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Showing posts from June, 2021

LIFE LESSONS from 'THE LITTLE TRAITOR'

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  The Little Traitor: A movie showing on Prime video, follows the unusual friendship between Proffy Liebowitz, a precocious and articulate 12-year-old Jewish boy, and a British soldier posted in Palestine named Stephen Dunlop. Though a sweet unassuming ‘coming of age' movie set in innocent times, it teaches us a lot about relationships, learning, and life .                                      1. Unexpected friendships are the best ones : As we meander through life, the possibility to make a friend lurks at every corner. Life gives us this beautiful gift of opportunity through  surprising and sometimes strange situation and coincidences. Take the opportunity, walk the common path and explore where it carries you. Keeping it or leaving it the power of choice is yours. The movie shows us a glimpse of a brief friendship that was carried in the hearts for a lifetime. 2. Common interests and shared beliefs build good friends: The statement “you too?” has started many a friendsh
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                               ‘Be where you are or you will miss your life’ -  Buddha How is it possible today to contribute a hundred percent to your home and work when both the entities have merged into a big confusing mesh? What changes can we make to reach the right balance? Everyone is walking the tight rope more than ever, but there is an upside in it all. Working parents and dads especially, in large metros specifically, get the unique opportunity to share time with their children, schooling or playing with them. Parents actually have more time on your hands. Gone are the days of preparing multiple tiffins, waterbags schoolbags, hair plaits, polished shoes, costumes for stage and games, ironed uniforms, drops to bustops and school runs, spending a couple of hours travelling and then settling down to work. A mindboggling list of activities and stress in a mere 2 or 3 hours, no more exist. Getting to wear comfortable clothing , not having to pay bus fees or fuel for you

Kindness Rediscovered

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‘WE RISE BY LIFTING OTHERS’ No quote summarises the year 2020-21 better than this. The year that has ravaged the world and our country especially has left a trail of destruction in every aspect of our lives. It has ravaged individual families, relationships in communities, economic stability and seeded a deep-seated mistrust and wariness for the future. All around people have lost family to death, workers their livelihood, children their childhood and human freedom on the whole. It was almost as if someone had pulled the plug on normal human existence. Amid this devastation stood tall one single aspect ‘the generosity and kindness of the human race.’ In the past decades of accelerated technology development and improved quality of life, somewhere the ‘Act of Kindness’ became the forte of the extreme rich (who made a profession of it) or the religious organisations who received the funding and manpower for the same.  The youth of this generation were consumed by movements towa

The Ambiguous Path Home

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Hiraeth ; a Welsh word that has no direct English translation. Hiraeth  is  a feeling   with many layers . It is homesickness for a home you can't return to, or that never was and also sense of regret, along with a general sadness over the lost or departed. It's a longing for a place, for one’s homeland , a romanticized past , but unlike homesickness, hiraeth  can be felt for a place one has never been to. To  feel hiraeth  is to feel a deep incompleteness and recognize it as familiar. Globalization and strife have pushed a huge diaspora of humans to every corner of the world, feeling Hiraeth. It is the longing you hear in the voices of the ones who have left their homeland long ago, a homeland which continues to remain in their hearts. A homeland, which has ceased to physically exist , maybe simply due to decades of development, done to ensure the improvement of the current occupant’s quality of life. The places they once inhabited, the people who once walked the land, all c

A Forgotten Season

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JUNE 2021 brought the rains lashing into the city. A half breathing half living city, wanting to be up and about but restricted and held back due to the COVID situation. The upside of it all was, the mind went whirling to another time; a long forgotten college season , to a city in past times with naturally empty stretches of  roads, sounds of birds tweeting , clean fresh air and cyclists trying to make it to their destination before the next shower. Collegians of that generation have today forgotten that cycles were not only mean exercising and health maintaining machines but literally carried you wherever your heart desired. Being the only mode of affordable transport to the struggling student (besides the sparse municipal transport) it was an asset to the owner, the only worry being getting an easily accessible spot in the college cycle parking lot. Quick exits after hurried breakfasts from homes, in order to beat the rain somehow seem to be a hard won battle. The old and g