Redefining Horizons

  The Last Run The aircraft had been on the search and rescue mission for quite some time. The sailor ‘over board’ had still not been spotted. The crew had done whatever they could have, but to no avail.  The weather wasn’t great and the sun, too was about to drown.  The captain could feel the knots in his stomach.   A sense of defeat filled the cockpit. It was time to call off  the mission and  set course for the base.  He took a hard look at all those dials in front. The fuel onboard could hold them up a little while more. Something within told him , “May be, one more run, One last run…” He then took a long deep breath and spoke into his radio "Running once more, One last time”. The aircraft banked and turned right back into search and the crew pressed itself to the mission one last time, It was now or never. Suddenly, as if from nowhere appeared, someone, bobbing in the seas below. 'One last time' and a life saved. A decision that snatche...

  Solutions! Really? The earth is infested with discarded PET bottles and plastic carry bags. Bobbing along waves, choking waterways and making up most of landfills, each piece a folly of mankind. Micro plastics have invaded potable water and aqua marine food source and our existence contaminated. Plastics, once touted as the solution to many a problem, have become the most pervasive environmental risk! Solution becoming a problem? Computers determine how we live, whether we use it ourselves or not. It is deployed even to influence our thoughts and emotions, thereby dictating our choices and actions, in ways beyond what we can fathom. Nothing is beyond the reach of these binary logic machines. While we enjoy benefits of information technology applications, we also suffer unstoppable loss of privacy and hopeless dependence. Control of mankind is slowly coming to rest at the mercy of these machines. Once purely meant for mathematical applications, they now evoke both awe and sho...

Down Memory Lane My wife and I, try and find time, both in the morning and evening to sit together and talk to each other. Ever since I left active service, it has become much easier to do so. Quietness of the area we live in and our two wooden chairs provide all the comforts required. Many who know us, ask, “What do you both keep talking so much about?” Besides the mundane, the conversation is mostly about our lives gone by, the good and bad times, the beautiful and trying moments, the calms and roughs we sailed through, of the people we met and their contributions to our journey. Our morning conversations help us plan start and run the day reasonably well. The evening ones are mostly journeys down memory lane. It fills us with a sense of gratitude and helps us re-experience blissful moments. It also helps us view the tough and trying times we survived with a sense of detached wisdom. Often there would be a reference to someone who had been nice to us. Within a day or two of suc...

  The Exchange “Kupa Manduka”! (Frog in the well).  The trailing text was loud and emphatic! Though the reference was to self-admitted limitations and the usage purportedly for himself, it left a sour taste. Was it just self-depreciatory idiom or a snub and beyond? A different opinion, a divergent view, expressed politely on a benign subject like ‘charity’ eliciting an uncharitable response, though self-accusatory, from someone [1] with excellent command on the language, was surprising. Condemnation of a divergent view and its proponent? Inability or unwillingness to accommodate discussion? A novel method of typecasting the opponent as illiterate, unaware and blind to the ways of the new world and therefore unfit to continue discussion? Such retorts are weapons of intimidation or call to shut up, often deployed to silence opponents in political discourses. But, in a benign discussion its is certainly out of place even if it was used self-depreciatingly. Regardless,...

  An Unlikely Waiting Room It was not like any other day! I was just one amongst others seated, keenly watching the digital screen indicating the progress of operations in the theatre [1] . It was not a waiting room by any standards but a landing on the second-floor doubling up as space for sitting and for people to board or alight from the lift. Rows of metal chairs were the only comfort there. Each one was occupied. If at all anyone got up, there was someone ready to take it. Hardly anyone got up. The chairs were inseparably welded together, three of them to a set. Each of us sitting on them, though together in anxiety, were on our own, individually struggling to fend off our own demons! I too sat, with nothing but worry on my mind. All those sitting there also had someone dear, either being operated upon, in one of the eight OTs or waiting for their chance to be wheeled in. There were a few, whose loved ones had been shifted to the post-operative room. Obviously, they se...

Ant and The Grasshopper The story of the ant and the grasshopper must have been narrated countless times in our childhood. The ant survived the famine and the famished grasshopper perished! Most of us, forced to by our kids or grandchildren would have re-narrated the story with all the sound and action to make it captivating. The last line is often about the moral of the story! They say all these childhood stories convey some profound message, which we conveniently forget as we grow up.  Let us recall the story in another setting!! The 'covidian' setting! Did it evolve naturally or was it synthesised for weaponisation? Even as debates rage, accusations denials and counters fly, covid continues to wreak havoc across the world. The second wave was deadlier than the first and everyone is now talking of a third.  Will there be a third wave? Will it be deadlier? Then what do we do? What Numbers Say A distinct rise, a fall and the relative calm thereafter is referred to as a p...