Darshana Saikia

In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same- nho. It makes total sense. How can you miss someone when they never actually left your head? Love is a beautiful drug. When did we start using words like 'drug', 'toxic' with a word as divine and pure as the word 'love'? Love is supposed to be a shrine; it is supposed to feel like a shrine. When did it start feeling like a sin? Well, like I always say, love has never been a scandal. It was the lovers. Love always starts pretty. There is warmth, tenderness, respect and commitment. Sooner or later, some of us reach a state where love stays, but warmth, tenderness, respect and commitment doesn't. As a result, the bridge spanning between the present and the future becomes shaky. Love alone does not and cannot hold that bridge. It takes time to understand the level of emotional maturity and social compatibility we have. We are so carried away by being in love th

When we come across a kid who is slightly different from us, who is perhaps in a wheelchair, most of us feel sorry for them. We express our sorrow and regret and we behave with them differently. Does that kid really need that? Spending an hour or two with them will be an eye-opener. They are actually better than us in many ways. Here's an incident- This was some 15 years back. Our school had many differently-abled kids, most of them were taught in normal classrooms and were not treated differently. One of them went in the same school bus as I did. She used to sit just behind me. Once, on the day of an exam, I forgot my book on the bus-seat in the morning. That afternoon, when I met her again, she didn't say a word, took out my book from her bag, and returned it to me. She had seen me with the book, and when I was irresponsible about it, she took notice. This hit me hard. Very few would have been even bothered about it.  There was another girl. I used to give her my