When you carry the baggage of watching Indian cricket collapses over the years, your instincts as a fan tend to be conservative. When I wake up at 5AM to watch the game today, my only wish is: play for the draw. Play for the draw. Retain the Border-Gavaskar trophy. That’s…

A: Do you see that? B: See what? A: That right there! B: The moon? A: Yeah, the moon! B: What about it? A: Isn’t it incredible that we’re sitting here looking at the moon? The moon! B: Okay… A: I mean it’s millions of miles away. B: No, it’s…

A newbie trekker huffs and puffs his way up the Salkantay Trail to Machu Picchu — Day 1 of 5: January 11th, 2016 9 AM “Okay chicos, we are going to do this together. We are a family now. Vamos!” says Edwin, our baby-faced 30-year-old guide, as he leads us — twelve tourists from India, the US, Germany, France, Switzerland, Brazil and Canada — up a…

A couple of years ago, I went for a reading by George Saunders at Seattle’s Town Hall. I wasn’t familiar with his work then, but I went anyway because it was George Saunders, an author who, according to the New York Times, had written the best book of 2013. Saunders…

The film Kuttram Kadithal, which won the National Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil, revolves around characters whose lives are turned upside down by an incident in a classroom. One of these characters is Merlin, a newly married teacher, who finds herself on the run as a result of…

I was in the round room of the State Central Library in Bangalore, walking along a semi-circular path created by the bookshelves, killing time before lunch with a friend, when I came across a book mistakenly placed in the Travel section. On the book cover was a black-and-white image of…

After a three hour trek to the tiny village of Tosh in the Parvati Valley, my friends and I stopped for lunch at the Moon Light Restaurant where we struck up a conversation with Eitan as we waited for our Special Thalis. Born to Iranian parents, Eitan had grown up…

An Interview with Musician Kaber Vasuki — Kaber Vasuki is a singer-songwriter and guitarist from Coimbatore who is now based in Chennai. His debut album, Azhagu Puratchi (Beautiful Revolution), came out in December last year after a successful crowd-funding campaign. Azhagu Puratchi has an interesting mix of themes. Revolution in pursuit of power and immortality is a…

Parvati Valley, in the hills of Himachal Pradesh, is popular amongst Israeli travelers, so popular that every restaurant serves Israeli food and most store signs have a Hebrew translation. “Why do a lot of Israelis visit Parvati Valley?” I asked Aya. “A lot of Israelis come here after they’re done…