I am sitting on Marina Beach, Chennai on an upturned canoe sometime in 2004. Next to me is a guy – Suresh. I watch the waves recede. Ebb. Flow. Recede. Relentless. Suresh turns to me and breaks the silence. “So, let’s talk about you and me.” I almost fall off the canoe and hurriedly clamber […]
A few years ago, a good friend, James, came down to Bangalore from London to study Kannada. My friend and I met him in a cafe in Bangalore’s quaint old VV Puram district. James, or Jam as we call him, is a chap prone to the most inane hilarity, armed with a wry British wit. […]
I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. I am sipping black tea with a tinge of sugar (just decoction, as they called it), sitting on the stone bench in front of a small shop selling groceries in a village called Devi Gere. I have just finished my bottle […]
The last time I came to Ooty was when I was graduating from high school. I was a certified loner then, and I remember thinking that my biggest fear then was if anyone would agree to be my roommate. I don’t remember anything of Ooty. Not its hills, not its climate, not its gorgeous chocolates. […]
I am sitting cross-legged in a fairly large meditation hall, my knees resting awkwardly on two pillows. I am propped up on two other pillows. Outside, I hear birds and a grass-cutting machine hypnotically whirring its way through. Inside the hall, someone coughs. I hear the person next to me deeply sigh. I bend over, […]
It’s morning but the heat is already enervating. A dry, barren plain stretches out before me. The air is dry. The landscape almost like a surreal scene from a dystopian flick. The odd patch of green struggling against the aridness. Your car turns the corner, off the Sholapur-Pune highway, onto a rough road, and then […]
The last few days of this year. A year that has been a shard of revolving dust, a whirlwind of chaos and mindless energy. As the year winds down, I can’t but think of the things that made me happy through the year. It’s difficult to do so. Our mind has a tendency to shut […]
Ramanagara, off the Bangalore-Mysore highway, is now the new hotspot for birdwatchers, rock-climbers, and coffee crashers. This place is known for its silkworm rearing, and of course, THAT scene from THAT Hindi blockbuster, Sholay, but of late, its rocky terrain has attracted more trekkers and climbers than silkworm farmers. I have neither trekked nor climbed […]
I stay in one of Bangalore’s more recently developed ‘IT hubs.’ The area there is chaotic. The air an unfiltered hell of poison. The people speak to me in Hindi more often than not. Traffic is not the word you can use to describe a 1,000 vehicles trying to squeeze past each other in a […]