Paddy’s bus – The Indiaman

The Overlanders and the Hippie trail A forward from across the seas, of an incredible bus journey, popped up the other day on my phone, promptly delivered by our ever-efficient news delivery man these days – the popular Whatsapp. More forwards came, together with requests to check out and detail the…

Letters in Post

I am sure many of you will remember a time when we used to wait patiently for the postman to deliver a much-awaited letter. The post was always capable of evoking strong feelings, at times it was a job interview or an appointment letter or it could be a distasteful invoice or bill to be paid, a lo…

Lakme

An interesting account of its history..... Many years ago, in fact it was some 123 years ago that the name Lakme rose into prominence. Well, all of you will agree that the native version, the name of Goddess Lakshmi was prevalent centuries before that. But Lakme was brought to print and western mind…

The Humble Telegram and the Lofty Rocket mail

Human communication over long distances have evolved in very interesting ways. While American Indians and perhaps others elsewhere used smoke signals to start with, it was largely written instruments like messages and letters carried by messengers, horsemen, horse carts or stage coaches, pigeons, t…

An Afghan, two Indian poets and a German

And their connections to Minute Rice and Harvard What earthly connection can all these people have and how can one mix rice with poetry? Therein lies an interesting tale concerning an enterprising individual, a fiery orator, a German scholar and the Urdu poetry of Ghalib and Mir. I stumbled into th…