Category Archives: epoche

Hitchhiker’s guide to duality

Surely, the man wasn’t going to tear Prem’s arm out of his socket while he was driving! Even cannibals must have some code of honour, even if they are short on table manners. Continue reading

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The backstrap

One professor of literature told me that after her mother had died of stomach cancer, she had not been able to cook for three months because the system wouldn’t let her refill her kitchen gas cylinder. She had visited the concerned office six times to appeal, but the clerks kept telling her that her mother needed to come to make the payment. Continue reading

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Your tranquility is here

It seemed a perfectly reasonable mission—to find a bottle of champagne in Paris. How hard could it be? But circumstance conspired to make it more of a challenge than I could have imagined. For one thing, it was a last … Continue reading

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The great divide

I told Siddhartha that I wanted to bathe in the Ganga. I thought I was looking properly ironic when I said it, but still he shook his head in a sighing kind of way. The hint of a mocking smile … Continue reading

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A far cry from the nanny state

Two days ago was the Muslim festival of Muharram. On the tenth day, Shia Muslims observe the martyrdom of Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad, and the battles leading up to it, which can get pretty literal judging from … Continue reading

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Close encounters with my mother

Originally posted on subincontinentia:
It was the scene where Richard Dreyfuss sees the aliens for the first time as they half-float out of the spaceship that’s landed behind Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming. Everyone in the cinema was in…

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The Ganga Chronicles – Stone Cold Tigers

Finally finished this rather long short story that I had originally posted in parts. Here all four parts in one. The whole story pizza. Enjoy. Vijay Chaudary was worried about his carbuncle. Three pedicures in the past week alone, and there it … Continue reading

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The greatest show on earth

Amelia Earhart once said, ‘You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky.’ Well, I think it must also be true that you haven’t seen a lunar eclipse until you’ve seen it in Varanasi. Here, where … Continue reading

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A man and his dog in Varanasi

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Style

When I first met Rakesh he was the youngest boatman working on the Ganges. Ten years old, shy and very quiet. He’s now fifteen, and very much his own man. He dropped out of school because “the teacher was bad” … Continue reading

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