I grew up in Calcutta watching everyone from my father to the cobbler to the...
Walking In & Out Of My Omelas
'Omelas' is a fictional city described in the short story 'The Ones Who Walk...
Of Children And Childhood – What Are They Thinking?
Part of how Basic Healthcare Services takes care of the community’s health is...
On Not Showing Up : Chronicling A Recruitment Experience
It takes effort to put together a resume but more so, to list down your life...
Can Challenges Be Blessings In Disguise?
Introduction The past seven months have been a period of self-reflection and...
Why I Find Myself In The Kitchen, More Than I Realise
It didn't occur to me until I was excitedly narrating the story of how I ended...
Winter Is Coming, So Is Consumerism: The Connection Between Game of Thrones and Your Wallet
Game of Thrones (GoT) is a popular television series that aired on HBO from...
About Endless Possibilities And A Library Workshop In Goa
Library to me is a mosaic, a beautiful patchwork of ideas, people, and stories...
Memoirs of Kalahandi: The Cultural Preservationist
The concept of culture needs no introduction in a country like India. I vividly remember the time I asked an Australian guy about why he was planning a trip to India; and he replied, “For the diverse, amazing and vibrant culture man!”. It’s true, India is diverse with...
Achieving Eco Friendliness in a Village of Odisha – A Comic
If you want to appreciate this comic, or have questions about my reduced-waste life here with Agragamee in Odisha, please let me know in comments below.
About This Summer in Jalna
The Indian summer is great. It is that time of the year when we feel a stronger connection with the Himalayas. Not so much about soul-searching but to stay clear of the incomprehensible heat. I’ll gladly take a cold-storage mango in Winter, thank you! But another...
A Postcard Of Hope For Better Future
As I sat down to have a cup of tea this morning, I heard my home calling me. There was a new post, and even in my mid 30s, I was as excited to receive it as I was at 7. Anne kept yelling since I had betrayed our old tradition of having breakfast together. We did it to...
10 Types Of People I Met In My NGO
I spent half of my fellowship year in the back office, which is in a residential colony of Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Since it is known to be a women's organization, the employee sex ratio is slightly skewed in our favor. But, irrespective of them being male or female,...
The Butterfly Effect
A butterfly flutters its wings on one side of the world and causes a hurricane on the other side. This concept knows as 'The butterfly effect', which was initially used with weather predictions (Lorenz's Chaos Theory), gradually gained popularity among theorists to...
In Praise Of The Shower In The Night
Of the many cultural differences between my upbringing and rural parts of the north of the country, the one that I am reminded of everyday is when I have to shower in the morning; to not repel the children from the school where I work. I am obliged to keep up...
The City Of Dead Dogs And Hearts
Ages and ages before Adam Smith came up with his theory that revolutionized how humans produce things together on a mass scale through industries, and also the act of production to become super-boring for the individuals involved, humans were already using the concept...
The Fellowship Epiphany
If you listen to the experience of a person who has just escaped death by drowning, this is what they will tell you – “At first you throw your hands and feet in all the directions frantically, only to realize that it’s not helping, slowly you notice the deluging...
Sight-Seat
I live in Bhuj now. Not exactly, but I live in Mankua, a village on the outskirts of the city. I have started working with an alternate-learning school called Sinchan and have been provided an accommodation in the above mentioned village. The school name is not based...
A Multi-hued Monoculture
Monoculture – not the most common of words, but one which you do hear nowadays from time to time, usually in texts about the present consumerist culture we live in. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? But what does it really mean? On the face of it, this seems obvious: mono =...
The Efficient Market Hypothesis
Sir George Mallory, O.B.E. stepped off the plane and immediately had to shield his eyes from the sun. It was the height of the Mexican summer and even before he got into the waiting car at the tarmac, he was sweating. Once again, he wondered why he was here. Then he...
Materialism
If words had reputations, then ‘materialism’ would be the poor, misunderstood sod walking home alone at each night after being turned down by every girl at the bar. And yet, I call myself a materialist – and proudly so! I come from arguably the most spiritual country...
Love
Love is in the air at India Fellow! Indeed, not even my previous fellowship can match the rate of romance here. We really ought to use this as a branding tool – "Join India Fellow! Get a girlfriend/boyfriend!" I imagine we’d have to hire some extra staff just to...