Righteous rage

People should learn to keep their religions within the walls of their houses and places of worship. I am saying this for the sake of their own faith which seems to be so fragile that it is threatened by the faintest breeze. And I'm not saying this about any one particular faith. I doubt if there's any such thing as a peaceful religion. They are all outdated and if people really need an anchor of hope, it is high time they got replaced by some universal kind of benign spirituality

More than two decades hence

It was all a long time ago, before school started, and way past bedtime. I remember lightning crackling, and a gush of wind that carried me through the ventilator. Of course I was still in bed watching the rain through the open window. But I was also out there, with the raindrops passing right through me, and I was looking down on the world bathed in a blinding light as if the person in charge of special effects had forgotten to switch off the lightning. And now, more than two decades hence, I get to look out the same window and wonder if the things that I remember are truly the things that happened. Of all the things that fade with time, what I will miss most is perhaps that sense of wonder we start off with, and slowly trade away for reason