Dr. Shashi Tharoor, one of the few Congress candidates who managed to win the recently concluded general elections to Indian Parliament has written an article in which he describes how he is perceiving a new version of the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi. For a regular politician, it will take much more than a week, to evaluate a new Prime Minister. However, Dr. Tharoor, a lateral entrant to the power politics, has already chosen to go on record about the new Modi that he sees in the Prime Minister.

What happened on May 16th 2014, can be described in just one word – MODI-fication. This was for the first time in the history of Indian elections that a Parliamentary election was fought as a Presidential Election of a Presidential System. It was the charisma of Narendera Modi that NDA got a whopping 336 seats and BJP alone got an unprecedented 282 seats. This very clearly showed that an individual can define and dominate the elections provided he senses the mood of the nation rightly and steers the campaign in the right direction.

I am a married Indian woman who doesn’t like to cook. So before you raise your eyebrows, or become all judgmental about me (I can already feel the thoughts running in some of your minds – Indian women should like cooking, they are anyway born to do that!), let me tell you a little bit about me. I was born in an average middle class family where people ate to live, and thankfully it was not the other way around where people live to eat, and the ladies of the house have to face the perpetual question: Nice lunch, but what’s for Dinner?”

We talk a lot about our (mobile) phones, but do we ever wonder what they say about us? I mean, not as status symbols, but if they could talk, what would they say? Lets take a look – but before we do, I’d like to mention that the brands of the phones are not revealed on purpose in order to remove any potentially controversial airs.

Phone 1 – Holy, why am I in a tray? I was comfortably bumping against my owner’s bum a minute ago! Am I being operated on?

My parents also advised to dress carefully to avoid such street side rogues. I did it all. But I faced fear every time. The boys, dotting the entire way to the classes, chased me sometimes. Once, they threw a bucket of water at me, drenching me completely, and I went back home crying all the way. They did different things each time – shouting vulgar comments about my body, or dress; describing my figure, walking alongside me trying to get close and, of course, trying something nasty; holding my hand, pulling me towards them, touching my body parts, and making me feel completely helpless.

I have always been under the impression that it takes an amazing amount of time, money and dedication to make any difference in this cruel world. The world around me, however, has been telling me otherwise. Apparently, I can make a difference at my own convenience, and in more ways than one – ways which I was unaware of until the recent past. Since I am aware of them now, I feel that it is my moral duty to enlighten you as well.

The best thing to do in either of these situations is take a nice, hot bath or shower. Once inside the confines of the sanctuary that is your bathroom, what better way to relax further than to hum or sing loudly your favourite song? It does not matter if you don’t know the lyrics – you can simply make up your own. They will sound just as good, if not better. Bathroom singing is an art that, like all ancient arts, is fast dying. The reasons for its extinction are not hard to find. The modern life and its ways are fast killing it.

I had always been a typically old-school firm believer of the fact that a phone should be used only to make and receive calls. I always doubted the utility factor of these so-called smart-phones. I imagined a smartphone to be just another electronic device that would eat a part of my day, just the way the laptop and the television do. It would be another screen that I would be staring at for a substantial part of the day. It was only after a lot of pestering by friends, and the fact of my existing phone giving way, that I reluctantly went ahead and bought a smartphone (an expensive one if I might add).

First, there was the increase in petrol prices. This rise in petrol prices led to many jokes on the social media websites but, more importantly, what it also led to was the popularity of the Diesel cars. Most people were buying Diesel cars, and anyone who was still buying a Petrol car was thought to be naive and behind-the-times. But the recent increase in the diesel prices has the potential to become a game changer for the automotive sector…

A couple of years back our humble coin managed to rise to the status of contraband when it started getting smuggled to Bangladesh. These coins are supposedly melted and made into shaving blades, idols of Gods and Coin-God knows what. Some say this might have contributed to the shortage at home. The coin traders are not happy with the limited supply of coins as they are not able to meet up with the coin demand from the shopkeepers, who in turn are almost always out of change.