Letter from New Zealand
Amitav Ghosh
Echoes of Goa: Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
The first Portuguese settlements in Bahia, Brazil, were founded at about the same time as those in Goa. Salvador was Brazil's first capital and these pictures were all…
Letter from Malaysia
My correspondence with Fernando Rosa began some months ago: he is a Brazilian doing research in Malaysia. This is how he describes his work: ‘I am doing research…
The mysterious death of India’s coastal and inland shipping
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries opium was transported from Ghazipur to Calcutta by large and heavily fortified fleets of vessels (the progress of one such…
Letter from Qatar
Dear Amitav, I have just returned from a trip to Beirut and Malta. While in Beirut I took a truly wonderful walking tour led by an AUB grad that I…
Echoes of Goa: São Paulo, Brazil
Yesterday, at São Paulo University, met Prof. Dr. Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza. His is a fascinating history of travel. His family hails from Salvador do Mundo in…
Delhi in the 1980s
In response to my post of September 9 (on the recent bombing of the High Court) Shernaz Italia writes from Delhi: 'The terror of the 80s ... I had…
September 11, 2001
In 1999, soon after moving to the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, my wife and I were befriended by Frank and Nicole De Martini, a couple whose lives…
Piranha Stew
The Espirito Santa restaurant in Rio de Janeiro is like none I have ever experienced. It sits high on a slope…
The bomb in New Delhi
No matter whether it is dropped by an airborne drone or planted by a man on a bicycle, a bomb’s effects are felt not only by those who…