Chefchaouen is an incredibly beautiful little remote town, washed in blue and indigo, situated up in the Rif Mountains in Northern Morocco. We stayed for two nights in the older part of the town, just above the main square. While taking one of our many…
Children’s literature always has this effect of clearing and refreshing my mind, opening it up for subsequent expansion. Minnie, my daughter was then 6 years old and going to the American International School in Dhaka. Ananya (my wife) would visit the school library and together with…
A mental transformation: Anything said about India is true, just as the exact opposite is also equally true. Just as we find extreme material ugliness in India, we encounter staggering material beauty co-existing side by side. What has always intrigued me about my country is…
Happiness is dozing off with a book open on your chest, in the quite and solitary weekend mornings in Kampala …. Built at an elevation of 3,900 feet above sea level, on a series of hills along the northern side of Lake Victoria, Kampala is…
I grew up in the beautiful town of Cochin (now Kochi) in picturesque Kerala – in “God’s Own Country”. In school, a boy called Ajith and I used to be best friends. We were pretty inseparable – Ajith was plump, I was skinny and our…
Much of my growing up years, 12 to be precise, was spent in the beautiful city of Cochin (now Kochi), located by the Laccadive Sea, in Kerala, in the south-west coast of India. In Cochin, we were very close to one particular family – a…
When I reflect on the long and eventful life of my mother, I feel humbled, I feel inspired, I feel sad, I feel happy and above all, I feel proud and blessed. My mother was hugely talented, had an artistic and creative mind and a…
I like ghosts – I mean the very idea of it. And I would love to meet one (or more) if possible. I go out every (almost) morning at five, for a brisk long walk in and around Spur Loop – the area I live in….
Just watched this AMAZING movie starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins and I had to share it with my friends, particularly those who share a passion for reading and for books with me. I had ordered it over Amazon and a colleague from London got…
Bengali Scholar in Freetown When I moved to Sierra Leone in West Africa a year ago, I did not expect to find many South Asians, let alone any Bengali speakers here. A few months into my stay in the country, however, I learn from two…
One of the mandatory things that many expatriates do once in Laos is to visit one of the fancier studios, get dressed in the traditional Lao costumes (with all the accessories and accoutrements) and get themselves photographed. True to this expatriate tradition, Nina and Minnie…
I spent my childhood in the beautiful south Indian State of Kerala. My school was in the picturesque Katari Bagh area in Cochin (now known as Kochi), in the precincts of the sprawling Southern headquarters of the Indian Navy. When I graduated from High School,…