Thatched House

  Live @ the Nobel Peace Prize Concert 2011 It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside I'm not one of those who can easily hide I don't have much money, but boy if I did I'd buy a big house where we both could live So excuse me forgetting, but these things I do See I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue Anyway the thing is what I really mean Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen And you can tell everybody this is your song It may be quite simple, but now that it's done I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind that I put down in words How wonderful life is now you're in the world If I was a sculptor, but then again no Or a girl who makes potions in a traveling show I know it's not much, but it's the best I can do My gift is my song, and this one's for you And you can tell everybody this is your song It may be quite simple, but now that it's done I hope you don't mind, I...

Delhi is in the grip of Dengue outbreak again. To date, over 800 cases and 2 deaths have been reported this year. People panic. The blame games do the rounds. Monsoon passes. Winter sets in to dry up the mosquito breeding sites. Cases come down. And it is forgotten. Come next year and the story repeats itself.  Aren’t all seasonal diseases supposed to be that way? The worrying part is that Dengue and vector borne diseases like Malaria, Japanese Encephalitis, and Chikungunya (the sister diseases caused by the bite of mosquitoes) are preventable. Other seasonal diseases like Typhoid, Acute Diarrheal Diseases, and Influenza are also easily preventable diseases. Yet season after season, year after year, we are caught off guard. To a large extent, we ‘let nature take its course’ and we do too little to stop the cycle.  Diagnostic facilities have become more refined, medicines have become better, and hospitals have become more equipped to handle complicated cases. But t...

If I want to increase the rating of this newspaper column , the easiest thing to do is to say something controversial or outrageous. The more bizarre, the better. That’s the way to become popular today. I don’t have to work hard; to be notorious is enough. I might ‘sex it up’ a little. A reference to sex can shoot up sales of magazine, soap, car, color paint, mobile phone, jewelry, movie, book, anything. Or I might say something outrageous against someone. Notoriety can turn a person without talent into a celebrity overnight. In this generation, no one wants to be ordinary. Everyone wants to rise above the crowd and be celebrated. We don’t want to be normal. We want to be special. The world doesn’t bother what means we use to become famous. It doesn’t matter if we have to sell our dignity, our self-respect, our very soul for it. To become popular has become the ultimate goal. Online social media like facebook provides platform for every ordinary person a kind of podium or a wo...

‘It would appear that water as a commercial good has replaced the State’s obligation to ensure availability to the community of basic minimum quantities of affordable water’ - Wilfred D’ Costa   ‘Water promises to be the 21 st Century what oil was to the 20 th century: The precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations’ - Fortune ‘Global crisis in water claims more lives through diseases than any war claims through guns - UN If you have been going to wedding parties for the last 25 years or so, you might have noticed many changes, one of which is the way you are served drinking water. Now, you pick mineral water bottles. That would have been unimaginable quarter of a century ago when water was served from water filters and jugs and you drank from metal cups. It is more convenient for the host to serve bottled water than to boil. To serve water in metal cups is also passé. But why I draw your attention to the way water is served at wedding part...