The last week or so, I have been learning lessons on honesty. Over the years, nothing has annoyed me more than lies and deception. Yes, we all lie. We lie all the time. We tell a friend who we are meeting that we are just around the corner even though we might be stuck in […]
I wanted to write more about the Philippines today. But I found that I couldn’t. I got an email notification to renew the hosting of a friend’s website, which I had gifted last year. I clicked on the link for renewal even though I had absolutely no wish to renew the hosting, as the friend […]
When I wrote the Art of Emotion many weeks ago, I was surprised at the visceral and emotional reactions that post evoked. “How is it that you, who claims not to be good at dealing with emotions, can bring out the deepest emotions in others?” I was asked. I didn’t have an answer. I usually […]
Tomorrow is International Women’s Day. Having just come back from organizing and escorting an all-women trip to the quaint, rural hamlet of Banavasi in Karnataka, today was a day for me to just think about all the wonderful women I have been in touch with over the years, and who have been sources of inspiration […]
I started writing this from the Gujarat Tourism’s office at the Bhuj airport. The air was sweltering and the heat enervating. The airport in Bhuj operates only three flights a day at the most, all to Mumbai. I hadn’t been in an airport this quiet. And I should know, having slept in many airports while […]
The other day I happened to read this article. The post was wise, looked at reality, and made me think. But what the post also had was a fair extent of bitterness. It might make a person with fewer wings think less of flying. Don’t be that person, I thought after reading the post. These […]
There’s a photo of me on the wardrobe in my room, in my parent’s house. My Dad has taken some of the photos of my childhood, and stuck them on the wooden wardrobe that spans the floor to the ceiling here in my bedroom. One of me as a baby, grinning delightedly, sepia-tinted with my […]
The other day I was reading an article, yet another interview, with the world’s happiest man. Matthieu Ricard, a 69-year-old Tibetan Buddhist monk, is not called the “world’s happiest man” without reason. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin found that Ricard’s brain, when meditating, “produces a level of gamma waves – those linked to consciousness, […]
I found some fresh bok choy in the local grocery store and I was immediately taken back to many a dinner and lunch in restaurants from the north, south, east, and west of China. All these years. I remembered the texture, the flavor of garlic and ginger. Just gentle garlic and ginger and the rich, […]