I'm very grateful to those who have written to ask how I am. We're still on vacation. Friends who went to our house to see if it h...

I'll be away for two weeks -- see you in the new year. A shop at Tambaram selling Christmas decorations -- Photo for the Hindu by ...

It really is the end of an era, although S.S. Vasan 's house can still be seen in innumerable Tamil films: Giving way to modernity Vasan...

I decided to make bread today. I found a recipe for oat and cheese bread which looked interesting. But I had chosen one of those days -- i...

These are my shoes. They were a gift, hand-made for me in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, a city famous for its shoes. The shoemaker came to the...

Yesterday's New York Times had an article about Steve Mumford, an American artist embedded in Iraq , with a link onward to his painting...

Yesterday, friends took us to Eden, a vegetarian restaurant in the new Harrison’s Hotel. As we emerged from the elevator, the lobby was cra...

M. S. Subbulakshmi, the great Carnatic classical singer, has died

Cream cheese (Malai Chaska) and crackers, carrot soup and pomegranate for lunch. I haven't been much of a fan of the colour orange, but...

Spent most of the day trudging around Spencer Plaza, a huge anthill of stores and people, the closest thing we have to a shopping mall. On ...

I'm grateful to those who answered my request for comments on the poem I posted yesterday. It has helped me to clarify the way I read i...

I was reading the November 15 New Yorker , and I came upon this poem: A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. I...

It's pomegranate season. I like to eat the ... what are they called? the juicy seed coverings ... with a spoon, but Ramesh loves dark ...

A question for Tamil speakers: I had earlier posted a drawing of a flower from a tree that grows in our garden. In the comments, Raj sug...

Lakshmi went to the temple and brought back a plastic parrot for me. I had told her that I wanted a clay one to replace the one that broke,...

A man preparing samosas A tree shrine Om Shakti Art Framing Works

've been trying to paint a watercolour from a photo I took in Calcutta, of a broken brick wall with a pipal tree growing on top of and t...

When my mother-in-law, who was called Ba ('mother'), died, I wrote a series of poems about it. I've posted two of them earlier:...

Someone whom we knew died yesterday night. He was elderly, had been ailing in mind and body for some time, and died quietly in his sleep; s...