Life Inspires

While walking casually in Connaught Place, I was struck by a curious sight. A woman manning one of the roadside stalls was engrossed in her business while two stray dogs were patrolling the area around her. After a while, the dogs took their positions around the stall, curled up, and dozed off. Soon more dogs arrived and joined the sleep-over. The woman, all the while, was apparently unperturbed by the increasing canine presence around her and went on haggling with the customer who was inspecting a colourful patchwork rug that her stall apparently specialized in. As soon as the customer walked away with the rug and the woman pocketed the money, the ears of the apparently sleeping dogs twitched and soon they were looking up at her. She reached inside a polybag that was lying next to her and took out an unopened packet of biscuits. And threw one biscuit at a time at the dogs. The dogs swiftly gulped down their share and gave her that persistent pleading looks only dogs are capable o...

World's population recently crossed 7 billion and, out of those, over 1 billion people live in India. There is, indeed, a lot of us! But how many people do we know or recognize? Perhaps 1,000 or 2,000 or, if you are socially very active or have an unusually good memory, 15,000. Of more than 1 billion people, only a handful are famous. And there's enough talk about them already. Twitter, Newspapers, Facebook, post-lunch discussions, all are buzzing with their names and their personal and professional lives are being minutely analyzed. But do we ever stop and think about who runs the country? Not the politicians or famous writers or artists. And definitely not the Bollywood Actors. The country is run by the guard who stands alert outside your housing society and the milkman who delivers milk to your place before you leave for office and your housemaid who cooks, cleans and washes up for you and by you yourself. Unfortunately, not everyone gets fame, but everyone does bring...

You do not meet someone who has followed his passion throughout his life every day. So November 27, 2011 was really special in the fact that I had the opportunity of meeting Bhai Mian and his son Jamal who have spent years making and flying kites all over the world. Bhai Mian is 85 years old now and his movement is severely restricted because of Diabetes. And this was the reason why the person who had put me in touch with Jamal had woefully predicted that probably I'll not be able to meet the national awardee at all. In fact, according to him, I would be lucky to get to meet his son in person. But when I called Jamal on his mobile, he agreed to meet me at his place in the famous Delhi 6. Full of anticipation, I and my photographer friend followed Jamal through the labyrinthine lanes of old Delhi. This was the first time I was going to enter a home in Old Delhi and the prospects were exciting me to no end. My imagination had run wild and I had painted various pictures of th...

Daleep Singh has been driving autorickshaws on Delhi roads since 1993. Born and brought up in Delhi, he has seen the starting prices of a ride in the auto rise from Rs 3 to Rs. 20 now. Nowadays, he and his auto can be found plying between Central Secretariat Metro Station and India Gate. Though he's happy this way, he prefers to take tourists on Day-long trips around Delhi during which he shows them India Gate, Qutb Minar, Humanyun's Tomb, Rashtrapati Bhawan and almost all other monuments of Delhi. He earns about Rs. 1000 - 1500 for this kind of a trip. It was his birthday on Saturday November 12th and he turned 40 that day.