Travel

even Eden was a garden

August 29, 2010

August is the month of Singapore’s National Day, and this year the state has been independent forty five years. In the district from Selegie Road to Victoria Road, where the arts institutions of Singapore are concentrated, on the lawns by Prinsep Place, some students have made and laid out a large card inviting the world [...]

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Cochin Post

August 7, 2010
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I went round and round the slab of stone in a corner dank in the humid of the monsoons, and went and saw the rest of the simple church and came back and stood about the stone again, and sat down on a bench by it. A woman came up with two kids and whispered [...]

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Missing Saigon

July 27, 2010
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All about town I was looking for a sense of bloody battles, for lingering spots of debauchery that lie with billeted troops, for a feel of tanks rolling in, for the American Consulate and for other terraces from where the superpower scrambled out of Saigon. In the War Remnants Museum, and in the Reunification Palace, [...]

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the rural will die; long live the urban

June 14, 2010
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At the Global Investors’ Meet, Mohandas Pai was ready to speak but the introducer droned on about Pai’s achievements and didn’t notice his hand urging a stop to the paraak, so Pai walked over and squeezed the man’s shoulder and silenced him. Pai threw down facts on what IT has done for India, and of [...]

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death in the evening

June 6, 2010
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His skin was the color of night, washed down a shade by the moon. I’d been reading, using a clip-on LED light, and I raised my head when Sujaya exclaimed in a way I’ve never heard from her before. Did he rush across the highway? Was he loitering in its middle? I saw him just [...]

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Shanghai Expo

May 20, 2010
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Vikas Swarup, author of Slumdog Millionaiore, was quoted in the Shanghai Daily, that the Indian pavilion at the Expo is “stunning,” so I went there first. That author is a career diplomat now located in Japan, and he writes (he says) to fulfill an urge to use his talent. At the Indian pavilion the line [...]

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unconditioning in Pune

April 26, 2010
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A rifle points toward the entrance to Osho International. Its stock is aged, worn smooth from much handling. A rifle just like the other points outward from the entrance to Osho International. The metal is aged also, and for some reason the lean muzzle reminded me of the broad snout of my dog. A black [...]

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the king and the good times

April 6, 2010
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I’ve returned from a three-day trip to Mumbai, and am savoring the comfort of my own bed this morning after. Every now and then a breeze lifts the grim green mango leaves outside my bedroom window, but otherwise they are huddled and brooding and appear sometimes to be telling me something through the mesh between [...]

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another look at that divine smile called Hassan

March 26, 2010
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Hassan appears abruptly on NH48, without an arch, without an announcement, with no landmark at all. Arriving from Bangalore, you turn right from the highway to go into town. The train delivers you into the same street, which is named the Bangalore-Mangalore Road. You cannot yet fly in—birds still command the airspace over land allotted [...]

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