My father grew up in a village named Purana in Jagatsinghpur district of Odisha. My grandmother, whom I fondly call bou (mother, in Odia) still lives there. As a child, I visited and stayed there during summer and winter vacations. However, most of my ideas about the...

As a part of training program at India fellow, I got an opportunity to visit the rural parts of Udaipur. The visit was intended merely for observing people and surroundings. Madar - the history of this village is older than the foundation of Udaipur itself. It was a...

Having spent my early childhood in a small village of Kamalanagar in Chawngte, Mizoram and living half of my 26 years in different cities of India, I have been fortunate enough to experience different flavors of life. This post is about an experience from Madar...

In The Republic by Plato, he analyses a story of a group of people born and brought up in a dark cave without any connection with the outside world. The "Cave Allegory", as it is called, gets interesting when one among them finds out about the truth of their existence...

A single story is one where the same thing gets told over and over again about a people or a place we do not know first-hand. The danger? It leads to stereotypes, to half-truths, not the truth. Our lives and cultures are composed of many overlapping stories. A single...

“One’s destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller An early morning bus from Udaipur to Gogunda made up for a good start. Gogunda is a small town and a major hub for surrounding villages in Udaipur. It is well connected via buses and...

Ever had the feeling where you were kicking yourself for leaving the good life behind? From being a reasonably well-off graduate student in Toronto, enjoying first-world comforts, to being completely drenched and hanging on for dear life, on the roof of an overcrowded...