Why I read the Guardian

Because I find gems like this. Read Part I, too, and wait for Part III.

Courage

More than half of what people call courage is a combination of an overlarge capacity for avoidance and a tendency to laugh at inappropriate moments. The rest of it is the ability to look the things you cannot avoid in the face, and cry for what you cannot laugh at.

A trip to the other side of nowhere

To get there, we take a national highway to Sonipat and drive through its narrow, crowded markets. Coming out of there, we take the ‘main road’ to Gohana and then turn off into a road-cum-dirt track-cum-paved path, to reach our destination. When the main road is blocked, we take a diversion through three small villages, [...]

Scared, or scary?

India is supposed to be a country of sexually repressed people, isn’t it? And the US of A is supposed to be sexually liberated. The swingin sixties and all the rest of it. But just look how scared Liberty University* seems to be of sexuality and any expression thereof.
Even more scary (or is it funny [...]

Bad, bad, bad!

Do you find yourself, sometimes, reacting in just the way you don’t want to? Saying all the right things, of course, but thinking all the wrong ones?
Like looking at a newspaper article about visas to Pakistan and wondering whether the Visa God would help these people: after all, he’s Indian (and Hindu?)?! Or about the [...]

Masculine beauty and suchlike

Well, the furious (by the standards of this blog) commenting on the previous post led to much thinking on beauty, and masculine beauty, and lots of other things. And ever notice how sometimes everything you read and watch and hear seems to tie up neatly with what you’re thinking? Well, that happened too.
It wasn’t just [...]

We have a crawling heater

It’s one of those things that blows hot air into a cold room. Small, rectangular, has a stand on which you prop up the front so the hot air blows upwards. (Doesn’t hot air always move upwards, anyway?)
Well, the little rubber thingies on that stand, the ones that are supposed to cushion it so that [...]