lissome's blog

 A PRIDE OF GAYS  Some of the most kind, productive, successful people I have known are gay. I am privileged to know them and to have the gift of their friendship. To this wonderful blessing, I owe gratitude to my daughter Adithi who changed my inflexible and unfair views on them when she was just 15, [...]

   So the people have spoken but…. Before we go into a euphoric Rahul Gandhi Zindabad bleat or Congress is our only hope  claim, blindly applauding the winner as we are wont to do   in the throes of success worshipping delirium, - the winning side being a comfortable one - let us take stock of what lies in [...]

In our world it appears that, if the end is moral idealism every means is justified. Thus violence, wars, anger, hate – all negatives that are independently seen as ‘evils’, become armed like glorious soldiers when the  fight is  for a perceived positive like religion, democracy, outraged morality, honour, izzat, citizenry, culture, language, decency, public [...]

 My husband has coined a term for a syndrome that affects most Indians, especially the young. It is the opposite of “grapes are sour”. Grapes are sour is a proverb for those who don’t have the grapes and declare it sour as a consolation to themselves for not getting the grapes, or, having no hopes [...]

 Indian law needs to be amended. We have problems that must not be given a verdict on the rules laid down in 1820. The world we live in is not the same. Technology has progressed at a rapid rate in the last 100 years and each year has add-on dimensions to this that are mind-boggling. For example, we [...]

Man is born nude and is everywhere in a state of shame over it just as the Rosseauvian man who is born free,  is everywhere in chains.  This post was inspired by the Lady Godiva blog posted by my friend hardhitter (hardhitter.rediffiland.com), which set me thinking on the subject of nudity.  Lady Godiva rode through the crowded [...]

 Freedom, my dear friend, has written an emotional piece, his very own, and it was a pleasure reading it. I could not respond to the number of pertinent issues he had raised by responding  on his comments page and therefore this blog is an extended response.  Freedom’s words are in red and my responses are [...]

 The first house was on the seafront at Worli. The concierge’s nose seemed to grow into the air in keeping with the vertical high-rise. The lone door where the liftman deposited us on the 10th floor was of polished mahogany with a brass knocker fashioned into a tiger’s snarl. The door opened and the house [...]

OF MEN AND MONEY Hum gareeb zaroor hai par izzatdaar hai… mehlon me aish o araam hai , par khushi nahi…… and ofcourse the ultimate “mere paas maa hai” which sums up the money dialogue in Indian cinema.  Money is evil. Poverty is noble. This message, as part of the collective and popular narrative, has penetrated [...]

 DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI - It is sweet and right to die for one’s country….Patriotism is the lifeblood, the raison d’etre of soldiers, wars, sovereignty and tribal pride.  Like motherhood, it is a sweet narrative and it is politically incorrect to slander its noble ideals. Yet War as an arm of patriotic [...]

 I have never sought to be like someone else. I have celebrated who I am and it has sometimes been rued as arrogance. But I believe we all have a basic nature that is made of the four humours that are not in balance but in certain proportions that decides whether we are sanguine, choleric, [...]

THREE RARE VIEWS ON DEATH FROM GREAT POETS Dickenson, recluse American poet speaks of death as wooer, seducer, abductor who whisks her away on his chariot with all the ‘civility’ of a suitor to a mound of an eternal home! Check out how speed is created in the images of life that they pass on their [...]

Today I visited PGRs blogs and found one on Death and Vanity titled “Satya’s Blogs” and I thought to myself, I have the perfect picture for this blog. So I am putting it up. The text is available at PGRs (sounds like MTRs .. giggle) so look it up at  The police on rediffiland are [...]

 Human beings live for Power. The one force that drives them is power over everybody else if they can achieve it. Every other emotion, motive, intention, goal is a camouflage to conceal the inherent need for power. We see it in mundane quarrels that children compete when they call it ‘play’ to the vicious machinations [...]