Vincent came running. “I was in that house cleaning their swimming pool,” he said pointing and with a broad smile I had gotten used to in Africa by now. “The rain and the wind had mucked it up,” he added, swole in damp clothes and wiping off drizzle from his face. The woollen cap was left on. This was my third visit to the Namibian capital, Windhoek, and I had passed through the ‘art island’ – as I referred to the area in the carrefour near a parking lot where
Dearest Marykutty, I am in Goa and I think coming here was one of the best calls I made in life. The monsoons – and the unseasonal showers that followed – have drenched the place and I am not as itinerant as I would like to be. Grounded most days with an eidolon of warmth who loves me no end and feeds me whenever I am hungry, I don’t have to tell you that I am purring content. But I think of you every time I see something new; I
The artist couple arrived on the dot of nine as they promised they would. It didn’t matter that it was Diwali eve or that it was pouring or they were on a two-wheeler. The irritating plangent of the hotel room bell suddenly took on a dulcet charm as I imagined Mira to be pressing it. Her partner, the famous mural painter Tutti, always walked a step or two behind her languidly, his gaze shiftless over the sky and the sea but settling with fixation on her shapely buttocks. She walked
Those who turn up at airports in flip-flops are those who are on the verge of missing their flights or who just had a breakup. While the former frets and fumes, hollers and thrusts their mobile phones at the airline staff faces to prove it was the cabbie’s fault, their pleas falling on unmoving ears as the ticket has already been sold off to somebody else (I have both harangued to be let on a flight without success as well as waited patiently by the counter for anybody to be
The prettiest things right in front of our eyes often go unnoticed, sometimes literally too. At the tulip festival of Kashmir the milling crowd rarely took a second look at the nearly 20 lakh blooms spread over 30 hectares of lush acreage sweeping into the foothills of the Great Himalayan range. Instead, they busied themselves taking photographs of each other in insta-like poses and I was occupied watching them, marvelling at the brazenly doting couples in a normally conservative place. Newly-weds and lovers went to the farthest corners of the
The lorry juddered to a halt. We were passing through one of those Himalayan hamlets that always looked like they were shut for the night. Like many others along the way this one too had sprung up around a sharp curve on the winding road. Habitation, commerce even, around these bends made sense as vehicles slowed down considerably and those like I was travelling in – 20 feet long and laden to excess capacity – took forever to pass. A lot transpired too by the time the road straightened –
