Words are Weariness

Green, Yellow and White,-the girl wearing the waitress's uniform was a refugee, could be an Indian or a Lankan refugee; could be even Guyanese. Black skin, black eyes, black hair, black eyes..even her lipstick and nail polish were black. Her name should have been long with many vowels, she had shrunk it into 'Rathna' in her badge that she had pinned to her dress. She stood at the right distance from the table, not too far removed to see, but not too close to hear the conversation around the table, just as the rule book of waiting at tables says. She knew many other rules of the book. When you serve at the table, you must serve from the left side of the seated guest - Rule No 12. When left overs are removed from the table, you must remove them from the right side of the seated guest - Rule No 11. While adjusting the chair before the guest eases in, you should approach from the left - Rule No 26. If the napkin is folded and kept to the right of the plate it means...

It all happened like this. A Jewish woman had called us for dinner. You may ask me, what was unusual about it. I had been to many gatherings and celebrations with dinner hosted by all kinds of people,- Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, but never a Jew. As a result, I and my wife were looking for the appointed day eagerly. Our host's husband was a writer. The novel he wrote was an interesting one , though the writing was not up to the mark. The whole story happens inside a moving train in Siberia. Though he had approached many a producer of films with his story, nobody was courageous enough to make a movie out of it. When we went to Ora's ( that is her name) home that night, her husband was away. She was alone with her mother. It was also for the good, after all, writers need their escape once in a while. She showed us our seats and said that her mother was in the kitchen and would soon join us in our conversations. The dinner table was nearby. We ...

Emily Dickinson’s poetry is fascinating. Her poetic vision and the imagery her poems create have fascinated me ever since I came across them in a small tattered book of poems I bought on the pavements near flora fountain in Bombay some 30 years ago. Emily’s poems stood out from the collection and thanks to Amazon and Kindle, the entire collection of the 1800+ poems of hers is now available for free download. Hail the INTERNET! The lines in the tag line of my blog http://words-are-weariness.blogspot.in are excerpted from one of her celebrated poems, ‘Tell all the truth---tell it slant‘. I do not have a list of favorites of hers, as during different times and in different personal contexts, different poems have appealed to me. However, what has given me sublime pleasure is the suddenness of expressions and the subtle movement that it makes deep down. How could so few words make so large an impact? Though the import of her poetry is universal and timeless, it helps to un...

Pulses have gone past 200 kg and there is great hullabaloo. Political parties are using it as a saber to cut and thrust at Modi Government. News papers are reporting the 'raids' on traders and the capture of thousands of tonnes of stocks which is also said to be softening prices while actually it does nothing of the kind. It is common sense,  when you raid stocks with traders and impound them, the impact will be disruption in supplies which can only act to increase prices. The government is reported to have 'successfully raided' and impounded about 85000 mt tonnes of Pulses, mostly from Mumbai. Most of these quantities belong to importers who had contracted to import large quantities at prices   between Rs.85/kg to Rs.135/kg during the last few months when it became apparent that Khariff crop of Pulses is bad following the failure of monsoon. It is likely these stocks rot in ports or godowns sealed by Government, benefiting nobody except the bureaucracy that will ex...

While Jaitley bravely declares GST will be resolved before 2016, and the bill will be presented in the winter session of the parliament, the fact is here tthere is still no consensus on some aspects of the conceptual design.A news report in 'The Economic Times' on the 25 th of Sept, 2015 talks of some states asking for powers to tax the Business-to-Business(B2B) transactions. This means the concept of GST being a destination tax should be applied in B2C scenarios and not in B2B scenarios of inter-state commerce. Nothing is more damaging to the cause of GST if such a course is adopted. It will be better not to tinker with the Indirect taxation regime as it is than to tinker with GST and allow all kinds of exceptions and deviations that are antithetic to the idea of common market creep into it. Such arguments reflect a very narrow thinking and are mooted by ill-informed bureaucrats in the states to curry favor with obdurate and intemperate state politicians like Jayala...