BREAK OUT OF YOUR SHELL that your wings may grow/Let yourself fly. These are the words of the Sufi poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi, from his poem Ramadan, a timely poem for Eid, as across the city, Muslim men and women break their fast. ...more...download here

HISTORY IS THE STORIES we tell ourselves about the past. In his book India After Gandhi, the author Guha, put together a sequence of events to create a narrative of building the nation-state of India since Independence. One of the things I rather like about this book is that as an historian, he is willingly to research into lesser known libraries and characters off the main road of India’s history. ...more...download here

A DEFENCE IS something one uses to hide something else. During these heavy monsoon downpours in the City our best ‘defence’ is a hardy umbrella, or to stay indoors and watch the lashing rains from the comfort of an air-conditioned apartment. A ‘defence’, in the law courts, is merely that which one stands-by, to argue one's position: "M'Lord, my client was indeed not exposing himself in the Borivali Park, he was merely perusing the zip of his trousers when they fell down, just as the woman happened to be walking close-by." A psychological ‘defence’ is that which use to protect ourselves (another umbrella if you like) unconsciously, to ward off reality. For example, I am warding off feeling that I think I am being an idiot for choosing a particular course of action, but I manifest this by saying that other people think I am an idiot (projection). ...more...download here

In the consulting room, two people sit together. One is trained as a therapist the other is learning what it means to be a client and to sit with a therapist. Together we get curious about the client’s telling of the story of their life, what can be spoken, what gets included, what involves hesitation, what gets left out. Theories of oneself, theories that govern the living of a life, the internal edicts of the mind that prescribe what gets claimed as “right” action or otherwise “wrong” action all appear, hidden, sometimes disguised, in some sort of arrival for examination. ...more...download here