Newerways

Why? Do you do that early in the morning, leaving me at the mercy of the notorious invaders? I said, slapping the mosquitoes that charged through the open doors and windows. I want you to see the early morning skies and natural light and feel the fresh air. It is so beautiful outside in the garden. Many good things are for free. Enjoy them as they are, quipped my mom. Yes, I nodded in agreement. Everything is so expensive these days. This tectonic shift in inflation made me yearn for all I could get for peanuts, if not free. I remembered reading an article written by my mother's maternal uncle published in an old magazine, Saptahik Hindustan wherein he had compared the expenses incurred at his mother's wedding (which had been documented by his grandfather in his account books) to the present times. That was not a solitary incident. A  father narrated how his father-in-law gave him money to arrange his wedding when they migrated to India just before the partition. He carried a t

Chat GPT rocks the digital world with its immense potential. Sam Altman, CEO of open AI, released chat GPT as if needed assurance of the unpredictable nature of the disruption just launched. The inevitable happened. Our morning dailies continued exaggerating its influence on modern societies, education, and businesses. Students began to use it to write their resumes and SOPs (statement of purpose), and the writer's group continued to emphasize their loss of passive income thanks to this generative malware (as few would call it). There is another group that has an uncanny ability to sniff the latest trends. Their mantra was simple FOMO, fear of missing out. This fear had fuelled their desire to succeed. They trotted along with the trendsetters. These visionaries embraced the latest trends. Thriving on their instincts and reveling in what others were hesitant to accept. Going into the depths of the internet world, I came across this sign board fostering a culture of creativity, poste

  Nature provides us with tremendous opportunities to experience the wonders it has in store for us. So here I was observing the emerging butterfly from a cocoon sticking to the underside of the leaf in hiding. This emergence of a beautiful organism was a stunning sight. I got to see it just once in my garden. I had no camera to record the process. The excitement made me shout out to my grandparents to be a witness to this natural phenomenon, alas! Their arrival was late. When they reached, there were more concerns about my welfare than the ongoing evolutionary process. Living in those challenging times was causing stress and trauma. It was a time of upheaval and unprecedented struggle. There was no room to avoid the trauma. The only way to escape was with resilience. Coping with those life-changing events and turbulent times, I began a journey to express myself creatively. My creative talent oscillated between the two extremes. A papier Mache wall that I made for my living room owes i