Litmus Tests

(published in an in house magazine)

This is stylized version of a few real life incidents, narrated in the first person.

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               The ‘tring tring’ sound distracted me from my computer. I was trying to shoot a bug for the past two hours in vain. I took my sight off the monitor and transferred it to the mobile. A cheerful, familiar face smiles at me, with its name, ‘Ravi’, superscribed on the top. At 16:15hrs, it was quite unusual for Ravi to call me. I wondered what would have gone wrong.

Is Idealism Affordable?

( already published in an in-house magazine)

          This is a real life event narrated in the form of a story. 

          Padma, as you all know, was born into a middle class family. She grew up listening to stories of how Rajah Rammohun Roy braved the society of his time to bring in the Sati Abolition Legislation, how Kandukuri  Veeresalingam Pantulu conducted widow remarriage, braving ostracism  from his fellow castemen, how Sir Raghupati Venkataratnam  Naidu brought about a transformation in the Devadasi community, so on and so forth.

          It was her grandpa, Sitaram, and her aunt, Lakshmi, who were her story-tellers. After relating the anecdote, they would add, ‘See, how courageous he was?’, or ‘One should stick to ideals like that’.

          ‘What are these ideals, grandpa?’  Padma would ask. Sitaram’s definition was ‘Ideals are beliefs in situations which are desirable, but not easily attainable’.

The Peril of being ‘Practical'

          There's nothing new in this. In fact, you feel you've read it somewhere, may be in a newspaper report, seen it on TV, or on the silver screen. However, a message needs to be reiterated till corruption is eliminated; hence this story.