Category: Personal Essays

Brick and Mortal

People make a space, but a space — the lack or excess of it, the perception or the memory of it — makes people, too The apartment was on the 22nd floor of a building that came with a carpeted foyer, an elevator with a liftman who saluted the puffy-haired ladies who rode them, and […]

Come, Meet the Little Prince

If you were the youngest in a pack of cousins, summer holidays were the best of times and the worst of times. Till you discovered a library of old books. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince first came to me on the summer after I turned eight. We were, of course, at our grandparents’ sprawling […]

Where The River Bends

Life on Majuli — the world’s largest river island — switches between the loving embrace and frequent fury of the Brahmaputra. Rains in Majuli are not ordinary. With every downpour, the island loses a little bit of itself to the river. “Don’t go to Majuli, worst time,” came a foreboding text message from a friend. […]