Foreign Devil
Amitav GhoshTop-hatted, tail-coated temple guardian, Phnom Penh, 1993.
Henry Mayhew
Henry Mayhew was the Studs Terkel of the 19th century: I find his ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ (published 1851) more interesting even than Orwell’s Down and Out…
Mekong Journals – Jan 9, 2003
In January 2003 I accompanied an expedition that was conducting a survey of river dolphins on a stretch of the Mekong River in Cambodia. The expedition was led by Isabel…
Ends and Beginnings
Today, with the Left Front being voted out in West Bengal, after thirty-four years in power, there is much being said about the bloodletting at Singur and Nandigram and…
from my Agha Shahid Ali journal
The death of the poet, Agha Shahid Ali, was a terrible loss – for poetry, for Kashmir, and for me personally for he was a close friend. Nine months…
India’s Birthplace
Geology is full of surprises. Who would have guessed, for example, that the undersea feature that marks the birthplace of the Indian subcontinent would be named after a brand…
Bird Prevents Ship Murder
A tale of a lascar and an unidentifiable bird: the ‘minka’ mentioned in the news report was probably a ‘myna’. From, The Washington Post, Feb 20, 1908. …
The Bhukailash Rajbari, Kolkata
This is the seat of one of Bengal's oldest zamindaris. The grounds are right in the crowded heart of Kidderpore, which is a blessing in a way, for it…
Leaping dolphin: Goa
This snapshot was taken near Aswem, Goa, on a fine February morning in 2010. It is actually a freeze frame from a Flip recording. The dolphin…
A house in the Sundarbans
This being the 150th anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore’s birth, it feels propitious to have chanced upon this photograph now. The picture is of the little house that Tagore…