Malnad Diary

He sat down, rested his vanity bag on the shelf formed by his belly and after he’d arranged the stuff from the bag about him he considered us who were sitting before him. We’d been waiting a short while from ten-thirty, the time we’d been told he arrives for work. He raised his brow. We [...]

Sujaya and I went shopping for stuff for the plantation. “Beware the fertilizer,” we’d been told. “It is often out of stock.” We went to the Tata Plantation Supplies in Sakleshpur. It is a quiet store on a yard behind a busy bus-station. The name of its manager is Muthapa, a serene young Coorgi who [...]

In June, I wrote about my trip to the vast land area laid waste by the backwaters of Gorur Dam, and of the church in ruins there. What I saw then was barren land awaiting fresh flooding from imminent monsoons. I was in Hassan this week and went again to the church, curious to see [...]

We discovered a neat narrow road from Magge to Hassan with no pot-holes in it. Mid-way en route, from a high bridge, we saw a Western-style building in ruin, and many cattle on a wide landscape. We walked over to the building and met a lone man grazing cattle for their owners. He spoke of [...]