As I saw it

If I was ever a journalist, I would have been busy chasing not breaking news, gossip or deadlines but PEWS - Positive Events With Substance and Possips (positive gossips like Nithya Shanti calls them). But I didn't become one as destiny had other plans through me. But if I were one, I would have been one like my role model - Steve Hartmann of CBS whose weekly programme - On The Road with Steve Hartmann is quite popular. Here is one of the two stories that I watched today that was really heart touching. There have been people who ask me how come you are talking of only stories that come in Readers' Digest and the one like this? How come you don't talk of stories from India. The fact is, I do talk about and share stories from India too. Just that till recently, they were hard to find given the traditional media's obsession with NEWS - negative events without substance and the lack of channels like The Better India. Just that like Ameen Haque quotes "Great stories ha...

It’s been a season of coincidences off late for me. I was conducting a session on Listening skills for a client the last module of which ended in the afternoon today where I had shared an ad of Red Label tea where they conducted a social experiment at the Churchgate station in Mumbai facilitating a conversation between an “ordinary” woman and a “sex worker”. I had shown that video as part of a set up towards discussing barriers to listening. That video experience landed very well with the audience as always but I would not have spoken about it here had it not been for this sheer “coincidence” where I come across this video in FB thanks to you Dola Dasgupta; less than an hour after my session got over. Thanks a lot for this. While it’s appalling and heart breaking to hear what self-righteous people will do to punish the “bad people” in the world, it was also inspiring and uplifting to listen to stories like that of Sandhya. I remembered this second line of a prayer: ...Ek noor te sab ...