You know those light brown spiders whose legs grow to about the circumference of a saucer, and who, because they like moisture, lurk in bath...

The New York Times has a piece that takes off from the infamous kisses which Richard Gere bestowed on the cheek of Shilpa Shetty on stage i...

Once again we went for coffee, and looked at the LUXURY ROOMS AVAILABLE sign that I had blogged about here . I pointed the sign out to R as...

Agni Nakshatram ("Fire Star"), an astrological period after which this blog was named, is traditionally the hottest period of the ...

Poetry Thursday inspired me again: In the Dream You bent over me smiling I in my white cotton dress (though really you were someone else). ...

I made this pen-and-wash painting of R's great-grandfather and two of his descendants, from the photograph I had posted below. I have i...

I came across this photograph yesterday (click for a larger view). The elderly man in the centre, wearing a white turban, is R's great-...

We discovered another coffee place today -- Coffee World on LB Road, next to the flyover, in Adyar. It is pleasant, but its gigantic window...

Photograph by Ramesh Gandhi We recently came back from spending a week in Hyderabad. We hardly got out, but did manage to see Golconda Fort...

under the fire star was four years old yesterday. Appropriately, I missed it.... Just to mention a couple of other blogs I've encounter...

Abida Parveen , a Sufi singer from Pakistan, has a big, powerful voice. Because of this voice, and the passion with which she sings, and al...

I recently finished reading Vinod Joseph's first novel, Hitchhiker , published by Books for Change, Bangalore. Its protagonist is Ebene...

I was looking for a transliteration of an Urdu poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and found it; but then I found this also, and it was amazingly beaut...

The sand under our feet - me and my friend P - as we walked toward the shore temple. Fishing boats drawn up on the beach. One or two tradi...

I was feeling aimless, discontented. I was babbling. I said, "I need a designer. I need a personal trainer. I need a guru. I need ...

[my remarks] "out of proportion blow kiya hai " Hema Malini said this, trying damage control after saying that North Indians who h...

Here's something different: an MGR fan-blog . MGR, an extremely popular filmstar and then politician, died on Christmas Eve, 1987. I f...

We flew from Chennai to Coimbatore. Most of Tamil Nadu is red and flat; then giant rocks or very small mountains rise suddenly from the pla...

burnblue.com sketchbook : From November 15, 2004 to June 8, 2005 I travelled through many countries, read 34 books, got sick 3 times, got ro...