Wait for side
The lorry juddered to a halt. We were passing through one of those Himalayan hamlets that always looked like they were shut for the night. Like many others along the way this one too had sprung up around a sharp curve on the winding road. Habitation, commerce even, around these bends made sense as vehicles […]
Escape to Nainital
The compact speaker had seen better days, been on many treks and taken several falls. It was rusted around the edges but continued to play with such high fidelity that it was easy to see why my friend took it everywhere with him. Right now it was tucked into the cradle of his arms and […]
Borobudur at daybreak
As you ascend the over 100 steps to the top of the Borobudur Temple you actually pass through three levels symbolic of Buddhist cosmology all the way to Nirvana. Chances are that you will be climbing up, unawares, in the pre-dawn dark at 4.30 AM to catch the famous ‘Borobudur sunrise’ your progress aided by […]
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 […]
Tso it is
A sudden blizzard – a regular occurrence at high altitudes – caught us unawares as we approached Khardung La and we stopped to chain up our tyres. Flaky snow fell on our jackets which were blown away by strong winds. There was nothing much we could do about the meltwater, ice-cold and mucky, that threatened […]
Delegate pass
Much has been written about muses and understandably so – they are salacious tales and scandalous to boot. The recorder always faithfully documents the gratitude the artistic and literary worlds owe to these little Lolitas who, by dint of their tenderness and tautness, aided the ageing masters in their Elysian pursuits. What might have started […]
The lesser-known globetrotting chai wallahs
Je ne sais quoi For all their famous hatred, the French sometimes do come to the rescue of English, the language. The word above might sound like an endearment in Mandarin but it means a wonderful ‘quality that cannot be described or named easily.’ Which means those four little words can mean everything from the […]
House of the rising sun
Take it easy, he said It all started with a valium prescription following a workout accident: I couldn’t straighten up after I put the barbell down but had to crawl on all fours and finally clamber up a chair clutching with every movable limb. That’s how the ambulance found me – sprawled like a chilling […]
Small bubble, big trouble
Gushing waters froth stories. When set amidst lush landscapes, the viridian violence can give rise to some very haunting ones. Sarojini Omanakuttan remembers a few with moist eyes, though not exactly a shudder – toughened by the wildness of office, nothing is shook enough for her. She pointed nonchalantly to a spot outside the wayside […]