BS Murthy

India’s general insurance business is under a double squeeze of meager premium incomes and mega fire claims outgoes. How it got trapped in such an unenviable position is symbolic of poetic justice. In the rudimentary stages, indemnity was but the whim of the haughty loss assessor, as his fancy would suggest, that the overawed insurers and the insured alike had to accept like a claim prasad. Though later on, the system had acquired some semblance of balance, yet the irony of inequity, more or less, remained the guiding factor for settling the claims of the small frays that were treated like serfs in the general insurance corridors. More often than not, owing to the insurers’ apathy, the claim processing was tortuous, accompanied by arbitrariness, occasioned by their ignorance or suspicion, and / or both. The hapless insured was hoodwinked to sign on the dotted line of the discharge voucher, or else. Some claim processing officials even went to the extent of maintaining dai...

'Almost every woman in her youth is beddable,' he thought, lighting his India King. 'While some may be repeatable, rarely are they keepable. But, each of them is obtainable, though with some of them it may take some time and effort even. All said and done, the quick-fire affair affords man ego satisfaction as well as ready gratification. Besides, won't that make it easy for man to bring the curtains down, when it suits him? It's as well; women tend to hang on to the illicit stage that much longer.' 'But should the dame resist long enough,' he continued with his soliloquy, 'for the adventurer that would be a different ball game altogether. Her reluctance to give in would only increase her appeal to him by the day, deepening his desire for her by the night. Won't that make it difficult for him to give up, resulting in unwelcome frustration? What's worse, it could result in reverse seduction, tying the philanderer in the nuptial knots. An...

"Oh, Roopa, my hope, I'm aware that my move would agitate you. But how am I to portray the thousand deaths I died wanting to avoid distressing you. All these days, I've chosen to suffer silently without making you privy to my predicament. Then, it dawned on me that I owe it to you to let you know that a poor soul is bathing in the warmth of love that is inspired by you. That apart, do I have any right to deny my love its legitimate expression? How does that matter even if it's unrequited? On that fateful evening, when I'd first seen you, I felt as if the flood of love that spurted out of my heart would drown me to death. Unable to hold on my own, I ventured to seek your hand for support. Thus, as I was nearing you, I'd seen Sathyam coming to you with those ice-cream cones. Oh, how my heart froze, fearing that you're married. But then, when I realized that you're my friend's wife, I rejoiced at his fortune, and chose to bury my love for y...

My soulmate: Whoever thought of such a fall for us from the dizzy heights you took us to! Why, even my worst fears failed to push me to such a precipice. I'm sure neither yours would have. After all, you were sure that by the time the dust settled down, we would have ridden the storm. And my blind faith in your abilities failed me to see what was coming. Well, it appears that fate is averse to taking your dictation, at least in this case. Instead, it chose the well-meaning Dr. Prakash Gupta as the messenger to deliver the script it had fashioned to end our trauma. How could I've known that I was the cyclonic eye of the stormy life of our son! It appears that he was privy to my double life ever since he could understand what it was. I know that it would shock and shame you no less. What a payback for the freedom you granted me! Pardon me if you can. Maybe, its better that you fail to forgive me for that lessens my burden a little. How I wronged Suresh the ap...

Darling: I am ashamed that I let you down. Oh, how I betrayed your trust and belittled my love! Seized by revenge, I was not my own woman then, but now burdened with guilt, how can I show my face to you? I know how hard it could be for you, and so I do not want to bother you anymore, but if you could forgive me that would help me to await the noose with fortitude. What with the fake-note case bringing Pravar and Shakeel into the spotlight, I came to you to test the waters of avenge. But even as I was shifting my goalpost of life in the arena of our ardor, my fate played foul with my love as Ranjit too came into the setting. It was as if fate had chosen to place in my hand, an axe to grind on the anvil of revenge, forged by the poison of abuse. How sad that I had allowed my bitterness towards him to eclipse my life that I was recasting in the mould of your love. Shamefully I pried upon Mithya's cupboards, in which I chanced upon her personal jottings and her ...

'Nithya Near, You've every right to know why I crave for you more than ever before. And I owe you an explanation for wanting you in spite of your indifference. My darling, you're the triumph as well as the tragedy of my life. You know about the joys you have had bestowed upon me, but you're not aware of the deprivations I have brought upon myself. I never wanted to lose you, but neither would I blame you for having left me. It was life itself that played the spoilsport. How it failed us both to misread our priorities! I don't know how happy you are. And I wish you are in real bliss. But know I've been living in misery ever since you walked out on me. You may think I'm feigning unhappiness, being in the seventh heaven with a superb wife. I don't blame you if you feel so, for after all, that's what I thought life would be for me with Prema. If not for that hope, I would've never lost you at all, my sense of insecurity notwit...

'Why is life hard on some while being soft on others?' Roopa contemplated after Sandhya had left. 'The sastras would have us believe that it's all owing to karma, while the philosophers stress that life is conditioned by a combination of circumstances. It could be true either way, but how does that help me anyway. For all that, does life play favorites? But that's unlikely, for after all, why should life be partial to some when all bear its own patent. Yet, some like me get condemned, all the time, don't they? But why is that so?' 'It's as though life has an obligation for itself as a whole and not to the beings that make up that whole,' she tried to probe into the proclivities of life as though to solve the puzzle of her state. 'It would appear as if life feels a monotonous regimen would bore people to death, bringing the creation to an unintended end. Therefore, for the larger good of itself, life could have found it expedient to tak...

‘Why didn't I take him out on some pretext,' she lamented no end for her failure to seek an avenue to let out her love to Raja Rao. 'Oh at least I should've come out to see him off. But then, wasn't it all so sudden. And lo, before I could gather my wits, he was gone!' 'Anyway, next time when he comes, I shouldn't slip up at any rate,' she resolved at length. 'Didn't he suggest that I could scribble something, for him to pick up? Given the constraints for a dialogue of love, wasn't it his innovation to let me bare my heart to him. Won't he come up with his missive of ardor to be on par after all? Well, I'll make it a memorable one for him, nay for us.' 'Can I ever express my love to him in writing as I experience it?' she felt as she sat down to write to her Raja that night. 'Would a ream of paper do to picture the craving of my soul for him? Even otherwise, won't borrowed feelings mar love...

T ime has always been the essence of life as the very survival of the humankind is linked to its minutes and seconds, more so in this modern era. The emphatic shift of success in life to material well-being has unequivocally placed the onus on man for an efficient management of time to achieve the same. Be that as it may, time is the only resource that life has bestowed upon all men in equal measure, which no power on earth can deprive them of their un-usurpable share of it. But ironically, the way men manage their time, in the main, brings about the inequality among them, and by extension, among the nations that they inhabit. If the threshold of patience can be defined as the time lag between the occurrence and anticipation of an event that makes the expectant person impatient, the same can be taken as a measure of the value he attaches for time, which is but the means of his material well-being. The findings of a survey in the economically advanced nations of the West and Japa...

In his savage state, mere sounds could have been man’s communicative tools to vent out his raw feelings, limited to such as hunger and anger and pain and pleasure. However, in time, as he managed to civilize himself in communes, he would have needed some vocabulary to synchronize the habitation therein. And in that lies the seeds of the tongues, which, when whetted by the tenor of the times, could have yielded the fruits of languages. But it was the character of life, as it evolved in a given commune that would have shaped the nuances of the words, leading to the evolution of languages with their unique characteristics of expression in personal interactions and public communions. While at some point, while it was the script that gave substance to the tongue, it was the word of mouth that incentivized the flowering of the art of expression. However, it was the advent of the printed word that turned out to be a boon as well as the bane of man’s art of arts. Any writing, ...

        वसुधैव   कुटुम्बकम्      After the millennia grind under foreign yokes, first that of the Islamic invaders and then of the British colonizers, Bharat Varsha, the ancient land of the Hindus, regained its independence as India, albeit downsized by the latter by carving out Pakistan from it as a homeland for its Muslims. Thus, it would have been logical that the Hindus had the truncated India all for themselves but owing to its wooly political leadership, it was not to be, which forever constrains them to drink the same old wine in a new bottle. What’s worse was Nehru’s nipping the Hindu nationalistic impulses in the bud, perceiving them as offensive to the religious sentiments of the Muslim minority that made India merely a habitat for varied interest groups.   What with its Muslim progenation progressively becoming a formidable electoral vote-bank, Indian politicians of all hues, barring the right wing Bharatiya Janata Party ...