The story goes back to when I was very young. Thirty days after I was born, my parents took me to the ancestral home in Calicut, and there I stayed in the care of my grandparents till age eight. That was when my parents figured I was old enough to not be a 'nuisance', a burden to two professionals whose minds were set on developing their respective careers. And so I was taken away from the care of my grandparents, and began living with my parents in Madras.

Neither mom nor dad had much time for me — both worked crazy hours and when they did get home, they were more intent on catching up with each other. Their interaction was largely restricted to pro forma inquiries about my schoolwork, a pat on the head and an exhortation to 'run along and play' — a parental edict I was only too happy to comply with. We are talking seventies here: a time when life was a lot less complicated. We didn't have psychologists prosing on about how childhood neglect would produce warped adults;

August 12: Arjun breaks silence: Breaking his silence on the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster, senior Congress leader Arjun Singh today gave a clean chit to then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the exit from India of then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson in the wake of the disaster. Singh suggested that the then Union Home Ministry under P V Narasimha Rao had a role, saying there were persistent calls from Home Ministry officials to grant bail to Anderson. Read more

July 11: Union Minister for Environment, Jairam Ramesh says sorry for the govt smuggling out Union Carbide waste and moving it to an incinerator in Pithampur. He goes on to say the people of Pithampur should have been taken into confidence.

Jun24: Even as the Group of Ministers (GoM) get set to meet the union cabinet later in the day to discuss its recommendations, activists and victims of Bhopal gas tragedy protest the GoM's report on the compensation. The group had recommended a relief package of Rs 1,500

A nun at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix recently had to choose between religion and humanity, and ended up choosing ethics over faith.

In defiance of the dictates of her faith, thus, she ordered the abortion of a 11-week-old foetus. This led to her being excommunicated from the faith she had chosen to serve, a faith that unconditionally treats abortion as sin.

The ruling by the bishop seems to have considered only the action, and not the cause that led to it — for if Sister Margaret McBride hadn't authorised the emergency abortion on the 27-year-old pregnant woman who arrived at the hospital due to complications and an illness that threatened her life, she could well have died.

The story forces you to think: If caught in such a situation, how will you choose, and what will your choices be based on? And will it be a blind choice, or one where you actually have to think to make the choice?

In the 2004 film Vera Drake, Oscar-nominee Imelda Staunton gives a bravura performance as

I got a tweet asking me to spread the word about Africa Launch in the hope of integrating African entrepreneurs into the global economy. It says they hope to "help change the public's perceptions of the continent, and spread the word about the vitality and sophistication of Africa's entrepreneurs and start-up companies."

The site caters to investors looking at African markets. Why am I writing about it since I don't know how authentic the site actually is? I'm not even an investor or someone with other interests in Africa. It's purely to share an image of Africa that is not always clear.

Our view of Africa is clouded by the images we see on TV, of abject poverty, of dictatorships, of internal strife. This site posed a different view. A continent and a people trying to shed the prejudices that comes with the word "Africa".  That in itself was worth writing about. A small group doing their bid to push for a life sans humanitarian aid. By helping themselves through promotion of