INDIRA LAISRAM

I always felt a useful connection with my laptop. Today I want to either chuck it or sell it off or take it away from my sight. My laptop has given me more than what I wanted. At one point of time, it was my saviour, today it has far exceeded its utility and eaten into my hours of sanity when I am away from work. I cannot even half help myself from feeling this strong aversion that I have now vowed never to ever own a computer in my life after I sell off this one. So, eventually I want to go back to the pre-civilisation days when man lived with the bare minimal subsistence, and still was happy! Maybe I am making a much bigger deal of it than I should especially in today's world when people feel handicapped without the laptop or the BlackBerry. Well, it's not. My laptop took away every happiness I found. My dad always said it constantly, my teachers always said it constantly, my friends always said it constantly that one should always tow away the stuff or things that have a ne

April is the cruellest month. That is T.S. Eliot in The Wasteland . Ironic that the dust and winds that blow during this time are not the gentlest and the rays of the sun often singe the face. It’s not very pleasant. I hadn’t thought to think of April this way, though. But it has its ways of bringing a certain, unsettling feeling. I was at the crossroads of life in the April of 1994. It was a time when I was leaving my favourite summer house, my favourite bunch of intellectual friends and my professors, with whom I shared a great rapport at the university. I was moving into another life beyond a safe periphery. Life, I imagine, is filled with a certain repetitiveness… I'm suddenly having an accidental slip into nostalgia and with it there is a sinking feeling of a certain apprehension that is not quite to define. Last night, I was witness to a discussion between two lovers -- the passionate (or so I think) and the messy one and the one with multiple obligations that he cannot deci

My boss, a hard core print journalist, now looks after the internet edition of the entire organisation or the group, which means a cluster of websites. So, nowadays, when he talks about JavaBeans I know he is not talking about wholesale coffee beans, or when he is talking about Ajax, I know he is not referring to the gods or monsters of Greek mythology. Like him, we are also fast becoming technology inclined. I have never been a math-and-science person, a fact that my first boyfriend found wanting in his list of 'must have qualities' in a girl. "She doesn't have any engineering background," I heard him telling a friend once. But that did not change my relationship with math and science. It changed my relationship with him instead. For good reason. Today when I find myself caught in the wired world of the internet and new media technology, I wonder what is this fascination with technology that people become so nerd out! Working with a team that is into redesignin

Relationships have often been described as beautiful... When I was young it had a cliche definition: "two hearts that beat as one, two souls that think a single thought without even thinking it aloud", and along with it came the fairytale staples from the likes of Anne Mather and Penny Jordan. As a dizzy headed teenager, they served as the ultimate fodder for dreams that slipped in from nowhere. Looking at women in relationships has been such a learning experience in itself, apart from my own. It's almost like trusting your instincts when it comes to your ilk. The gift of hunch, because a woman's hunch is always right. So I know when a woman is led on in relationships but, often, when you are the one, you fail to recognise the tell-tale signs of danger. It's like mindlessly sorting out things not knowing which should hold where. That's when love becomes blind and dumb too. And love is blind and dumb for most women. The moment a woman gets into a relationship