The ancient ruins of Nalanda
There are times when you tour the world hunting for treasures, while the treasure lies buried in your own backyard. One of those telling moments when I felt most proud to be Indian was when I visited…
The stillness of dawn
I wake up abruptly two hours before my alarm goes off. My tossing and turning wakes up my husband. “Let’s go for a walk,” he says. But the remnants of the previous night’s dinner party are still…
Swimming in the deep
As a swimming pool, it was primitive. But for us kids it was the only solace to beat the temperatures above 45 degrees C in Chanda. There were no blue tiles on its floor to make it look…
The Black-necked Stork: A near-threatened species
Only recently there was a hue and cry in the papers about a black-necked stork which was spotted with a ring around its beak in a wetland outside Delhi. Black-necked storks are large birds, which are classified as…
The Mad Tibetan: Deepti Naval’s anthology of short stories
The Mad Tibetan: Stories from then and now is Deepti Naval’s debut anthology of eleven short stories which was first published in 2011. I happened to stumble over it while browsing for books on Amazon now. Rather late,…
Dantakali: The tooth-goddess in Nepal
A few kilometres from Dharan in Nepal, as you go uphill towards Bijaynagar, stands the Dantakali temple. It is a 20 minute drive from Dharan, and located at an altitude of 1572 feet above the sea level.…
The legends of the Budha Subba temple
I was visiting Dharan in Nepal for work. I tried to call home to convey the message that I had crossed the border. A Nepalese colleague chuckled: “Yes, tell them you are safe. You Indians believe that…
The Rhinos of Kaziranga
Reminded of Ogden Nash’s poem, The Rhinoceros: The Rhino is a homely beast,For human eyes he’s not a feast,But you and I will never knowWhy Nature chose to make him so.Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,I’ll stare at…
Losing yourself
The hospital corridor is long. Sterile and sombre. Doctors wearing long insignia-adorned white coats hurry along. Medical students who are perpetually late for their lectures, scurry, mumbling good mornings to me. Patients walk slowly with their companions…
Kedarnath: The wrath of nature
In the opening scenes of Kedarnath, the camera pans the mighty Himalayas and I gasped at the landscape. Complementing the stunning visuals of the magnificent mountains was the resounding score of Amit Trivedi’s Namo namo shankara. The film…
