I am hooked on crosswords almost to the point of being compulsive. I cannot see one. I get a thrill when I see a black and white grid. I am upset if it is very simple and can spend a long time trying to solve a difficult one. It is the first page I go to when I open any newspaper. But, there is a catch. Crosswords are in the entertainment section of any newspaper be it The Times of India, or the El Comercio in Perú, or the LA Times in Los Angeles. And that, creates a new problem for me as early as eight o’clock in the morning when I sit down and check my new challenge!
You see, I am also addicted to resentments! So, when I start looking at the photos of Chopra-Jonas’ wedding at a palace in Jodhpur, or that Virushka had a baby girl, or the type of shampoo you should use on your dog, or the best way to find a serious and honest relationship online, or when the Ambassador of “Timbuktu” gave a big banquet to his so-called friends, my resentments flare up—not because I am against these people, but because, I can never comprehend the absurdities of such news in cities where people are still trying to make ends meet. But that’s me!
Little by little I come back to the reality of other type of news—other faces, names and stories which start appearing and entwining into each other. Farmina, who lived with her husband Khurshid in Gurgaon and is being accused of slitting the throats of 7-year old Muskan, 5-year old Miskina, 3-year old Alsifa and an eight-month old. Shib Kumar Gupta, a hardware trader, who after being “upset” with the children who would play at his doorstep, apparently flung eighteen month-old Shivam from the fourth floor of a central Kolkata building in the beginning of lockdown. The 41-year old homemaker who killed her physically disabled teenage son and then hanged herself hours after attending the funeral of her husband Debnath—a COVID patient. Amit Agarwal, a 42-year old chartered accountant, who killed his estranged wife Shilpi, another chartered accountant in Bengaluru, and then, after he travelled to Kolkata, killed his mother-in-law.
Bro Carmel Duca MC
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