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The ABCD of Acronyms

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Sorry, I’ve been MIA for a few weeks. One of the enduring thing about working on projects for large MNC’s is that most of your day is occupied with RoB stuff. One thing that frightens me the most during these meetings and knowledge sharing sessions is CUA - Casual Use of Acronyms. Every company has its own alphabet soup, brewed carefully over decades. The same three letters can mean wildly different things depending on which corporate office you are working. One of the first thing I ask, when I start working for such companies is, do you have a glossary for the acronyms that you regularly use? Rarely is there one and you need to learn by asking. Sometimes I feel like a child picking up a new language. It isn’t that acronyms were not part of our daily lexicon. But, earlier, it was simpler and kinder. In school, PTO meant Please Turn Over. Teachers insisted on put a dot after each alphabet to remind the reader that something was being shortened….not replaced. So, Please Turn Over was wri...
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The Comfortable Distance of Caring

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Few days back I was at CIMAR Hospital, Thrissur where I saw a ‘regular’ scenario. Couple of grandparents hovering over a newborn grandchild. There was a softness in their voices, an indulgence in their smiles, a patience that seemed endless. Every yawn was celebrated, and a grasp of their extended finger making them laugh. The new parents’ faces were a mix of happiness, joy, anxiousness, etc.   We always say that the grandparents love their grandchildren more than they ever loved their own children. What made me think was, why does display of love skip a generation? Then it struck me that perhaps it is not because the love is deeper, but because it is lighter. Their own children came with timetables and school fees, fever charts and future anxieties. Grandchildren arrive free of such encumbrances. They can be adored without being managed, cuddled without consequence, returned safely to their parents when the crying starts. It is love, distilled—emotion without administration. I’m n...
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When Does Adulthood Actually Begin?

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These days, many serious thoughts begin not with books or conversations, but with a social media post glimpsed in passing. A Facebook post by someone in my network asked: Is 18 the right age for adulthood? No preachy stuff, no numbers or data sources, no opinionated copy to go along with it. Just the question. I might have moved on, except for one small detail. My own child will be approaching that milestone in a few years. Suddenly, this was no longer another ‘interesting’ post; this felt closer, personal and slightly unsettling. Eighteen has always been a curious number to carry so much weight. Nothing changes at midnight. I did not wake up wiser the next morning, when I turned Eighteen. And yet, by law and logic, you are expected to be an adult — capable of decisions with long shadows. Adulthood, never really arrives on birthdays. It creeps in through responsibility, through small moments when help don’t arrive on time. You don’t become an adult so much as realise, one day, that n...
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Life, Subscribed

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Every week, my phone reminds me of my new relationship with the world. An SMS or a WhatsApp notification for something I have, but never actually own. Access to Amazon Prime, Spotify, Kindle, Dropbox that stores the fragments of my life, books and files I might never read, in places I will never visit. There was a time not very long ago when the things we ‘wanted’ were the things we owned. Music came on tapes and CDs whose covers we gently straightened after use. Encyclopaedias lined shelves, heavy with authority. Books carried the thumbprints of those who read them before us. These objects announced themselves by occupying space. Today, so much of what we “have” never actually comes home. Music floats in the cyber space, movies wait in the cloud in queue, a verse of poetry arrives through a clean, content-approved notification. Even memories — once tucked into boxes or photo albums — now live on remote servers, rented back to us through storage plans. The world has shifted from posses...
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Two Weddings and a Funeral

There is something prophetic about the movie title “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” In real life, for most of us, it could be one, two, or three occasions. The number is not the import, the import is that’s roughly how often we meet people who once mattered to us. Old family friends, relations one generation up, neighbours from the homes we grew up in — all exist somewhere in our phones, remembered but unreached. We know their birthdays because Facebook reminds us, and we acknowledge them ‘enthusiastically'   with a cheerful emoji, a quick wish, a sense of obligation fulfilled. We even find ourselves in their cities sometimes — for work, for weddings, or for a holiday — but rarely do we think of meeting. “Next time,” we tell ourselves, comforted by the thought that their faces are just a click away. The photograph on our feed becomes proof that the relationship is still alive. Once upon a time, we didn’t need reasons to meet. People simply dropped in. Someone would be passing throug...
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WhatsApp and the Art of Social Engineering

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There was a time when opinion was formed in public spaces. The village square, the tea shop, the office water-cooler, or the pubs (pub is actually a short form for ‘public house’)—these were places where ideas were exchanged, debated, often loudly. Today, our new square is a green-and-white screen. WhatsApp has become the digital equivalent of the chowk, but with one key difference: it is quieter, more efficient, and infinitely more manipulative. In its early years, WhatsApp was just an SMS that didn’t cost money. We sent festival greetings, birthday wishes, and bad jokes accompanied by even worse clipart. But somewhere along the way, it became more than a messenger — it became a mechanism. A space where information was not just shared, but shaped. Consider the resident WhatsApp group — an invention that has redefined the way we live together. It is part bulletin board, part kangaroo court, part stand-up comedy stage. A lost slipper gets the same urgency as a missing child. A dog-bite ...
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The New Currency of “Busy”

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Ask someone if they’re coming for dinner next Friday and you’ll rarely hear a simple “yes” or “no.” What you’ll get instead is a polite reply: “Let’s see… I’ll try.” Or maybe, a friend asks your confirmation to a travel couple of months later and in all probability you’d say,   “November is still far off, I’m not sure how I’ll be placed.” (At least that is what I did). Nowadays, we have become culturally allergic to certainty. The RSVP has been replaced by the NSVP: Not Sure, Will Verify and Possibly Decline. This hesitation is less about logistics and more about posture. To say “yes” is to admit you’re available. To say “no” is to close the door too early. The safest and most diplomatic answer is maybe . It signals both importance and possibility. Being busy has become the new way of being important. “Crazy day” is no longer a complaint—it’s a humblebrag. ‘Rain check’ is a phrase that has got into the daily lexicon in India. Busyness is not just a state; it’s a status. In mythol...
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