Namaste from India, There are some places whose experience is adequately captured on film. But some places are clearly not in that category. In a photograph – no matter how clever the photographer or how modern the camera, one cannot see the true splendour of the place. You simply can’t appreciate the true context. In the …Read More
Namaste from Kerala, During the early 1980s a chap called Kris Srikkanth opened the batting for India. Like a lot of Indian openers, Srikkanth was a hard-hitting risk-taker who showed scant interest in records or averages and savage disdain for the hapless Australian spinners of the era. Srikkanth was from Cochin which …Read More
Namaste from Kerala, To borrow a laughable phrase from “The Castle”, this India place is “so full of culture”. And India is experiencing some culture wars right at the moment. You may have heard something of the culture wars, centring around the incarceration of a university student leader, accused of being anti-nationalist. …Read More
Namaste from Kerala in India, India today is experiencing ructions and protests which are probably the biggest since Partition. Trouble is brewing. The big heading in The Deccan Chronicle one day last week was “India’s Culture Wars”. This is no isolated cry in the wilderness. To put it mildly, it’s the talk of the town. eroded …Read More
An excerpt from Sarah Macdonald’s entertaining book “Holy Cow”, about her two years in India: “I can’t get a word in to tell the Raja of Red Tape that . . . . . As he speaks, four men watch, drinking in the glory of their Goebbels. They prostate before him, vigorously nod and fall …Read More
Namaste from the Andaman Islands, Naomi Klein – that courageous journalist from Canada – wrote about disaster capitalism in her book “The Shock Doctrine” in 2007. She outlined the growing number of cases in which right-wing ideologues had taken advantage of a people/community/nation at a time when they had just endured a traumatic natural disaster. …Read More
Namaste from Havelock Island, When the flames of freedom light up the hearts and souls of the people, how long can they be stopped? How long indeed. The abandoned prison in Port Blair on the Andaman Islands is testament to the way suppression can only be temporary. The Andaman Islands are idyllic tropical paradise in …Read More
Namaste from the Sundarbans (on the Indian side of the border), We have made our third foray into India, for a third dose of sensory overload. By happy coincidence, we’re in India on the day when India plays Australia in the semi-final of the cricket World Cup. In India, the passion for cricket intersects …Read More
शुभकामना from Delhi, We are just back from our much-anticipated trip to India for a spot of professional development (as well as some sightseeing). Comparisons with life in Bangladesh are inevitable. India has more of almost everything: more traffic, more squalor, more of a discernible middle class, more worldly confidence and, insanely, more …Read More