Divorce, or the end of an emotional and legally recognised relationship between a man and a woman is perhaps one of the most painful events in a person’s adult life. We can prevent it from happening by handling sticky situations with some calm and wit. But as we all know there are times when things become unavoidable. Then the intelligent move will be to prepare yourself for the unpleasant situation rather brood over it. STOP LIVING IN DENIAL Once you finally recognise the marriage is not working out after you have genuinely tried to save it, start preparing for its demise, before your partner and the situation overwhelm you. And quicker you are in preparing yourself for the agony ahead, better you can handle yourself mentally, psycho...

Parenting or should we say mothering teenagers has been a challenge through ages. We prefer to use mothering, as generally dads are busy with making moolah while the moms, even though working, deal directly with their teenage children. Now talking about challenges, it’s a bigger challenge in a country like India with its ever evolving culture and society. As we open to global (read western) ways of life, our teenagers are becoming more independent and liberal. Though there’s also a culture of more teenagers picking up vocational jobs, but that’s just vocational, limited to a couple of months. For the rest of the year, they depend on pocket money to take care of their ever increasing needs. In such a scenario, it’s not wise to deny th...

Though the pat on my shoulder was not a particularly heavy one, it startled me. I guess the delicious tuna tetrazzini was to blame for this. It involved me quite a bit. However, before I could get into the blame-game, I found Rakshanda beside me. That afternoon I had unexpectedly landed up in this restaurant and as I ate, I had secretly wished for company. So I was absolutely delighted to see Rakshanda. But she was not so happy, it seemed. I asked her the reason. Hesitant in the beginning, she opened up gradually. Last evening she had bought an evening gown. Her husband, without even taking a good look at the dress, said, “It’s the tenth and the house rent is not yet paid. The landlord has called me thrice today. It’s so embarrassing...

It’s eight o’clock in the night. Pie is packing her school bag. She is about to switch off the lights of her room when the door bell rings. Her mama opens the door. It’s Jia. She is crying!“O! Why are you crying? What happened?” Pie’s mama asks. Pie hears this and comes running out of her room. Jia says, “I have lost my money.” She had 200 rupees which she had kept in her little wooden box. She had got this money from her Papa for getting good marks in class test.Pie’s mama asks, “Did you look for it on your table and in other rooms?” Jia said yes. Then Pie asks if she asked her mama and papa about the money. Jia says they have gone for a party. Pie tells her not to cry. They will search for the money. Then she says that Jia should...

This is a question which posed itself many a time to me over the years and I heard myself say ‘as long as I do what I love, the money will come.’ Now this may be true, even though at the time I had no idea how to do what I loved and trust that money would come. I was a slave to money, no doubt about it. And when I did take my higher horse and decide I would only work for money if I enjoyed the process of earning it, I still didn’t turn on the money tap. However, I am a reflective sort of a person as that’s the spiritual development path I’ve been following for the last twenty something years (or is it thirty something?) and at some point I was poked and prodded to look at that comment and think about it a little more deeply. Was I s...

You may have noticed that money is being mentioned quite a lot at the moment (or are you living in a cave? And if you are, how do you connect to the Internet? And if you can, are there any other caves nearby for rent? email me...) Anyway, it seems to me that there's a deeply hypnotic process going on where government, media and personal mind-space are together creating a perfect storm for depression (in every sense of the word). Sure it's hard to keep your head space clear and clean when all around are losing theirs (apologies to Kipling?), but panicking with the herd is a known recipe for geting trodden underfoot in the rush. A great reliief then to be reminded of the fine work of Rebecca Fine, she of The Science of Getting Rich (a ...

Someone recently called me ‘counter-intuitive’. Which I took as a complement, although I’m not sure that it was intended as such. And of course, one of the most inappropriate things to do when Connect is dedicating an edition to green money and ethical investment – on which I am specialist – would be to use this column to write about something completely different. So read on. . . It’s really because I recently ran the workshop Making Friends With Money and realised that I’d never written anything about it. I’ve been doing it since 1993 in locations all over the country. And it’s (if I say so myself) pretty damn’ good. But the name seems to frighten people off. Somebody at the last session apologised on the way in because she ...