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manipuris

We Indians are all familiar with  time-honoured and, frankly, yawn-making  clichés about our distinctive regional  pecadilloes; after all, what sets a Punjabi apart from a Bengali and a Bengali from a Southerner or a Gujerati from a U.P bhaiya?  We fondly cherish stereotypes of  the brainy Bong who eats a lot of fish and thus […] Read more

Old Goa: Mrs Suares in Fontainhas

Mrs Suares is a sprightly 92 year-old  Goan lady of education and culture. She was a schoolteacher, like her late husband. He won many awards for his teaching of Portugese and I wish I had asked her to recite me some verses from the Portugese Shakespeare, Camoes,  who came to Goa in 1553. RED  rose […] Read more

fave caffs (5). Sublime in Morjim, Goa

It’s not just in Britain that young people full of energy and vision are launching cafes and restaurants to excite the palate and provide social hubs buzzing with interest. I found one in Goa. Chris Agha Bee, half Iranian and half Goan, has created an oasis in the middle of a culinary desert in North […] Read more

Seven years back in Goa: not a lot has changed

Agonda Beach The sound of surf is ever present and soon becomes part of my heartbeat.  I don’t hear the roar as separate from my circulation  until I move away from the shore- and then it’s absent like a friend who’s gone somewhere else. I listen to the  waves boom, braking the limit of their […] Read more

Little Moscow in Goa

A small metalled road leads from Morjim village to the beach, which under a decade ago was the one of the most tranquil stretch of sand and coconut palms in Goa. Today the area is known as “Little Moscow.” I entered a huge bamboo and palm shack full of  nut-brown lounging Russians and found the […] Read more

Pottering

    Perhaps the single most off-putting “like”, in the lists provided by Men Seeking Women in Guardian Soulmates is “NT”, or National Trust, seconded only by “log fires” and “country walks”. Can you imagine a more boring past time than  trundling around historic houses looking at topiary and tapestries, leaving the Rangerover to babysit […] Read more

The dead are with us

“Inspiration is always a surprising visitor,” is a quote from the poet-priest John O’Donohue, a favourite  of the artist Robert Kenny-Smith. Bob offers another quote, this time from Matisse, who spent time on the coast with his friend, Derain: “You must present yourself with the greatest humility- pure completely blank, candid; your brain seeming empty […] Read more

A little break in Devon

This hip yogi was collecting daan (charity, baksheesh, funds) for his “beloved Guruji, Swami X” and had taken £256.13 in cash to build a temple in the Himalayas. He wasn’t particularly out of place as Totnes gathers many such characters to its cosy bosom, where they become part of the variously costumed population, such as […] Read more

  Will there  be honey still  for tea, or will the masses take to stale cake on Monday? Is honey to vinegar as miraculous as water to wine?             […] Read more

Sacred mountains: Montserrat

Just as May Day in Oxford mixes the sacred and the profane/secular (Magdalen College choristers singing in the dawn and wasted undergrads flinging themselves with abandon into the murky Cherwell), so the Spanish Catalans make merry family outings to the Abbey of Montserrat near Barcelona. On a pristine Spring morning Philippa and I zipped up […] Read more