Ajay Jain 
“Earn this. Earn it.” The last words of Captain John Miller to Private James Ryan in the movie Saving Private Ryan have played themselves back to me continually ever since I heard them the first time. Having lost three sons in the war, the US army thought it fit to ensure the last surviving son, …
What do you do when you walk into a room and see your sister with her step-cousin, Vikram? With her sitting on the edge of a bed, her dress dropped to her waist, the bra lying on the floor? And he standing over her, his shirt unbuttoned, and his member protruding hard and big? I …
You may be its guardian, but you may not pluck the forbidden fruit for yourself from the garden. Even if the royal family holds you in high esteem for your performance and loyalty. There are some rules set in stone – rules to remind you of your position in their society. It would be a …
There were no fixed norms for meals in our house. Everyone had their own schedules, their own menus, and their own eating places. Sometimes there was sharing and caring, but people stayed to themselves mostly. There were exceptional days though, like one when Brajesh tauji sent word out for all to have dinner together. He …
I don’t know what his siblings – and their respective families – had against my father, but it seemed they were out to suck his blood dry and destroy him in every way possible. Including the lives of his children. My father had five brothers and two sisters. The position he held with the royal …
I am, because my mom wanted another child. Out of remorse. She might still have been around had she not wanted to see me in the family portrait. I am, and thus my mom is not. The cross of guilt became mine to bear. Even though I had no say in a past I was …
One Mistake I made one mistake in my life. At nineteen. An age when you cannot distinguish between right and wrong, correct and incorrect, the good and the bad. It’s an age when there are no precedents, no events to base judgement on. You just do things. You are in the kindergarten of adulthood. When …
Daedalus crafted wings of wax and feathers, enabling his son Icarus to fly away from imprisonment in Crete. It worked, but the young man ignored his father’s instructions and flew too close to the sun in his exuberance. The wax melted, and he fell to his death in the sea. There is a lesson – and a warning – for us in this myth!
A peaceful elephant road crossing would have stayed so had a man not been trampled by one of the herd. The man would have been alive had he – and scores of others – not shouted, heckled and honked. The ruckus disturbed the giant mammals and one of them lost his – or her – cool leading to the tragedy.
What is wrong on our planet? We are going down fast, and it will require each one of us to be an environmentalist. We cannot wait for others to do the needful; even Governments cannot be trusted to. But what can citizens do what authorities are not able to?