12 basic rules to find love

Arif Khan made it look easy as he slalomed downhill on the artificial slopes of Ski Dubai recently. That was the moment he became the first, and so far only, Indian athlete to qualify for the Beijing Winter Olympics, which begins in February. For the year-old, who hails from Gulmarg in Indian-administered Kashmir, it has been a long hard climb to get there. I remember the last time how difficult it was chasing the qualification when there was hardly any support for training and racing events. Even though a cricket-crazy India has steadily moved on from being a one-sport nation, raking in their richest haul of seven medals at the Tokyo Summer Olympics, winter sports continue to languish on the fringes. India has never won a medal at the Winter Olympics, and has never sent more than four athletes to a single edition of the Games. The Indian government dropped winter sports from the priority list in and it has not been reinstated yet. But Khan is no stranger to the hard life in the mountains.

I remember the moment my sister told me she was having a babe. I was spending the evening along with a group of friends and, central through, Kate said she needed a word. We ducked into a bedroom, where she looked at me accordingly solemnly that I ransacked my common sense for anything I could possibly allow done wrong in the past half-hour. The seriousness of her announcement made me giggle out loud.