From Pacolo in Fontainhas to Marykutty in Indiranagar
Dearest Marykutty, I am in Goa and I think coming here was one of the best calls I made in life. The monsoons – and the unseasonal showers that followed – have drenched the place and I am not as itinerant as I would like to be. Grounded most days with an eidolon of warmth […]
Varanasi – The best of both worlds
Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous business. (‘Travels with a donkey’ by RL Stevenson) Lighted lanes Lallan* sat maudlin next to me, wracking in sobs that his long, flowing hair bobbed. I put my arms around him, hugging him from the side. Espying […]
Vagamon – hilly tales
Belgian monk Francis Acharya decided to come to India after he met Gandhi in London. So impressed was he by the Mahatma’s espousal of the tenets of Hinduism that he wanted to work for the ‘encounter between Hinduism and Christianity.’ After several unsuccessful applications for visa he finally approached Vijayalakshmi Pandit who was the Indian […]
Siallagan and the story of a beheading
If you are a fence-sitter when it comes to the supernatural – and its different ways of coming alive – Indonesia is a not-so-gentle nudge into adherence. The folklores and urban legends abound with spirits infamous for a lack of benevolence – some shriek forcing you to veer off the highway in the middle of […]
Earth on heaven
A man goes to a shrink to check if he has gotten over his ex. Shrink: Do you get jealous when you think of her with another man? Man: But I have always wanted to see her with other men. You get the drift when the jokes go like this. We were three guys, slightly […]
Jesus monkey and Mary chechi
As children, our parents kept me and my sisters away from adultery and blaspheme by shifting to English. So we might all be sitting around and talking about the annual day celebrations of our village school in Koko, rural Nigeria, in Malayalam. Suddenly, they would go ‘Mrs Gloria caught Miss Pereira and Mr Okay in […]
Quiet days in Kochi
Alice Delices is a rare place. Besides freshly baked bread, here you find people actually talking to each other, looking at books and photographs, debating the identity of artists on the wall posters next to that of Picasso and kids rolling the good old dice. We sat on the backless benches fashioned from wood, facing […]
Go ‘ah’
At the O’Coqueiro in Alto Porvorim I sat exactly where the ‘Bikini Killer’ did over 30 years ago enjoying what would be his last meal as a free man for a long time. Hatchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj, widely known by the last two names, might have been celebrating his latest exploit. Or he was […]
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 […]