Jug Suraiya
The storyteller who scripted my life
Mother enrolled me in an academy of equitation and horsemanship, and made me by far the youngest member of the North Calcutta Rifle Range.
11 Jan 2020
The multicoloured mosaic of India
India is vast space; space to accommodate the clamour of giant cities, teeming with the seething energy of millions, and the silence of empty solitudes.
08 Dec 2019
What price a loved one’s death?
One of the sisters in the family was stricken by an irreversible and fatal disease that attacks the auto-immune system and for which there is no known cure.
09 Nov 2019
In foreign parts, loo before you leap
When I first visited Britain many years ago, it truly was a green and pleasant land, its salubrity reflected in the plenitude of public loos.
12 Oct 2019
The Moveable Feast that is India
The other evening our friend Chitra cooked us some spectacular Bangla ranna (Bengali cuisine).
21 Sep 2019
A tale of India’s many biryanis
All this can, and does, provoke heated debate. But there is one argumentative staple, a constant of controversy.
18 Aug 2019
The Many Travels We Make Towards Ourselves
I was a traveller long before I knew I was. As a young boy in Calcutta, I would walk along the streets and bylanes of the city.
18 Jul 2019
Calcutta: City of a distant joy
Perhaps no other place exercises quite the same kind of lure, composed of about equal parts of nostalgia and anger.
22 Jun 2019
The Price-less pleasures of nostalgia
The other day I paused to lend an ear to a couple of economists discussing inflation.
25 May 2019
The Joyous Alchemy of Witnessing
The scant foliage and gawky branches of Amaltas trees give it an air of gauche adolescence.
27 Apr 2019
Archie’s death and end of an American dream
The comics were a magical gateway not only to a mythical America but also to a thrilling new terra incognita called adolescence, with its acned angst and its exuberant ecstasy.
02 Feb 2019
The rediscovery of a literary ‘greeneland
Greene attributed his conversion to a youthful romance and has shrugged off the label of being “a Catholic author”, preferring to be called an “author who happens to be Catholic”.
06 Jan 2019
A remembrance of Calcutta christmases past
The mainstay of Calcutta’s Christmas tradition was the Anglo-Indian household, to which an invitation had to be inveigled if one wanted the true savour of the season.
01 Dec 2018
We Indians need to spit it all out
Yaaaaarnk! The blood-curdling sound freezes me to the spot.
03 Nov 2018
When Durga comes visiting in Kolkata
Durga Puja is around the corner, evoking in me memories of how this festival was celebrated in what was then called Calcutta, and where I spent most of my adult life.
04 Oct 2018
Down memory lane on Kolkata’s park street
Every now and again they talk about renaming Park Street, in what is now called Kolkata.
08 Sep 2018
An Israeli-Palestinian take on Shakespeare
The other day I saw a movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, with Al Pacino playing Shylock.
11 Aug 2018
From blood and sand to flaming heart of Spain
What redeems bullfighting from being an act of senseless cruelty is the courage of the matador who while dealing death coolly faces it himself.
14 Jul 2018
Madrid represents all of Spain—or none of it
Perhaps the best aperitif to the city is a morning stroll through the Plaza Mayor, the vast, cobblestoned square designed by Philip III in the 17th century.
16 Jun 2018
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