THE MAGIC OF SANCHI (2006)
I arrived, deep into the silent night, and laid my jet-lagged body down, in the vacant room of a dingy Mumbai guest house. Closing my eyes, I removed my grim surroundings, revelling in the prospect…
ONE OF YOU PEOPLE (1989)
Like an unblemished spot on the dustsheet that is Ahmedabad, the Gandhi ashram stood unstained, repelling the muck and chaos that settled around it. It gently hugged the bank of a quietly rolling stretch of…
COUNTER 22 (1989)
COUNTER 22 (1989) The early morning sun was beginning to burn off the dawn mist. The dew had disappeared from the ground. On the street, men cycling by, wore dull brown woollen scarves tied from…
THE WHITE DOT (2012)
At the corner of the street, an indigo blue enamel name plate, announced the Rue Romain Rollard. Its well-swept pavement was punctuated by poodle-tail, pollarded trees. The handsome buildings, paint-washed in Naples yellow and rose…
NIRMAL’S WATER POT (1981)
I was anxious to be travelling east that evening. A state bus had taken me from Chandigarh, across the Punjab, to the railway station at Ambala Cantonment Junction. This place would become one that I…
CHEEK BY JOWL (1989)
The morning town bustled, jostled and hassled. Amidst the hullabaloo I spotted a sign advertising ‘Jolly walks in landscaping garden’. It was noted, and later in the day, searching for some respite from the intensity…
THE PINK LADY (1981)
It was a gloomy January day in Old Delhi, and the mood on the street was unusually flat. People were just getting on with their business as I wondered what the day might have in…
THE SILENT COW (2012)
‘Madras is hot for 10 months of the year, and hotter for two.’ RK Narayan. During one of the ten hot months, I floated in a mini bus, along the coastal road that hugged the…
THE ROADS LESS TRAVELLED: PART 2 (2000)
I put little to no planning into these rural bus journeys. You got on if you could, hung on if you could, and fell off in a new place. Passengers’ skills to accommodate, got you…
5 MILES SHORT: INDIAN RAILWAYS (1981)
I had reached Madras, and travels in the sub-Continent had so far been largely by bus and by boat. I was determined to change that, and lined myself up to take on one of the…