I am a public transport advocate. I’ve used public transport in every single city I’ve lived in and in many cities I’ve visited. I’m proud to be able to ‘crack’ the basics of public transportation wherever I go, and it’s a big part of my process of learning more about a city. But in Delhi,…
Live concerts, Clapton and discovery
I simply love concert versions of songs I like. There are magical new elements in these versions that make you fall in love with the song even more. The music is fresh, live, and there’s the joy of being part of an audience that is rediscovering the song with you. Among my favourites is Eric…
How Tea is Made
Nighat teaches the story’s narrator how to make tea, and friendship blossoms, with tea at the centre of it all – until they meet again, seventeen years later.
The things you leave behind
… On a trip. Out of the blue, I remembered two things I left behind in trips spaced eight years apart. In Delphi, Greece, I left behind a travel guide that I’d borrowed from the Ang Mo Kio public library in Singapore. My friend and I realised it when we’d left Delphi, I think, and…
Rahman in St Petersburg
14 August 2019 Hello Rahman, Last night, I tried to explain your music to a couple of Russians in St. Petersburg. It came up because my partner tried to explain how religion had influenced your music so. We argued mildly about which should be the first song of yours we play to introduce you to…
To each our journeys
First published in Spark: http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/to-each-our-journeys/ A few days ago, I got into an altercation with an old man in an e-rickshaw. I had requested him – politely, I made sure – to reduce the volume of whatever he was watching on his phone without his earphones. He turned it off with a huff, asked me…
ReConference 2019: Thoughts from Day 2
If there’s a theme that could sum up my experiences of day 2 of #recon2019, it’s that of personal stories, which end up making political statements. Not that day 1 didn’t have this, but what stood out most for me were the stories that people kindly shared, on stage, in conversation with a group or…
ReConference 2019: Thoughts from Day 1
I’m at ReConference in Kathmandu. #recon2019 is organised by CREA and has pulled in over 500 people from 50 odd countries, and I’m here on behalf of the organisation I work with. #recon2019 aims to rethink, reimagine and reshape conversations around feminism, sexuality, disability, abortion and other related topics. Day 1 was super stimulating, balancing…
‘Ink Pen’ Tales
This morning, VK gifted me a Hero pen out of the blue. He’d found it in CP yesterday, he said. It is brown, with a golden cap, and has ridges along the line where the ink barrel meets the grip. I was excited because I can’t remember the last time I saw this kind of…
Free porn and the lives of ‘porn people’ and their fans: Jon Ronson’s ‘The Butterfly Effect’
(Written for In Plainspeak‘s November issue – read the original here) The first time I heard the phrase ‘Butterfly Effect’ was in Jurassic Park, when mathematician Ian Malcolm uses it to explain Chaos Theory: ‘A butterfly flaps its wings in Peking, and in Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine’. Can such seemingly disconnected events…