100. So, this is the 100th article!

Today marks my 100th submission here. As someone who tends to get bored quickly and leaves tasks unfinished, this feels like a significant milestone.

I would really appreciate hearing congratulations from my readers.

Meanwhile, every morning, when I see how many people visit this website to read my gibberish, I bow my head to them.

Believe me, when this idea was conceived at the end of July this year, I was very apprehensive because I had observed my guru, Khushwant Singh, writing two columns every week. 

He adhered to strict discipline, unlike my more bohemian lifestyle. 

On August 1st of this year, when my associate and Man Friday, Avinash Rajurkar, finished the job in a week—something I thought would take a month—and handed over the keys to this website after a one-hour tutorial, I was at a loss.

Carrying this for a while was manageable, but doing it every day—vowing to keep it up until my last breath—was a big challenge. 

The only 12-letter word I saw when I closed my eyes was 'UNBELIEVABLE'.

Apart from Khushwant Singh, another person from whom I learned a lot and who liked me almost immediately because of our shared connection to Lucknow is Vinod Mehta. 

I had just started a literary magazine, “THE SCORIA,” in 1996, while working for the Indian Express group. It was also the same month that the weekly “OUTLOOK” was launched with Vinod Mehta as its editor.

I took the inaugural issue to him, and he seemed quite aghast because it carried no sketch, no photo, and had a bland cover. 

The first piece of advice he gave me was to make it visually appealing, as it was intended to be a very serious type of product.

Khushwant Singh disagreed with him and discussed both publications – Outlook and THE SCORIA - in his column “With Malice Towards One and All” (the article is included in his book ‘Big Book of Malice’). 

Although I didn’t like it, because he expressed apprehension about its future. I saw it as a bad omen.

When Vinod Mehta told him about my disappointment, Khushwant Singh sent me a postcard – “I read The Scoria, Mr. Editor, you are a brave man.” 

Later, when I met him, he told me about the challenges of publishing a magazine without financial backing and also tried to persuade me to focus more on writing poems.

He was very fond of my poetry and wrote the most encouraging words for my collection, Always in Transit: “I liked Always in Transit, and the title fascinated me. Too intense, passionate, poignant, a spontaneous burst. The last one, ‘Walking in The Rain,’ an epicedium… almost a coronach, was the most moving poem I’ve read in recent times.” 

But those times are gone.

Vinod Mehta once mentioned his friend, the well-known Behram Contractor, who authored the world’s longest-running satirical column, “Round and About”—36 years—under the pseudonym Busybee. 

He said that when Behram went to a restaurant in Bombay (now called Mumbai), the bill was never presented because the owners were delighted to see him and felt insulted if a friend accompanying him tried to pay it. Such was the popularity of his daily column and the respect he commanded.

I have all his books — a collection of some of his articles, such as 'Best of 1985 to 1987', 'Best of 1988 - 1989', 'Best of 1990 - 1991', and 'Best of 2000-2001,' along with others that his wife, Farzana Contractor, has meticulously published. Some are designed by my colleague Arun, a talented visualizer. His work was first published in the Evening News and later in the evening tabloid Afternoon Despatch & Courier, which he himself launched on March 25, 1985. 

The publication later came into the hands of Kamal Morarka, a former union minister and businessman, who was also the national president of the Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya), Vice President of the BCCI for a time, and the owner of several heritage Havelis in Rajasthan. 

Once, he took me to his most famous haveli, the Kamal Morarka Haveli Museum, which also serves as a private museum. 

I used to spend hours at his office in Bajaj Bhavan, Nariman Point, where he would entertain guests sitting behind a large table in one corner of the room, with stacks of books on it. The room served as both his office and a large personal library.

As a wildlife photographer, he had an artist's eye and appreciated my paintings. 

There was a time when I was unemployed and had plenty of free time. I spent most of it at the Asiatic Society Library, where I served on the Managing Committee and led the Periodicals Committee. 

Whenever Morarka had free time, he would call me, and we would discuss a wide range of topics—including politics, finance, and my personal concerns—especially as I was planning a magazine titled “Money Mughal” before settling on “Indian Economy & Market.”

During one such visit, he graciously asked me to take charge of Afternoon Despatch & Courier and revamp its content and layout, as the paper was struggling. Three years after that offer, it eventually ceased publication in 2019. 

When Urmila, my wife, and I faced a dilemma about my eldest daughter’s marriage into a Marwari family, he imparted a life lesson I will never forget. 

Following his advice to proceed, my wife consented, and we married her just two months later, although we had been contemplating it for the last two years.

I think I drifted too much; it’s nothing new to me when I write about those people who shaped my life and who are still on my mind—a kind of nostalgia, you can say.

I also enjoy the works of Clarice Lispector, the Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story author. She wrote a column every Saturday for over ten years in the Jornal do Brasil, a well-established daily newspaper from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, founded in 1891. 

The collection of her column “Too Much of Life” is an excellent book for learning how to write about everyday life, including your own, others', your city, and the world.

Now, as I celebrate this 100th column, I pause to reflect on the number 100 and want to share some interesting, unusual facts coming to my mind right now.

Mathematics has always been one of my favourite subjects, so first remember 100 is a perfect square number and its square root is 10. The sum of the first 10 odd numbers equals 100, and 100 is the basis of percentages, as per cent means per hundred in Latin, with 100 percent being a full amount

Not to stop at mathematics, there are 100 paise in one rupee; there are 100 years in a century, and on the Celsius scale, 100 degrees is the boiling temperature of water. 

Not to forget, a person who lives to be 100 is called a centenarian.