By Aasawari Shenolikar :  “DID you pick up the Rs 100 note on the dining table? This was payment for the newspaper vendor,” I asked in hushed tones. It was addressed to my better half, known for his uncanny ability to clean an..

T HE apartment on the 37th floor is not soundproof. However, at that height, one would assume that silence would be paramount. But in reality, itis not so - the quiet is often disturbed by the strident notes of the fire trucks, the urgent sirens of an ambulance following the fire truck, the piercing alarms of the police cars, probably chasing an offender on the roads or a part of the entourage of the fire truck. The cacophonous notes, wafting across to the upper floors, often break thequietude,disturbing ..

It wasn’t too long ago that the social media was flooded with pictures of the ‘very coy’, lovey-dovey couple - Malaika Arora and Arjun Kapoor - flaunting their undying love for each other. Once they made the affair public, for the next six years, the poor public was subjected to ‘the way they inhaled and exhaled, what they ate, how they fed each other, the vacations they spent, the way they held hands’ - it was as if they were the only couple in the world that defined and redefined ‘love’. And then ..

“Oh My God!” I had started hyperventilating. I wasn’t able to locate my phone. Five minutes had gone by and I hadn’t checked the phone. I could hear faint ‘ping, ping’, which meant that notifications were being received, and now the state of affairs is such that if I don’t check the phone every two minutes, it seems that something major is amiss. I searched frantically for it, like a sniffer dog looking for drugs, I concentrated on the direction from where the pings were emanating, and I was finally ..

“Ma’am, even though the pooja will be over by 1 pm, you and Sir please come at 1.30 pm for the Prasad.” Jaya was explicit in her instructions, while inviting me and my better half for Prasad at her home. The reason for ‘half an hour after the culmination of the pooja’ was, “You always arrive ten minutes before the appointed time,” which was followed by an emoticon that signified ‘embarrassment’. What I could read between the lines was that ‘my reaching at the appointed hour is many a time a source ..

“CHUTKI bhar sindoor ki keemat tum kya jaano, Dev Babu,” was what kept running through my mind when discussion at the coffeetable centered around Vinesh Phogat’s 100 gms debacle. While the group debated hotly the Phogat case - some talking in favour, others not so favourably, my thoughts raced to the countless times when a matter of grams may have meant, in my case anyway, the difference between life and death. The pesky grams, that one might think of to be totally insignificant, canmake - or break ..