A CHILDHOOD habit passed on by a doting father to his young son has become a treasure trove of memories, as author Ruskin Bond dips his pen in nostalgia in his latest book A Book of Simple Living, published by Speaking Tiger. This 150-page personal diary records small moments that constitute a life of harmony for our resident Wordsworth in prose.

As the title suggests, Bond’s gentle charm has gone from being simple, to simpler, as he puts pen to paper in order to sustain the sort of life he leads — unhurried, inquisitive, evenpaced and completely in sync with nature and its varied moods.

Most of us who have been fortunate to live in the hills, there is something magical about a hill station — the long walks, picnics under the deodars, moonlit walks, stolen kisses, haunted houses, trees in blossom…. Bond, the gentle muse of the mountains, looks back with affection on his early association with Mussoorie and the quaint things that make it special.

Consider this, for instance: “A cold, cold January. There is a blizzard. The storm rages for two days — howling winds, hail, sleet, snow. The power goes out. There’s coal to burn but it is hardly enough. Worst weather that I can recall in this hill station. Sick of it. Why do I stay here?

In March, there’s gentle weather at last. Peach, plum and apricot trees in blossom, birds making a racket in the branches. So this is why I stay here.”

The book is full of interesting diary entries about season change, people whom the author met and was affected in some way by them, about blossoms, birds, trees and even insects, which the author has a knack for observing, inspirational quotes and short poems make for an interesting read.

This handsome hardcover, the first title from Speaking Tiger, stands on its own and is a must-read for those who love the hills and Bond’s writings.

It is a place for those who want to leave behind the world, forget the date and the day

My heart pumped wildly even before I was exposed to the trippy air of Kasol. The road leading to this popular hill station in Himachal Pradesh is so dangerous that every time the bus took a sharp turn (and there were plenty of those), I looked out the window with trepidation.

On one side of the highway stood massive and mean-looking rocks that threatened to slide on to the road causing havoc. And on the other side was River Beas, with its unrelenting current. The bus had to tread a delicate path between these two stubborn natural obstacles. The life of 25 bus passengers (including mine) was entirely in the hands of the driver and there was no margin for error whatsoever.

After a 12-hour bus ride from Delhi, I reached the first pit-stop of the journey at Bhuntar. Another four hours on the road, and I reached my destination —the quaint town of Kasol.

The little Israel

Parvati Valley is the favoured holiday destination of young Israelis tired from three years of compulsory military service, and Kasol is undoubtedly the hotbed of this recreational immigration. The readily-available drugs, low cost of living, peaceful environment and the prospect of rave parties draws many foreigners to this hill station.

It is fast turning into a Jewish settlement where Shalom (greeting) and namaste are used interchangeably. Hebrew signboards are a common sight in this area. According to an estimate, about 70 per cent of the foreigners visiting the state come from Israel.

Kasol also has a Chabad (prayer place) for the Israeli community at the end of the market. It is open and accessible to people of all communities and looked after by a soft-spoken priest. Birds have built their own nest here and are at ease with the surroundings.

The stillness of Kasol is frequently broken by the dash of bikes headed to the Sikh pilgrimage sight Manikaran, five kilometres away. The young pilgrims can be easily identified by the blue flag with a khanda (Sikh sign), which juts out of the front of the bike. Their youthful rigour comes across in their demeanour and constant blow of horns.

After a round of falafel, I was ready to venture to a nearby village called Chalal. The trek began by crossing a rickety bridge that swung perilously with every step. The winding path of the Parvati River, tall pine trees and the setting sun had a soothing effect on me. For the first time on this trip, I felt truly at peace.

An hour into the trek, I heard booming techno music from the thicket. I followed the music deep inside the jungle to find myself at a rave. There were loudspeakers, a makeshift dance stage and plenty of expat faces in the crowd.

It seemed like half of Kasol was gathered here. Bodies grooved to music uninhibitedly and there was no dearth of LSD. By the time I returned to Kasol and boarded the bus to Delhi, dark clouds had gathered over the hills and a hail storm ensued.

The weed capital of India

A tiring hour-long trek finally led me to the remote village of Tosh, located on the slopes of a mountain about 18 kilometres from Kasol. The snow capped mountains high above and the waterfall below made the long and tedious journey to Tosh worthwhile.

The sun had set by the time I stepped inside the Pink Floyd café for snacks. The smell of hash reeked from every corner of the dim-lit café with Bob Marley posters on the walls everywhere. In time, I realised that Bob Marley is the God, Schnitzel (Israeli food) the staple diet, and trance the archetypal music in this part of India.

The three Indian travellers I interacted with didn’t remember what day or date it was. They had forgotten when they had arrived in this village, and had no clue about their departure date. I was beginning to understand why Tosh is called the weed capital of India.

People don’t come to Tosh for the weekend — they come for weeks that turn to months. Stubbles turn to beards amid the smoke and sound. I walked down to another cafe, with a torch light in hand, only to find another group of young men smoking up and betting on an IPL match.

“Can you increase the volume?” I asked. They looked back at me with a bemused expression and went back to watching the game on mute. As a rule, the television is always played on mute. Silence is celebrated with joints and psychedelic music fills the space with noise.

A young traveller offered me weed and I declined. “You haven’t smoked up. And you don't even want to smoke up?” he said looking astonished.

I felt like the world is divided into two kinds of people. Those who live in Tosh and those who don’t. The former are comfortably and happily detached from the mainstream.

Ten minutes inside the cafe and my eyes began to burn. I stepped out to fill my lungs with the crisp and chilly mountain air. Two young men (Avinash and Shikhar) joined me and began rolling a joint. They were articulate, smart and completely stoned.

“Kasol is no good anymore,” Shikhar said. “This is the real deal. We get 10 grams of top quality hash for Rs 1,400. Kullu Valley is famous for top-quality charas, which is sold under various acronyms such as Malana Cream. The rates go as high as Rs 40 lakh/kg, depending on the quality.

I, too, have the habit of withdrawing to my thoughts. I began to wonder if they saw me with the same curious and questioning eyes with which I looked at them. Perhaps we weren’t all that different. We were both addicts in our own right; them to smoke, and me to my words. I didn’t judge them and they didn’t judge me. We sat on the opposite sides of the table intoxicated by our own beliefs, accepting our vast differences. Clearly, there is more than one way to live. The next morning I packed my bags and boarded the bus back to the treacherous journey back to Delhi.

I thought Parvati Valley to be a haven and it was, although in a different way than I had imagined. It is a place for those who want to leave behind the world, date and even day. That is the good, bad and trippy of it.

Restaurants are trying to attract customers using molecular gastronomy, but it may not be so easy to please the picky Indian Palate, says VIDYA DESHPANDE

Has the Indian palate experimented enough to enjoy the subtleties of molecular gastronomy? I will answer that question last. First, let’s see where this trend has reached in India. Not many knew of molecular gastronomy in the country until the advent of the popular TV series MasterChef Australia. It had episodes with renowned chef Heston Blumenthal, who brought the lab into the kitchen and introduced the art of molecular gastronomy to Indian homes.

Molecular gastronomy combines chemistry and food to give you an elevated dining experience. With this science, you can enhance the flavours, textures and aromas, turning a simple dish into an exotic variation. Take, for instance, the humble mishti doi, a popular Bengali dessert. Zoravar Kalra, the man behind Farzi Café in Gurgaon’s Cyber Hub, has turned this into a striking appetiser. A dollop of mishti doi is injected into a diaphanous covering with a spot of jam on top, to make it look like an eyeball. The dish is served on a platter of liquid nitrogen. It’s a dish you eat with your eyes, taste buds and sense of smell. The perky presentation adds to the eye appeal, while your taste buds savour the flavour of the sweetened curd that melts in your mouth in seconds. The dish is served at the beginning of your meal, works as an appetiser as well as a palate cleanser.

According to Chef Blumenthal, this technique was first introduced in 1991. “Since then, it has become a convenient, catch-all-phrase to describe science-driven cooking. It explains little and misleads a lot,” he explains in a cooking statement on his website. The chef also feels the term has become “fashionable” and doesn’t describe his style of cooking. But one has to admit that the advent of using chemistry in the kitchen has certainly changed the way one looks at a dish.

Instant ice cream parlours have popped up all over the country, where liquid nitrogen is used to instantly freeze a concoction, and served to you even as you choose the flavours, colours and textures. Like Nice Ice in Hauz Khas Village in Delhi. You can choose the colour, texture and flavour of the ice cream you create. So, one can opt for a chocolate flavoured ice cream that is green or purple in colour, depending on your mood. Who says chocolate ice cream has to be only dark brown in colour?

Using molecular gastronomy allows the chefs to serve a bit of trickery on your table as they can present dishes that add a twist to the flavours, with drama added to the presentation to make your dining experience more fun. You can have cocktails inside spheres of ice, ravioli made from translucent covering instead of the conventional flour dough, or caviar made of olive oil droplets. It’s this “wow” element that attracts people to molecular gastronomy dishes.

Run by Chef Abhijit Saha, Fava in Bengaluru is popular for dishes cooked using molecular gastronomy. Saha’s most popular dish is a sous vide, where vacuumpacked meat is cooked in a water bath. The meat retains it pink colour and natural juice even as it gets cooked to perfection.

The concept of molecular gastronomy is fairly nascent in India and not many restaurants have taken to this science. It is more popular with young chefs and in restaurants that have experimental menus and thus the demand for such dishes is relatively low as of now. While in the west, Chefs such as Blumenthal and others are moving on from molecular gastronomy, Indian chefs are still in the experimental stage of this technique. It is only bigger cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru that are open to such experimentation, while most prefer to stick to traditional dishes in other cities.

Molecular gastronomy also provides the options of using natural, vegetarian ingredients to create tastes and flavours that are mainly nonvegetarian. Like a jackfruit kebab, which can be granulised using molecular gastronomy to taste and look like a mutton kebab. However, the concept itself is so alien to the Indian palate that it would be difficult to get picky Indian customers to accept this.

Which brings me back to the question I first raised. The Indian palate may not readily accept experimentations with food. People may like the dramatic presentations but how long the fad will last is anybody’s guess.

Last week, I found myself humming alongside B J Thomas’ lovely “Raindrops keep falling on my head”.

The Delhi skies, which have become kind, had various radio stations making the most of the pitterpatter and played some of the best rain song collections I’ve heard. After all, isn’t rainfall one of the most blessed gifts from nature?

I remember the days my sister Monica and I would go to the press with our father, no matter how grey the skies. As monsoons came and went, we realised we had to fulfill our father’s dream and make the MBD Group what it is today. Democratic World is one of those big dreams we have realised. With DW the idea is to inspire, to share tales of victories and failures, and lessons that come from both.

By the time you read this piece, monsoons would have already cast their spell on you. But you must have also noticed how the weather gods have been playing their tricks too often on us. Like His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa featured in our Looking Back section says “We have been abusing our environment for far too long, it is really about time for us to heal the environment.”

For there are regions reeling under the effect of unexpected floods, with cities such as Mumbai getting virtually held up because of rains. And then there is Delhi, which has been witnessing a rather elusive monsoon for a few years.

So what can we do to address these water woes? Rainwater harvesting could just be the big answer to a lot of small problems.

I know the rising pollution levels, global warming, shrinking natural resources is scary, but then I go back to my father’s words. He often said, “Life is a marathon with three stages. The starting line, the half-way there, and the finish line.”

And although they say the finish line is always the hardest, in my opinion it’s the half-way that’s the challenge. It’s here when your hopes start to die. The more you run, the further the finish line seems. But that is the time when you stick to the fight. As my father used to say, it’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t allow yourself to quit.

Let’s all draw from our experiences. Why, India has had a tradition of rainwater harvesting, each unique to its geography. There are zings in Ladakh — small tanks that collect melted glacier water; the ramtek model in Maharastra, tanks called kere in Karnataka, cheruvu reservoirs in Andhra Pradesh to store runoff water, dungs or jampois (small irrigation channels linking rice fields to streams) in the Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal, and step wells called vas in Gujarat.

Isn’t it time we tuned into our traditional wisdom and saved water for our future generations?

I wonder if it has a special significance — the World Environment Day being in June, I mean.

For isn’t it in the same month we see the sun god at its cruelest in most parts of the world? Or in some cases, such as the Uttarakhand flashfloods of 2013, the rains at their worst. Was it always like this, however? The answer is a resounding no. While the world has not been immune to natural calamities, there are enough indications these natural disasters are being triggered more and more by human existence.

According to the Environment Protection Agency, over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps are consumed in the US alone. Dams are being constructed not only in seismically sensitive areas, but also by flouting all considerations for the environment; in fact, some of these are being called the greatest planned environmental disasters. Did you know rainforests are being razed to the ground at the speed of one football field per second? All in the name of development?

No, I am not against development — in fact, I am all for it. What is disturbing is the total apathy towards ethos. I recently heard Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech while he was addressing the nation from Japan. He said he remembered how as a young boy, his mother told him to ask Mother Earth for forgiveness every morning, for having stepped on her. That is the ethos I am talking about.

It’s time we hear the call of Mother Nature to stop the atrocities against her. She has been giving us grim reminders for a while now. Untimely snowstorms in the US, the UK experiencing summers like it hasn’t in years, not to forget the tragedy that struck our neighbor Nepal. Are these disasters an impending reminder from Mother Nature to stop and think?

For thinking, reasoning and taking action will ultimately bring change. A reason why we have Dr Swati Piramal on the cover. Not only has the Piramal Group looked seriously at some great innovations, but has also been an environmentally and socially responsible conglomerate. As Director of the Piramal Foundation, Dr Piramal helps promote health in rural India with HMRI — a mobile health service, women’s empowerment projects, and supporting community education that creates young leaders.

And while we are talking of environment, do read our Good Karma section. The Forest Reserve Institute (FRI) shows what it takes to make a difference. As per the guidelines of the World Bank Project, the FRI, along with the Bagwan Gramodyog Samiti, has adopted Shyampur, a small village on the outskirts of the Dehradun. Over the past few years, this has drastically improved the socio-economic status of the villages.

Small steps can make the big journey easy. Let’s all do our bit.

Experiencing different cultures makes one appreciative of each one’s unique attraction

MOVING TO DIFFERENT country can be both very exciting, and intimidating at the same time. It was September 2006, and after spending 28 years of my life in India, the move to Australia came as a bittersweet appeal. Thoughts of starting from scratch all over again, leaving your friends and family behind and settling in an entirely new place and culture can be a bit overwhelming. Sure enough, my first year in Australia was challenging.

Finding my first job with no Australian experience, getting to know my surroundings, blending in with a new culture wasn’t easy. The process of turning from a tourist into a local can be difficult for a lot of people, especially if you are not a youngster anymore. I have noticed this with a few families that had immigrated to Australia and then returned to India since the change was too much for them.

I always get asked about racism in Australia. Yes it exists, but I have never experienced it. I also don’t think it is as rampant as the media makes it out to be. Australia is the most multi-cultural country I have seen. You will find people from all walks of life and maybe 50 different countries within a 10 km radius, so racism is not welcome. My advice to people immigrating is to be positive, especially for the first year, after which things start to fall in place.

Looking back, it was the best decision of my life. Gradually, you start to notice the little things, such as drinking water out of any tap in the house, the cleanliness around you and the ease of travelling without getting stuck in traffic all the time, the clean air, and the list goes on. Professionally, I worked my way back up. My wife joined me in Australia after a year, and we managed to purchase our own house (with a mortgage, of course) within two years and we are well on our way to making Perth, Australia, our home.

I made two trips to India during all this time — in 2010 and 2015. The desire of going back is always there, the nostalgia of the city you grew up in, childhood friends and the feeling of being a real local. Once in India, I didn’t realise it would feel this good to speak and understand Hindi. You tend to try and re-live your past experiences in the city you grow up in, visit old hangout places, eat all the Indian food you can get your hands on, and travel to places in India that you never think of when you’re living in the country.

During my first visit in 2010, I remember my friend telling me “Tu angrez ban gaya hai.” (You’ve turned into an Englishman). I remember saying the same thing some time ago to other NRIs, when I was living in India. This is so true, come to you think of it. Things that were completely fine with me just a few years ago now seemed unbearable and I couldn’t help pass comments about the traffic, the honking of cars, the crowds, the pollution and so on. That’s what a few years of living in a Western country subconsciously do to you.

My second trip to India in 2015 was absolutely fabulous. It was one of acceptance and of knowing my roots. We travelled around India and created our own foodie trail in Delhi. The city of Gurgaon was truly impressive. I now sometimes envy my friends in India. One of my best holidays so far!

My connection to Nepal has always been subtle for the first 22 years of my life. Although I have always been classified as an Anglo Indian, my grandmother was a Christian Nepalese from Darjeeling. We never spoke Nepalese growing up, didn’t know anything about the culture and only stuck to eating momos.

It was when I met my wife Anju in 2001, who is Nepalese, that my connections with Nepal would become strong and an everlasting one. I was introduced to the Thakali culture and it impresses you straight away. The respect people give each other, the famous Thakali cuisine, which is Nepal’s best (I recommend stepping into a traditional Thakali restaurant and trying the food), the faith people have in their religion, are indeed cultural traits to cherish and protect. It’s a large but close-knit community and everyone seems to know each other.

For me, being a son-in-law comes with great benefits. Everyone goes out of their way to make sure I am well fed. My three trips to Nepal, the most recent one being in 2015, have been superb. We have already decided that in the coming years, we will spend a month travelling around Nepal, exploring its beautiful mountains.

The recent earthquake in Nepal has been a huge tragedy for a nation that is considered to be one of the poorest in the world. The loss of life and property has been staggering and it sets a nation back 20-30 years, maybe more, to rebuild itself. It is utterly sad to see monuments that were thousands of years old now become rubble — something future generations will get to see only in pictures. These were things that we saw just two months ago. What is heartening is to see Nepal getting a lot of help and aid from around the world. I am proud of one of my classmates, who is at ground zero, helping people in the villages of Nepal. For people who can’t be there physically, help can always be given by donating to the right people who will get the job done. I know that Nepal is land of people with faith and it will rise from the dust.

We have been fortunate, blessed and lucky to be a part of three different cultures. Each one is unique and special in some way and all three countries have a special place in our hearts — India, Nepal and Australia.

The G Flex 2 is a better version of LG’s G Flex, the first ever vertically curved smartphone in the world. Ready for this one?

If you have tried your hands on LG’s G Flex, the first ever vertically curved smartphone in the world, and thought it was the best phone curved technology could produce, you need to check out the new LG G Flex 2.

A lightweight successor to the 177g G Flex, the G Flex 2 may pack a display that is half an inch shorter than its predecessor’s, but it is in no way a “mini version” of the original, as the specifications will suggest.

The display is a full HD 1080p P-OLED screen with a 403ppi ratio, which makes it among the best smartphone displays available. The curved screen, with its real immersive effect, offers a more pleasurable viewing experience compared to flat screens, and if you prefer watching music videos on YouTube or HD movies on smartphones, the G Flex 2 will offer you the best cinematic experience and will keep you glued for hours on end.

The 13MP laser-guided camera in the G Flex 2 is also a wonder to behold. Featuring dual LED flash, optical image stabilisation and noise reduction for lowlight conditions, you will get the best possible images in all kinds of conditions. Several new features in the front camera, such as air brushing, beauty tools and gesture control, offer added incentives to selfie-lovers.

As for the performance, the presence of the top-end octa-core Snapdragon 810 chip and the 2GB RAM are enough to suggest that multi-tasking and HD gaming would never be a problem with the G Flex 2. My attempts at giving the phone a wakeup call with some speedy navigation and by trying out heavy gaming with several downloads in process at the same time did not for once impact its performance. However, while chatting with a few friends on WhatsApp, I noticed that the typing did seem to freeze for a couple of seconds now and then.

In spite of the plastic body, holding the G Flex 2 gave a similar feel to other metalbody smartphones. An outer coating over the plastic body gives the phone a selfhealing quality, with regular scratches and cuts disappearing as quickly as in 10 seconds. However, deeper cuts could still leave behind a few thin lines. The display is also shielded by Gorilla Glass 3, which offers similar protection as the coating on the back of the device.

Apart from its unique exterior and stunning internal specs, the G Flex 2 also stands out in terms of ease of usage. The latest Android 5.0 Lollipop platform works perfectly on the device, and LG’s homegrown Optimus interface offers various shortcuts to view notifications and alerts.

The Glance view, which will help you see the notifications when you swipe down from the top of the screen, will also enable you to check your memos and WiFi connectivity status, toggle screen brightness, volume levels, turn on/ off data network, and also help you decide if you want the display to rotate as per the angle of the phone.

One major disadvantage, and there was only one that I could detect, is that the minimum brightness level in the G Flex 2 is higher than most smartphones. This means that if you are in a dark room and want to play games or read news on your phone, the bright light is sure to make your eyes water in less than an hour

Kate's second child was in the news for entering the world a week or so late. I felt for Kate, it's unbelievably tedious to have a late baby. I should know!

THE END of April was hard on me. I went through all the usual symptoms: panic attacks, back ache, heartburn, inertia, the feeling it would never end. Every moment of my own Great Wait 26 years ago was relived and groaned over. The anxiety about timing it right nearly killed me: would she be able to evade the Queen’s birthday, would she manage it before the UK elections? Finally, on May 2, when Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana of Cambridge was born, no one — and I include the Duchess of Cambridge here — was more relieved than me.

You cannot live in the UK and not follow the royalty. The media are intensely obsessed. Ten minutes of waiting at your GP’s are enough to keep you up-to-date. And the British public are eagerly curious or casually dismissive, but seldom blasé. When we won tickets to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert and the picnic in the Buckingham Palace grounds that preceded it, even the blasé asked us bitterly, “How?” They were assuaged only when we revealed that the Queen had not come to the picnic; with her husband in hospital, the poor woman had barely managed to make it to her own concert.

From the royal-gazer’s point of view, the husband and I could not have chosen a more serendipitous time to move to the UK. We’ve seen, in addition to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Will and Kate’s wedding, the birth of Prince George and, now, his sister. We’d even caught a glimpse of the Prince of Wales with his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, in their car on Oxford Street.

I’ve personally come a long way from the time I used to swing on the gate at home in Saharanpur, waiting for the postman to bring me theWoman’s Weekly, six weeks or more after it was published in London, so that I could see for myself the details of Princess Diana’s hugely lavish wedding gown. The miserly black-and-white clips Doordarshan afforded us had only whetted my appetite. The husband, ensconced as he was in his public-school ivory tower, would have been more likely to say, “Huh? Diana who?”

Diana was every girl’s fairy-tale princess come alive. Her magnificent, over-the-top wedding gown was the flamboyant symbol of her story: the shy, retiring nursery school assistant who got chosen by the prince of the realm to be his queen. Later events, as unsavoury as they were, never quite obliterated the shine Diana was to sport all her life. I still have a picture of her with Prince William in her arms, soon after he was born. Added to it now is one of Kate, with George in her arms.

It is a sign of Diana’s enduring symbolism as a true romantic that she is still thought of as a tragic figure, when the real love story here was that of Charles and Camilla, but nobody thinks of that, do they?

The British royalty wear their blue blood lightly, and with immense grace and dignity for the most part. Quite unlike the erstwhile royals in India, many of whom continue to believe that they still rule. Some of them do, but as elected representatives in a democracy, not as a matter of right of birth. You wouldn’t think it though, to see them hold court, entire electorates deferring to them and calling them Hukum and Maharaj.

when he went to interview one of these so-called kings, who was then a minister of some importance in the Union cabinet. He was kept cooling his heels in an anteroom while Maharaj had his breakfast. When he was finally granted audience, the manservant offered them water, the Maharaja in a silver glass, the journalist in a regular steel one. That’s not even good manners, leave alone majesty.

As a journalist, I got to hear lots of stories like the one about the water glasses and they routinely made me snigger. What made these folks so condescending? We were citizens of a free country and all equal in the eyes of the law.

Then came August 1997, and the famously spectacular car crash and death of Diana, Princess of Wales. I watched in awe as the entire world, literally, wept in unison! Suddenly, it did not matter whether you were a democracy or an oligarchy or an autocracy, whether you’d been colonised or looted, whether you were white or brown or black. Here was a royal who had caught the imagination of the world and she was mourned in every corner of it. It helped, too, that television was ruling the roost by then: 24x7 coverage always boosts a cause.

Will and Kate’s wedding ruled the air waves, too, perhaps not as comprehensively as his mum’s death, but for weeks there were programmes aired on the wedding dress, the designer who was designing it, where the royal couple would go for their honeymoon. For a late riser, I was up uncommonly early on April 29, 2011, to watch the wedding. Kate’s wedding dress, when it was finally revealed, was not the Cinderella confection her ma-in-law had worn; it was more understated and — dare I say it? — elegant!

Prince George’s arrival was waited with equally bated breath. We traced every detail of Kate’s pregnancy from her extreme bouts of morning sickness to her enrolling for pregnancy yoga, buying pregnancy books on Amazon, what kind of pram she was buying, to details about the Lindo Wing in St Mary’s Hospital, where she would be confined. Huge bets were placed on whether it was to be a boy or a girl. Thoughtfully, in April, just before George made his appearance in July, the Succession to the Crown Act was passed, which rendered the sex of the imminent baby quite immaterial.

We were visiting with an equally royaltyobsessed friend when the little prince was to be born. Nobody could have scoured the television screen, which showed mainly the road outside the hospital, more than the two of us, much to the scorn and mirth of our husbands. When the baby was finally born, bets were placed on what he would be named. Much to my chagrin, I lost — he was not named James!

In comparison, Princess Charlotte has had a relatively easier entry into the world. The news she did make was more to do with her own entering the world a week or so late, causing all the media to dub it The Great Kate Wait. I felt for Kate, it’s unbelievably tedious to have a late baby, I should know!

The Sunday Express made an extra effort when it hired a team of American forensic computer age-progression experts — who usually help in solving crimes! — to make up a picture of what Princess Charlotte would look like when she will be 18. She was shown to have her mum’s dimples and her paternal grandmum’s lips. Believe me, Kate and Will might do well to save up for a bit of help for her in the looks department, if you go by this reconstruction.

Meanwhile, I wonder what the Queen thought of her newest great-granddaughter combining her name with that of Diana, of whom she was reportedly not too much of a fan. Speaking of which, maybe it was divine intervention that caused the crash that killed Diana. Can you imagine that tragic fairy-tale princess now a grandmother of two?

Is a woman in a men's preserve still newsworthy? It's 2015, after all and we aren't talking of the badlands of Uttar Pradesh here

Kate Cross, 22 going on 23, is a medium pacer who has played two Test matches, nine one-day internationals and four Twenty20 internationals for England since starting her international journey in October 2013.

Cross, daughter of David Cross, the one-time West Ham United striker, was the first woman to be admitted to Lancashire’s cricket academy at Old Trafford and, in April this year, became the first woman to play in the men’s Central Lancashire League — one of the most traditionally minded setups one is likely to find anywhere.

How Cross shattered that particular glass ceiling is clear in her performance since: she picked up three wickets for the cost of just 19 runs as her club Heywood beat Clifton by eight wickets in her first game. Further, Cross delivered eight for 47 for Heywood against Unsworth on May 10.

Times have changed, of course, from the time the Marylebone Cricket Club wouldn’t allow women members, and women cricketers in England were not given professional status. But Cross’s crossover — a successful one at that — is a step in a direction no one had thought possible. So much so that she has to change into her playing gear in the disabled persons’ toilet in the Heywood dressing room. Is a woman in a men’s preserve still newsworthy? It’s 2015, after all and we aren’t talking of the badlands of Uttar Pradesh here.

The answer to that is difficult, not least because we do not live in a world of gender parity. In more senses than one: skillswise, there might, be nothing to separate men and women, but there is a difference in physical strength and speeds, and that goes a long way in defining what we have come to see as men’s sport and women’s sport.

Is that a sexist take? I’ll stick my neck out and risk it, and I have Serena and Venus Williams, the two strongest (the word is used in the physical sense here) players women’s tennis has ever had, on my side.

At the 1998 Australian Open, Venus and Serena — young at 17 and 16, respectively, but making waves with their powerful tennis already — claimed they could beat any men’s player ranked below 200. [That was the difference between them and the men in their minds.] Karsten Braasch, a journeyman German tennis player then ranked No 203, took up the challenge and first beat Serena 6-1, and then Venus 6-2, and then “complimented” the girls by saying that anyone outside the top 500 among the men had no chance against the American teenagers.

game (which never happened) against Andy Murray in 2013, even as she said, “I doubt I’d win a point, but that would be fun.” Braasch v Williams Sisters wasn’t the first battle of the sexes in women’s tennis — Bobby Riggs, a former world No 1, but 55 in 1973, used the rise of the feminist movement at the time to make a quick buck, and challenged Margaret Court, then 30 and the top-ranked women’s player, to a one-on-one over three sets. He won 6-2, 6-1.

Later the same year, Riggs took on Billie Jean King as well. King was 29, and, over three sets, beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. A victory we can finally celebrate? It’s hard to say for sure. It was reported that Riggs had bet against himself and made millions from his loss, and that helped him pay off the debts he had racked up. Martina Navratilova later lost to Jimmy Connors 7-5, 6-2 in 1992.

A couple of other quick ones, keeping it to the faster, higher and stronger demarcations: The men’s record in the 100m sprint is 9.58 seconds to 10.49 for women; the pole vault marks stand at 6.16m versus 5.06m; the marathon records are 2.o2.57 and 2.15.25. Back to Cross now, and if we are looking at integrating men’s and women’s sport — something that could cause a fair bit of excitement if the stuffy and sexist sections of the bosses were to allow it — the example, and her success, is a huge step forward.

Diana Edulji, as outstanding a left-arm orthodox spinner as one is likely to see, was once refused entry to the Lord’s pavilion — when she was there as captain of the Indian women’s team. She had then joked that the MCC should change their name to MCP. While that is unlikely to happen now, it is safe to say that men everywhere are going to guard their turf, as they see it. More so in what are perceived as macho sports, such as football or boxing. Or in sports that put a high premium on strength and speed.

Skills, yes. The disciplines where skills matter over strength and speed, we could make a “stronger” start — how about archery and shooting? And, yes, cricket, although I’d give bowlers a better chance of making it than batters if we are looking at the top level, or one or two levels below, keeping in mind the pace at which top men’s pacers hurl the ball — around 25 per cent higher in terms of average speeds.

No doubt futurists imagine a time when human physiology has changed. Perhaps these discussions would be moot then. For now, as cricket has adapted to Twenty20 cricket, no doubt integrated sport is another direction to grow in.

Milkha Singh, he of the swift foot, dogged determination and grit, gives his views on what makes ordinary mortals into champions and role models, says SD Thapliyal

He must have felt a strange bond with the sevenyear- old. The son of Havildar Bikram Singh, too, lost his father to violence from across the border — in the Battle of Tiger Hill in 1999. Just like Milkha Singh, who lost his parents to the violence that erupted on both sides of the border in 1947. So when Singh and his wife adopted the fatherless boy, Singh was probably trying to exorcise ghosts that have never really left him in all these years. Sometimes, the only way to leave sadness behind is to look beyond it.

Today, Singh has created a life for himself that he should be proud of. A former Indian track-and-field sprinter and one of the best athletes India has ever produced, he is a living legend of Indian sports. Singh has been inspiring generations to become the world beater in sports arena. He is also called the Flying Sikh — a title bequeathed to him by former President of Pakistan General Ayub Khan — after he defeated his arch rival Abdul Khaliq on Pakistani soil.

A refugee from Muzaffargarh in West Pakistan, Singh has seen the partition massacres of 1947, which took the lives of his parents. He was forced to live an orphan life, but destiny pointed him in the right direction — one he followed, no matter what the hurdles. He was the only Indian male athlete to win an individual athletics gold medal at Commonwealth Games until Vikas Gowda won the discus gold medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

BEYOND THE PAIN

He was born into a Sikh family in undivided (Punjab) India during pre-Independence days. He lost his parents, brothers and sisters during Partition. Orphaned, he moved to Delhi to live with his sister. “I have gone through a troubled childhood, have seen the horrors of the Partition in 1947. I could not continue my education, lost my family. At that time, I was clueless about my future,” says Singh.

Once he was imprisoned after being caught for travelling on a train without a ticket. He was released after his sister sold her jewellery to get him out. Aimless in his ambition, Singh even considered becoming a dacoit. His brother, however, convinced him to join the Indian Army, which he did in 1951. It was here that his talent as an athlete was nurtured. His first competitive event was a cross-country race and he finished sixth among 500 runners.

“By the grace of god I got an opportunity to join the Indian army. It nurtured my talent. I had the willpower and dedication to become a world-beater, and the army provided me with a platform to achieve these milestones,” says Singh, with gratitude.

Singh soon realised that he had the potential to become a world-class athlete; he was determined to become the best he could. He started training five hours daily, often running in difficult terrains such as the hills, the sands on the bank of rivers, and against a meter gauge train. His training was sometimes so intense that he would be sick with fatigue.

INTERNATIONAL ARENA

Singh was selected to represent India in the 200 m and 400 m races in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. “I became an athlete in the army, but it was the 1956 Melbourne Olympics that made me realise my true potential of turning into a world-class players. I saw people were dying to get an autograph from world class players,” he says. After seeing such respect for those players among the people, Singh decided to give athletics his all. “I knew nothing about Olympics, tracks, studs, coaches, physio, and so on. I only got to know about the athletic world when I participated in the Olympic games,” he says.

Unfortunately, Singh was not experienced enough and could not go beyond the heat stages. A big turning point during his Melbourne trip was when he met the 400 m champion — Charles Jenkins — who inspired him to greater things and gave him advice about training methods, which changed his career forever.

He met Nirmal Kaur, a former captain of the Indian women’s volleyball team in Ceylon in 1955, and the couple married in 1962. They have three daughters and a son — golfer Jeev Milkha Singh.

THE MANY ACHIEVEMENTS

In 1958, Singh set records for the 200 m and 400 m in the National Games held at Cuttack, and also won gold medals in the same events at the Asian Games. He then won a gold medal in the 400 m (440 yards at that time) competition at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, with a time of 46.6 seconds. The latter achievement made him the first gold medalist at the Commonwealth games from Independent India.

His 200-400 double at the 1958 Tokyo Asian Games gave him global attention. That he went on to defend his 400 title in the Jakarta Asian Games four years later was a tribute to his longevity as well.

His national 400 m record stood for 38 years, and the Asian mark for 26 years. Many world-class athletes followed him, the most prominent being the versatile Gurbhachan Singh Randhawa, who came fifth in the 110 m hurdles final at the Tokyo Olympics (1964).

ROMAN DISAPPOINTMENT

The entire nation was expecting Singh to win his firstever individual Olympics medal for independent India. He didn’t make it. “The world felt if anyone could win a medal in the 400 m race in Rome Olympics, it was Milkha Singh, but it ended in disappointment. I could have done it in Rome but I lost the chance of creating history there,” Singh says, regret tingeing his voice.

He recounts the moments from that time like it happened yesterday. “Since it was a photo finish, the announcements were held up. The suspense was excruciating. But I knew what my fatal error was: After running perilously fast in lane five, I slowed down at 250 metres. I could not cover the lost ground after that and that cost me the race,” he adds.

His desire, thus, is to see an Indian sportsperson win an Olympic gold medal for the country. “I failed to win it in Rome Olympics in 1960. But I want to see an Indian athlete doing it,” says Singh.

THE FLYING SIKH

Singh had run many races but he got the title of Flying Sikh in Pakistan in 1960 at a track event he never wanted to contest, which was to be held in Pakistan. The past was like a fresh wound for Milkha and the Partition massacre still made him cringe. However, the then Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru persuaded him to take part. “There were around 60,000 spectators at the Lahore stadium, including almost 20,000 burqa-clad women. When the race began Khaliq took an initial lead as he was a 100 m sprinter. My strength was my stamina and I overtook him after 150 yards and won the race by around seven yards with the timing 20.7 seconds, a new world record. After the race, General Ayub (the then Pakistan President) came up to me and said: ‘Milkha, you did not run, you flew,’” says Singh.

PRESENTLY SPEAKING

Singh is disappointed with the approach of Indian youth towards sports. He reiterates there is no short cut for success; only hard work pays: “That, along with dedication and a strong willpower have contributed to my success in the sports. No athlete today is doing what I did,” he feels, talking about the many days when he would be in bed from vomiting blood because he had practiced so hard. Singh feels the present day athletes lack dedication and that is why the standard of the Indian athletes is going down. National broadcaster Doordarshan had telecasted a serial based on the autobiography of Milkha Singh in early 1990. In 2013, Indian director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra made a blockbuster movie Bhaag Milkha Bhaag on his life. Singh sold the film rights for one rupee but inserted a clause stating that a share of the profits would be given to the Milkha Singh Charitable Trust. The Trust was founded in 2003 with the aim of assisting poor and needy sports people.