She plants lavender bushes on arid earth and keeps the soil moist, welcoming and fertile for thirsty seedlings. She is like the trees sheltering. And like the gardener nurturing. She knows the words the silences. Her hands build heal becalm soothe revive and remain invisible because she likes fading into serene margins. To never claim […]
S l o w… They are in no hurry. They stand and stare at me when I photograph a cloud. They slow down their two-wheelers to look at me, because in their town, girls do not sport short haircuts; their plaits touch their hips. My friend Muthu, who is a proud localite, tells me that […]
I see this Laughing Buddha every weekend when I go cycling. Do you see the crow, perched on the board he is holding? Do you see how small it looks? This Laughing Buddha is gigantic. He is at VGP Golden Beach, Chennai’s first theme park. That part, where the Laughing Buddha was installed, of the […]
Penguin Random Houses announces the release of, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. The most highly funded original book in the history of crowdfunding, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls was a runaway hit raising over 1 million dollars on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. This gorgeously illustrated book containing 100 tales of extraordinary women including Michelle Obama,Jane Austen, Simone Biles, Frida Kahlo, Ada Lovelace, Serena Williamsand Amelia […]
The wisdom of the Absolute posing a challenge to the intellect of human is the crux of human predicament. The perennial questions about god, self, soul, afterlife, purpose and meaning of personal and impersonal existence – all point towards the enormous gulf between our limited capacities to understand key abstractions on one hand and the infinite […]
Yesterday, for some reason, I hunted for a DVD I had bought many years ago but never watched. And then as Aruna-Vikas’ little known 1978 murder mystery Shaque unspooled, I realised, the film in a way exemplified Vinod Khanna’s approach towards fame. He did not give a damn about it. He did love the […]
In a world where reductionist phrases simplify trends in unintelligent words, it is the season of supposedly “woke” men turning out to be predators. Case in point being Vikas Bahl, the man who directed Queen and also a few other successful men who were supposed to behave better than louts hanging around dark street corners, […]
There is a telling anecdote about Kishori Amonkar’s early years as a classical sensation when she was rattling off the number of shows she had been booked for and her mother and guru Mogubai Kurdikar, herself a legendary disciple of Ustad Alladiya Khan’s Jaipur Atrauli gharana, heard her out and asked her if her calendar had […]
Actually she isn’t. That headline was only meant to grab eyeballs. She fought again odds to educate herself. No not just school or college. She dared to go to the university. And then get herself a post graduation degree. Though she married my father through an arranged marriage, there was nothing ‘arranged’ about her marriage. […]
Romeo Montague (Italian: Romeo Montecchi) is one of the title characters in William Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Romeo, the son of Montague and his wife, secretly loves and marries Juliet, a member of the rival House of Capulet. Forced into exile by his slaying of Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt, in a duel, Romeo commits suicide […]
Pic: Saw this beautiful deserted spot on one of our drives around the island! Earlier this year I visited the gorgeous island nation of the Seychelles, located in the Indian Ocean, off the eastern coast of Africa. This being my first time to any part of the African continent, I was understandably excited to see […]
Pic: ” Vientiane” by Staffan Scherz is licensed under CC BY 2.0 On my way to Vietnam earlier this year, I made a short four day stop in the capital city of Laos, Vientiane. The city, to my surprise, was far more relaxed and easy going when compared with other capital cities in its neighbourhood. There […]