What is common between Twitter’s Blue Ticks, Diamonds, and the OPEC? Will Elon Musk’s plan to sell the blue ticks improve or harm Twitter’s fortunes? What does it mean for the value of the blue ticks for people?
Category Archives: Society
Here’s Why I Need You to Work 18 Hours a Day: And Not Whine About It
SHORT STORY/SATIRE – ‘The ‘conference room’ was a corner of the studio floor with big glass windows, seven bean bags, and toys scattered around. Raman Ronadhona had taken a bean bag next to a stuffed bulldog. The Founder-CEO, the 30-something Chaman Chaturkumar, stomped in and plonked into a huge tan bean bag shaped like a chair. He had a frown on his face and didn’t look happy.’
How I Became the Richest Person in the World
SHORT STORY/SATIRE – ‘Those were tough days. I had sold my scooter to loan money to a local businessman, Firki bhai. He put it in a business that eventually sank because, as it became apparent later, he knew nothing about that line of business! And when I asked for my money back, he avoided me! It’s not like he wasn’t rich already; he just wouldn’t return what he owed me!’
Mili’s Sunday in CP
A SHORT STORY: “Five-year-old Mili was enjoying a Sunday outing with her father, Ashutosh. They had not come to Connaught Place since before the pandemic, and Ashutosh was keen to see how things were.”
Sheru, the Girl-Boy Dog
A SHORT STORY
“It had got dark earlier than usual, and the park looked like a dark-green canvas with splotches of white. Sheru was sitting cross-legged, ladylike, facing a girl swinging on the swing, as if guarding her. But he saw me a fraction of a second before I saw him. And in that time, he had wagged his tail, got up, and started limp-running to intercept me on the walkway…”
“I’ve been laid off. What now?”
In my parents’ generation, getting fired from a job in India was kind of rare. Not any more. In the past few years, organization after organization, in all kinds of industries, is doing large-scale layoffs.
Phunparliamentary
One of the most common expletives in North India (and I’m sure elsewhere) begins with ‘chu’. It is naturally uncivil and, you guessed it, ‘unparliamentary’. What is interesting is that some locals dampen the auditory (but not the semantic) blow of the word by replacing ‘chu’ with ‘phu’.
The Social Distance
The real social distance has always been there. A short story on the different lives of different classes during the COVID-19 lockdown. Will society ever bridge the distance?
Adventures in Personal Space
The tall young man walked up to the counter like his dad owned the sun and everything under it – typical of some of God’s favourite men in Delhi.
Desperately Seeking Glory—On Twitter!
You can guess that those are their national flags or the flags of the countries to which they owe their allegiance. I’ve made an unfortunate observation: most of these flag-flying fellas are 1) men, 2) easily angered, and 3) humourless.
Anupam Choudhury 