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The art of giving

The art of giving doesn’t come naturally. Let me share a story to illustrate my point. We’ll travel back thirty years, to a time when I was twenty-four and stationed in a remote village on the border with Myanmar. I worked for the government, overseeing a vast area of 230 square kilometersdense forests, rugged mountains, and about 50,000 poverty-stricken people. My duties included monitoring the borders and ensuring other government departments fulfilled their responsibilities. My office-cum-residence was a two-room wooden shack. One room served as my bedroom, and the other, with a small wooden desk, was my office. There was no plumbing; I relied on rainwater and used an open-air toilet. If I was lucky, electricity might flicker on for an hour a day, though it often vanished for months. For senior staff, this place was considered a punishment transfer. But for me, just starting my career, it was an… The art of giving

A death in the family

I first met my uncle when I was seven. I was in junior school and enjoying my vacations. He came to our house with a box full of mangoes.

The chair with a world around it

Ramesh settled into his chair, stretching his legs and arching his back. The chair with a world around it was his window to the world.The chair, worn from years of use, sat in the middle of a patch of grass officially referred to as “The Lawn” in the housing society’s documents. Every day, Ramesh, the society’s watchman, would spend at least ten hours in that chair. He moved it in sync with the building’s shifting shadows as the day progressed. His duty was to guard the housing society against the unseen threats of the outside world. The dull plastic chair was his throne, his kingdom. He hated it when anyone else sat in it. Protecting his chair was a never-ending battle. Just an hour ago, at precisely four in the afternoon, Ramesh had found the old gentleman from B-23 seated in his chair. The society manager had sent Ramesh to… The chair with a world around it