Reflections

Travelling abroad, particularly to the developed world is a real pain in the neck. While Malaysians and Singaporeans and South Africans and Brazilians sail through most immigration departments with no need for a visa for at least short visits, no country appears ready to let us enter their soil without a visa.     Our peripatetic Prime Minister has made it possible for many visitors to come to India without a visa (or has he? The e visa is a visa, it requires all the procedures and documentation, and you just get it stamped in the airport that is all). There was brouhaha about Canada having now allowed Indians to get a visa on arrival. This is not true. What they have done is allowed us to do all the paperwork and come with a document which allows the visa to be stamped at the entrance port, the hassles remain the same. If you google visa free entry for Indians you will find that around 54 countries allow visa free entry or allow you to get a visa on arrival. Th...

Baba as a young man  What can you say about an 86- year old man who died? That he was a good husband and father, he loved his grandchildren, he lived a long life and now his allotted span has ended. My father died last night. They say that you never really become adult until your father passes away. In that case I am finally an adult at this ripe old age. It is clichéd to say that an era has ended, but that is exactly what has happened. He was the last surviving member of his generation of a family that boasted 10 siblings. He belonged to a time when fathers were firm, stern and heard. His idea of parenting was a model had probably passed its sell by  the time he became a father, but nobody told him. We, my sister and I, loved him, but were scared of him almost in equal measure during the days that we were growing up. But as I grew to adult life, I could see him more a person, a man who had his faults and his strengths, who did good most of the time, but sometimes di...