It's so hot the crows sit stunned on their branches. I'm going to see some elephants. (The illustration is an imagined antique seed...

I confess that I drew this, not from life, but from a fuzzy old photograph taken by R, which we were going to throw away. It is a Chennai c...

R tells a story from his childhood -- about the herbal hair oil which his father brewed up for the family. My post about the Armenian Chur...

I received several interesting comments / bits of information after my post about the little savoury mold that the paperkkaarar had given m...

under the fire star is three years old today. Here's my first post, from April 17, 2003: The God of Death Sells Paint I love thi...

Yesterday the paperkkaarar came to buy our old newspapers, Diet Pepsi tins, magazines, empty bottles and so on. We usually call him in -- ...

I drove out to do some errands today, determined that I would not return without at least one photograph. I was just rounding the corner fr...

I was reading an article about James Agee in The New Yorker . It quoted something that he had written as a film critic, about Bathing Beaut...

Chennai has just joined the cities which particpate in Metroblogging : With almost 40 active sites, Metroblogging is the largest and fastes...

Like many, many households in the south, we have coconut trees in our garden. When I look out the window I can see our three, and four more...

I've been posting photographs and things he has written to r's website . R enjoyed doing his own advertising for the company he fou...

I had another go at some ancient rock shrines in Mahabalipuram (my first try was here ): This one looks sort of brutal and cartoonish,...

Sharad Haksar - Chennai-based photographer. His portfolio is stunning - mostly advertising photos, some more personal. Many will be famil...

This is a half-bottle of wine from Sula, an Indian winery. The label says that it is Satori (a zen term for enlightenment) Merlot; and ...

Thanks to yesterday's rant I received more visitors than ever before on a single day (309). Today I resume regular programming, with a ...

Thanks to Murugan , who gave me the link to The Advertising Standards Council of India . I made a complaint there about the advertisement I...

I saw a TV commercial that enraged me. The first time I didn't pay a great deal of attention: A man, an impoverished laborer, performs ...

One of my favourite Indian English words is timepass (I just googled and found 185,000 references to it). "What are you doing?" ...

And a little more rain, in the afternoon. I was sitting alone at the dining table, eating some soup, when the sky darkened several shades, ...