Sunrise in Almora

Traveling together is a benchmark of compatibility. I know at least five dating couples who decided to move in together as they found they were still pining for each other at the end of each trip. More than onism dawning, it is the realisation that you have made some ground together. Yes, if anything can go […]
Finding Charlie

Hanging welter covered peeling plaster. The veneer on the butt of an air rifle reflected light, hockey trophies and team memorabilia; a discoloured snood probably worn by Charlie’s wife on their wedding day, frayed ‘Jesus loves you’ pictures curled at the corners; a clock in a chunky wooden case which kept ticking away loudly sometimes […]
Like the President

Toll plazas judder me. I have never passed through any without my mind wrought, eyes blazing, head giddy and generally feeling violated. True, there have been happy occasions where I gave a lift to an old man who was a plaza manager by dint of which I didn’t have to pay not one but three […]
Skateboard to school

All of a sudden the father of the two guys we were dealing with stood up, left the hall and came back with a rifle in his hands. Ulrike Reinhard, a soi-disant futurist and social entrepreneur, was relieved to leave India the first time she came for a conference. Besides the ‘harsh and irritating extremes’ […]
Munnar

From the balcony It must have been the same view that held the Muthuvan gaze two centuries ago. The tree line, the undulating hills and the Western Ghats segued into the argent skies through a thick veil of mist. In the calm of early dawn Nature stood motionless narcissistically occupied by its own unrivalled beauty, […]
Boondock saints

A tribal woman, heavily pregnant, leaned against the iron gate sliding it open and walked into the health centre. Her gait was strained as she had broken water. Too weak to press the electric bell she just about managed to spread out a mat on the corner and collapse. She was alone; her husband was […]
Selfie culture to the rescue

The last time I came to Jharkhand was when ‘selfie’ was, forget the culture it is today, nowhere in the lexicon-horizon even. It was seven years ago to make a film for a livelihood program funded by the central government ministry of rural development and implemented by Don Bosco Tech in the more backward districts […]
Hitch hike

There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying. Why don’t you dance?, Raymond Carver. For most part of the wedding ceremony, the bride was missing from the altar. She was puking her guts out because of all the spice she ate. She was […]
Pushkar fair – Mela in the air

They are all Meeras Throbbing notes twanged out from a three-string kamaicha. Wood-ringed fingers tapped on a ghara. A sadhu with the longest dreadlocks sat like the sachem he was surrounded by attitude and subalterns and general onlookers including me. Thick wafts of grey-blue smoke rose from a smouldering chillum that briskly changed hands […]