyes focused on the screen.

And just when Jarnail bent forward a little to get a better view of the screen, the man who looked about forty and who Jarnail thought was most happy, let out a an angry shout!

All news channels on International Women’s day covered Squadron Leader Veena Saharan’s achievement. Veena Saharan is the first woman pilot to fly Air India’s gigantic transport plane IL-76 nicknamed ‘Gajraj’. Though many IAF women officers have been flying passenger aircrafts, Veena is the first woman to fly Gajraj that weighs almost 200 tonnes when fully loaded.

" "No!" said Jarnail shaking his head

"But why not?" Silvie said a tad disappointed

"You have dumb and impractical ideas. What sense does it make to organize a rally of SUPERSTAR’S fans? The same thing will happen again. His fans will obviously treat him like God.

As a kid I used to feel that holi is a festival designed for children. I had reasons. I knew the adults had fun too but that couldn’t beat our enthusiasm. Despite being a reputed foodie of the family, food had no significance for me on that day.

"Security!"

The shout was so fiercely shrill that the trees in the vicinity shook like the taut skin of a drum being beaten. The man who shouted the word looked as angry as a cricketer who is the victim of a wrong decision by the umpire.

How many times in your life have you been told the following?

"Lose some, win some"

"No pain no gain"

Apart from being used for advertising weight loss programs, such often repeated lines have become part of daily conversation. They are used as consolatory lines even when they have lost the impact decades ago.

I work for a media-marketing firm where life runs on a ticking clock and is measured in terms of deadlines rather than heartbeats. I originally hail from a simple little town called Uran situated on the western coast of Maharashtra. My company picked me as fresher from a B-school during our campus placement fair. I was exhilarated by the company’s brand image in the market but little did I know that corporate culture was a tough one to adjust.

"I was right." , murmured Silvie to himself.

Ever since Jarnail had stepped out of the station, he was a different person. For one, he wanted to use local transport instead of his powers to travel!

I woke up to the incessant ringing of the bell. As I stumbled my way across the room to open the door, I saw it was the maid. She hadn’t been coming for three days now.

It's said that childhood is the most beautiful of all life's seasons. A vacation may now mean different things to different people. But as kids it always meant lots of fun and games.

"Mumbai?!" screeched Silvie.

"What is wrong with Mumbai? It's a big city and I've never been to a big city, so I want to see how big cities are." reasoned Jarnail.

I remember those days in school when there would be an air of hopes and challenges…tanned faces dripping with sweat returning back from practice…the look in their eyes of sworn determination…like a promise they made to themselves to prove their skill - the days around a sports tournament!

In the past few months, all of us have been using the term ‘Global recession’ extensively in our day-to-day lives. Thanks to the evolved media sources like news channels and Internet news websites, we are well informed about the financial conditions of various multinational companies across the world.

14th February is approaching…and the hype surrounding it is the same as always. There are the same old opposing groups taking their respective, and often very extreme, stands. The discussions (for want of a better word!) these groups indulge in, seem so very childish, it’s almost strangely funny! It’s the same story every year – some politician ‘speaks out’, and what follows is an unbelievable show of absolute buffoonery. We, the citizens, are left speechless to see the politicians, who WE chose and elected, reduce themselves to something resembling a comedy show!

We are all born the same. We all die the same. The same human form, the same number of bones, the same size of the brain, the same ignorance about nature’s unpredictability, the same need for air, water, food and sleep, the same childish blabber in the name of language’s beginnings, the same ancient history of all modern histories-we are all innately the same. But turning a blind eye to the creator’s motive of keeping all alike, we have built walls in our mind, demarcating any sort of difference. These walls have been under construction in our minds for years and ages, and have now become almost genetic.

Jarnail, with his experience believed that the word 'but' can always turn the tables. Like on Holi every year, Kaptan Singh would tell his son, "Jarnail, today you can have as much fun as you want to. You can play with all the colours and all the water in the black pond. You can stay out till whenever you want. You can play Holi with the girls…"and like the lull before a storm, he would stop to catch his breath.

Jarnail was now a little impatient. It had been almost two weeks and his case was still awaiting a trial in the court of almighty God. But Jarnail was an understanding soul. Despite his being a high priority case, he understood that due to the big tsunami in some country, the name of which he couldn’t pronounce or remember, God and his team were overloaded with work.

In most seemingly trivial things lie the answers to most mind boggling questions. For Archimedes, it was a splash in his bathtub, for Newton it was the fall of an innocuous apple and for me it was my white and green Colgate toothbrush...

9:30 am. My alarm rings. I hit the snooze button. Toss and turn for 10 minutes, then decide to get out of bed because I won’t be able to sleep anymore anyway. Shower, change, a cup of tea, and I’m off to office. 8 long hours later I’m back home, with another cup of tea in one hand, and the phone in the other. I’m talking to my mother. She’s in Kolkata. I moved to Delhi the year before last. I miss my parents terribly.

The other day, my friend and I were discussing how we missed the joy of being able to just run around and play all day long. When we were kids, we looked forward to the late afternoon – early evening period. This was when we would forget about all our childish problems like homework, cleaning our rooms, fussing over vegetables etc., and rush out to the playground to start the all-important task of choosing teams and deciding on the game we would play.

Ruby Banerjee had just moved to Bombay, the city of dreams, the city which never slept. She scouted around for a cheap-yet-beautiful home, which proved to be easier said than done! After hunting for almost 2 weeks, she finally got a house, neither very cheap, nor very beautiful. But it was a house nonetheless – her very own space in this big, unknown city.

One of the most crippling human emotions, I feel, is fear. The absolute helplessness one experiences is terrifying. When the 26/11 terrorist attack happened, the first reaction of almost everyone was overwhelming fear.