Mearl Colaco

As a woman I am devastated that in this age when women are working harder to achieve the unachievable, in areas of education, sports, politics, service sectors, science and technology, they also face routine abuse both mentally and physically. Today a 23-year old medical student lost her life after a thirteen-day battle against physical injuries inflicted on her. She was a girl like any girl next door, who woke up one fine morning, left home to watch a movie, but sadly never returned. She wanted to live like any twenty-three year old youth with aspirations to make it big…someone who wanted to live an exciting life ahead. But her battered body asked her to give-up her fight to live. She was called a gang-rape victim in death. She was severely beaten, gang-raped and thrown out of a moving bus.  Even wild animals are so well-behaved. What has happened to sections of society in my India? How can they commit such insensitive inhumane crimes?  If I was in India today, perhaps I...

The world is battered and ailing with terrorism of a different kind. The terrorism of gun shooting incidents, in which, an individual who has been living a normal life like one of us suddenly comes out on a mass shooting rampage killing people randomly is hard to fathom? Today public areas, educational institutes, and places of worship have become places that we fear going to. What if? Is the question we ask ourselves? What if, someone comes on a rampage while we are enjoying a film? What if someone puts the gun to our head while we are attentively sitting in a class and taking down notes? What if someone creates a chaos while we are praying at a temple or a church? What if….and my list goes on?   I’m not a mother, but I am a daughter, a grand-daughter, and a sister of my parents, my grand-parents and my siblings, and I exactly know how it feels to lose a loved one. Even more, it pains, when victims of these gruesome mass shootings are six and seven year olds who don’t unders...

Well the United States of America has elected its President for the next four years. The brutally verbal presidential cat-fight is finally over. Many opinion leaders, trolls, analysts, volunteers, found themselves a job to do, thanks to the fierce presidential fight which lasted for over a year. Apart from doing routine chores, many of these passionate followers of the presidential elections have suddenly found nothing interesting to do. Making a sincere confession, I being one among them. People chose status-quo. They chose the 'charismatic' for some and the 'incompetent' for others as the President of the supposedly most powerful country of the world. Did Americans make a correct decision, well, who am I to write about the right or the wrong. The only thing to cheer about is the triumph of democracy. In countries like India and the USA, which are the largest democracies of the world, it is the freedom of the people to vote that is the victor. I am all of three ...

 Gravity lift  Serving up pancakes  It’s great to be in the United States of America at that time of the year when the Presidential race is heating up and presidential candidates - Mr. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama - are going all out to impress about the people of the country with their theatrics.  6th November is the auspicious day in the 2012 calendar when the people of the U.S. go on a date to vote their President. So who's it going to be? Stakes are high on both sides, thus making it really difficult to even speculate the results.   Pick up a newspaper or turn on your television or radio set these days, you’ll find that the Presidential elections are the highlight all day long. Wonder whether Mr. Mitt Romney will surprise us by showing a thumbs-down to Obama, or would Obama get a second term?    The campaigns are getting really interesting with hot freshly baked scripts and rhetoric churned out almost every single...

That’s what I call a chapter in my life, when I woke up one fine morning and incidentally brushed by teeth with my face-wash, instead of my favorite mint flavored toothpaste.  It’s been exactly a week since I moved to Texas and it’s only now that the hangover kinda feeling seems to fade away slowly from my system. Long extended flights, unbalanced diet, and lack of sleep are certainly not my kinda way of living. Well, thank God I’ve gotten over it now. Besides the jetlag, I still face the ‘not-going-my-way’ kinda challenges in Texas. The one topmost on my list is the helplessness of moving around the city like I did in my home city, Mumbai. Since local transportation is a bare minimum here, it becomes mandatory to hone some left-handed driving skills and drive around the city to make the most of it. Doubly, missing family, homemade food, and friends together sum up to my blues. But as they say time is a healer and I’m sure I’ll get over this too. From the little I have se...

Getting straight to the point, does India still need minority and religion based reservation? True that we are a developing country still reeling under the realm of poverty, but how can reservation tackle this situation. If reservation was anyway effective, poverty would have been wiped out by now; our country would have become a developed nation by now; child labour which is still rampant in India would be eliminated; we would have most children studying in school and not dropping out to earn bread for their families. Sadly, reservation hasn’t worked for us and will never work even in future. All it does is it makes people receiving benefits from these reservations languid and laid back. It also increases hatred amongst people from different faiths. Furthermore, is it right when women demand their right to equality and in the same breath demand special ‘being woman’ privileges. Aren’t women who claim for such special privileges asking for too much. They seem to want to have their...

A runner makes his way along a trail in front of the once-a-year 'super Moon' at Papago Park in Phoenix, Arizona Hope you witnessed the supernatural cosmic phenomenon last night when the Moon seemed so close to the Earth that if you simply stretched out your hand, you perhaps could just touch and feel it. I have always been fascinated by the Moon. She looks so mysterious…as if she has so many untold hidden secrets accrued inside her. She (the Moon) appears to be waiting for that someone special whom she can tell all her secrets to, alas! I always wonder how the Earth would look from the moon’s surface. Of course from the pictures by Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, showing the Earth seemingly rising above the lunar surface (see picture), the Earth looks like a jumbo swimming pool. Wish I could experience this phenomenon from ground zero. Sadly, am not an astronaut. Earth as viewed from Lunar orbit during the Apollo 8 mission, Christmas Eve, ...

This is not about the 1997 American action thriller starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts. This conspiracy theory is about the recent Army Chief and Government faceoff that has silenced India with awe and disbelief. Disbelief because, the people of this nation who are already reeling under the corruption menace involving most (not all) government officials, didn’t in their wildest dream expect a character assassination of the most respected arm of Defence, the Army. From officials of the highest rank to a peon, most in the government undoubtedly are corrupt. In fact, this has become more like a daily soap in which, every day there is a new minister or bureaucrat caught in a mega scandal. But how should people react when reports of a corrupt Army makes headlines in national newspapers? This is certainly no daily soap! Perhaps while people are already getting used to scandals involving government officials, and have left it to fate and the judiciary for justice, the news of scandals invo...

The outcome of the recent high octane State election battle in UP, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Manipur may have left many high profile aristocratic contenders dejected, but it has also brought back smiles on faces of indigenous political contestants who won by unimaginably huge margins. The most significant battle of the States was the one in the largest, but the most underdeveloped, State in India, Uttar Pradesh (UP). The key factor of UP elections was the relentless campaigning done by the scion of the Gandhi family, Rahul Gandhi. Like the monk who sold his Ferrari, Rahul Gandhi left his princely home in New Delhi to ride on the barren unfamiliar land of UP. This is the first time in history of Indian politics that UP elections drew nationwide interest. Thanks to the Gandhi scion who acted as a catalyst to attract minute-by-minute coverage by media. No doubt, he worked hard towards successfully bringing down the corrupt ruling party lead by Mayawati from winning again, but his ch...

Yes folks, sound 'Sleep' is the fundamental right to life of every citizen says the Mai-Baap (Mom-Dad in English translation) of Indian democracy, the Supreme Court. Just like the right to breathe, to eat, to drink, to blink etc, the judge of the Supreme Court has broadened the ambit of right to life by including the right to sleep. And if the Supreme Court has said this, we can blindly take it as the last word. So henceforth, let’s not allow our parents, friends, spouse, in-laws, colleague and boss, to rob our fundamental right to sleep from us. In fact, we can legally dare anyone waking us up the next time. To some extent we need to thank Baba Ramdev for prompting the Supreme Court judges for making sleep every citizen’s fundamental right. If it wasn't for Baba Ramdev and his supporter’s peaceful protests against countrywide corruption at Ramila Grounds, sleeping would continue to be considered an evil spell that Sleeping Beauty had to endure to, only to be awakened by ...

Popular TV show host, Jeremy Clarkson, well known for his role on the BBC TV show, Top Gear, left India fuming at his jokes, when he chided India for its scarce public toilet facilities. So hard did India react, that government officials filed a legal case against the television anchor for making an offending remark that supposedly hurt people’s sentiments. Leaving all crucial developmental work at hand, government officials approached the court for legal intervention and also demanded an apology from the anchor for making that unpalatable racist remark. Only if our officials had used the same energy to improve sanitary conditions in India and focussed on issues that are worth debating, a remark like this would have never been made in the first place. Recently, the Government sued another prominent American television Anchor, Jay Leno, for portraying the holy shrine of the Sikhs, The Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple), as Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney’s vacation home. My question is,...

At the start of the run After two successful Half Marathons in two consecutive years (2011 and 2012), I’m just wondering whether I can now officially call myself a Marathoner. But then…aah…I don’t really think so yet. Perhaps the day I don’t complain of swelling, muscle pain, and difficulty in walking up and down the stairs after the run, will be the day when I can give myself that official status. Until then, I’m just an amateur runner. The 9th edition of the 2012 International Mumbai Marathon got even bigger. Over 3,500 runners participated in the Full Marathon (42km), 11000 participated in the Half Marathon (21km) and over 22000 registered for the Dream run (6km) this year, making it the biggest blockbuster event ever. Personally, the pressure built up on me was even more, since I had set a benchmark of either repeating my last year run-time or at least do better than that. Whatever it is, I just wanted to complete the Half Marathon within the cutoff time as per the internation...