A shorter version of this article appeared in the July-December 2020 issue of Indian Quarterly magazine (so far available only online, at https://www.magzter.com/IN/I&E-Engine/The-Indian-Quarterly/Art/) Pictures on this post courtesy Luis and Chryselle Dias, Child’s Play (India) Sometimes, serendipity brings together events, people, and ideas in one’s life in such a fortuitous manner that it’s difficult not…… Continue reading Child’s Play (India): Orchestrating change
Everything is Big in Uzbekistan
An edited version of this travelogue piece appeared in the June 2020 issue of Platform magazine (follow this link to access the magazine site) The man most of the world knows as Tamerlane or Timur-e-Lang or Timur the Lame, and generally reviles as a ruthless invader, is revered in his native Uzbekistan as Amir Timur.…… Continue reading Everything is Big in Uzbekistan
“Thubten Returns”
This is one of my first published short stories. It appeared in ‘First Proof: The Penguin Book of New Writing 4’ published in 2008. The anthology, which featured both fiction as well as poetry and non-fiction, took the unusual route of having the fiction stories start from one end, and the non-fiction from the other,…… Continue reading “Thubten Returns”
“Moebius” and ‘Inside/out’
Nine years ago, Goa Writers, a group I am a part of, published an anthology titled ‘Inside/Out: New writing from Goa’. In the past few days, while doing a thorough cleaning and sorting of accumulated clutter, I came across a couple of newspaper reports that had come out around the time of that publication. I’ve…… Continue reading “Moebius” and ‘Inside/out’
Entropy
This story is unpublished The professor stared at the table, registering little more than a blur of brown and white, red and orange. Breakfast must be toast and fruit. Again. As his hand reached out for the steel tumbler of milk, guided more by memory than sight, something at the fringes of his consciousness tugged…… Continue reading Entropy
Fans of a different feather
This piece appeared in the Business Standard Weekend supplement on January 4, 2020. In his everyday avatar, that of a young entrepreneur helping his father run a wholesale cement business, Conrad Barreto is a soft-spoken, pleasant young man just under 30 years old. Like all good superheroes, he is someone you would think leads a…… Continue reading Fans of a different feather
The Fergana Valley: Foodbasket of Uzbekistan
An abridged version of this piece appeared in the December 2019 issue of Outlook Traveller. The train from Tashkent to the Fergana Valley winds south-east through the rugged landscape of the Kamchiq Pass and through the 19km-long Kamchiq Tunnel, the longest broad-gauge rail tunnel in the world. It’s called Ozbekiston (the Uzbeks have a propensity…… Continue reading The Fergana Valley: Foodbasket of Uzbekistan
Reading ‘Baburnama’ in the Land of Babur
An edited version of this article was published in the Business Standard Weekend supplement on November 30, 2019 At the Babur Literary Museum in Andijan, Uzbekistan, dozens of copies of the Baburnama are arrayed in glass bookcases. There are modern editions and older versions, in Tajik, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, French, English, and other translations.…… Continue reading Reading ‘Baburnama’ in the Land of Babur
The Souza you haven’t met
This story appeared in the December 14, 2019 issue of ‘Business Standard Weekend’. The online version of the publication is behind a paywall, so I have put an extract here, with a link out to the entire piece for those who might want to read it in its entirety. Mary D’Souza rises, two storeys tall,…… Continue reading The Souza you haven’t met
O Jogo Bonito
I wrote this article for the October-December 2019 issue of ‘Indian Quarterly’ magazine. When they assigned the story to me, they gave me a general brief on capturing the Goan footballing culture. In planning it, though, I felt it important to set it in a historical context. Outside of the state, people know very little…… Continue reading O Jogo Bonito
The Long and Short of It 