Once we went to the Burjuman Centre. Actually we had an appointment elsewhere at about 11.30 and not wanting take any risk with the traffic, we left home early….and ended up too early for the appointment. Since Burjuman was nearby, we decided to drop in.

We entered the Nike shop and I as usual got curious glances from the filipina salesgirls. What would a sari clad middle aged dame want in a Nike showroom? I asked for football jerseys. Without batting an eyelid ( very professional...

Last Friday was the most dreaded date…Friday the thirteenth, a day of bad luck. It seems the fear of Friday the Thirteenth is called ‘paraskave-dekatria-phobia’ (sounds worse than mere dread for a bad day doesn’t it?) It is Greek for the words…Friday, 13 and phobia…The origin of the superstition is unclear, many believing that it refers to the13th of October, 1307, a Friday, the date they arrested many knight Templars in France.

It was to be a day of misfortune for the travel sector...

“Iyam aakashvani… Samprathi Vaarthaaha shruyantham….Pravachaka(ha) Baladevananda Sagaraha!”
These were the first lines I learnt byheart in Sanskrit other than the slokas I had learnt as a child. This is the beginning of the Sanskrit news bulletin on All India Radio. After this, for all I know, Baladevananda Sagara might have been using Latin and Greek ….till he finished up with “Idi vaarthaaha!” Though I could not understand much of Sanskrit… this news session meant much to me!
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Once the newspaper had a very interesting piece of news for me. It was about a Bangladeshi who had found a novel way of ensuring peace and quiet for himself. Salim Hussain Gaus, a carpenter and writer in the making, had found an innovative way of avoiding company by building himself a wooden platform atop a….palm tree! The 25 year old had built the platform and a winch operated by a pulley to haul himself up to a height of 30 metres, where he spent a good part of the day reading and writing. Quite...

Some people think that there is nothing more torturous than being foisted with someone’s family album and having to go through the who’s who of their family tree. Well….I am an exception. I love going through albums… even that of semi acquaintances and strangers… Sometimes it makes good conversational gambits and icebreakers when you are hard up for conversation.

All of us love going through our own family albums… not everyday, perhaps, but on certain occasions when we don’t have...