Today as I'm flying back home from New York, something that stands out vividly in that city is it’s passion! A passion for enjoying work with subways and roads filled with millionaires and billionaires on their way to make a million or billion more. A passion for enjoying a holiday, even if it’s a cold winter day.

Some years ago  I read how an Indian sentenced to death by UAE's Supreme Court for murdering a girl had been pardoned by the victim's parents! As a father of two daughters I can only look at such an act of mercy as beyond human understanding, divine and holy. I remember some years ago meeting Mrs Gladys Staines whose husband and two sons were gruesomely burnt to death by fanatics. I looked at her face as she spoke to me and wondered how she had managed to forgive those killers. "How?" I asked silently. She looked at me and from her soul came a smile that smoothed out her grief torn face, and I knew what she was telling me was if a God above could forgive, then why couldn’t she?

Quite often as a newspaper columnist I forget that instead of concentrating on the dim side of situations, to remind my readers, things are also bright and beautiful!

Yes, they are!

A famous writer was in his study room. He picked up his pen and started writing: ‘Last year, I had a surgery and my gall bladder was removed. I had to stay stuck to the bed due to this surgery for a long time. The same year I reached the age of 60 years and had to give up my favourite job. I had spent 30 years of my life in this publishing company.

She was seventy, with mischief in her eyes!

She’d always had mischief in those eyes of hers, as bubbling teen, those eyes beguiling her host of friends with their naughtiness, enticing young men to stray close, then mesmerizing them forever that they like petrified rock, never moved afar again from spicy, titillating gaze that held them for a moment then left them forlorn as she bolted from their grasp.

 “What’s happening?” I ask as a man on the street with a loudspeaker shouted, “Free! Free! Free!”

 “A political party is distributing spectacles free of cost for everybody!” says someone in the crowd.

 “But I have my own glasses!” I tell him.