April Eats

A dean, a sociologist and an economist read Goodnight Moon for...

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 16:18:35 -0500

A dean, a sociologist and an economist read Goodnight Moon for The Harvard Crimson’s Fifteen Minutes magazine. (This year they have Steven Pinker doing If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.)

Paris

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:02:00 -0400

Paris

newsweek: Can a Diplomat Really Get Away With Murder? This...

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:30:00 -0400

newsweek:

Can a Diplomat Really Get Away With Murder?

This week’s Back Story, by Daniel Stone.

"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasant sensations in the world. You have no..."

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 13:09:33 -0400

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasant sensations in the world. You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it. For this reason your customary thoughts, all except the rarest of your friends, even most of your luggage—everything, in fact, which belongs to your everyday life, is merely a hindrance. The tourist travels in his own atmosphere like a snail in his shell and stands, as it were, on his own perambulating doorstep to look at the continents of the world. But if you discard all this, and sally forth with a leisurely and blank mind, there is no knowing may not happen to you.”

- Freya Stark, Baghdad Sketches, 1932

Ladakh, a region in India bordering Tibet, takes more culinary...

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:25:08 -0400

Bread, yogurt, butter tea

Woman churns butter tea

Cheese dumpling soup

Monks, stir-fried ramen

Mountain trout

Ladakh, a region in India bordering Tibet, takes more culinary cues from its northern neighbor than from the Indian legacy of curry leaves and cumin. Butter tea, churned till fat and tannic liquid are inseparable, warms each Himalayan morning. Young monks eat a balanced diet of noodles and dumplings. As in the rest of India, however, ketchup remains the condiment of choice.

Hipsters in Phyang, a village in Jammu & Kashmir, India

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:02:28 -0400

Hipsters in Phyang, a village in Jammu & Kashmir, India

"We had already tamed our own hostile landscapes, the enormous stretches of the West, stamped out..."

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:30:00 -0400

“We had already tamed our own hostile landscapes, the enormous stretches of the West, stamped out what came before, emptied and erased a vast run of earth so that we, the Americans, could have a tabula rasa, could invent a new nation and grow strong. And then September 11 came and infected us with the idea that we could tame all the wilderness of the world, too, and make ourselves perfectly safe.”

- Los Angeles Times reporter Megan K. Stack in Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War, the best book I’ve read about the Mideast since Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War, and more lyrical than that. (Think Joan Didion, with cluster bombs.)

The New York Times recently featured the Golden Temple, the Sikh...

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:07:00 -0400

The Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab

Visitors deposit money and prayers

Traveller staying in the temple complex

Women buy prasad, or offerings

Waiting under a fan spraying cool water

Giant fans do little in summer's heat

A man rests his offering on his head

Temple is an hour from the Pak border

The New York Times recently featured the Golden Temple, the Sikh site near the Pakistan border that attracts visitors of all faiths for its gorgeous architecture and free daily meals. I was just there in June, and could have stayed forever, sung into stillness by the musicians in the temple’s inner sanctum who throatily declare their love of God to every visitor.

Airplane fare in India: mango custard, lentil salad, a curry...

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:58:14 -0400

Airplane fare in India: mango custard, lentil salad, a curry potato sandwich and a water bottle from the company that owns the vanity airline.

"I wanted to be roaming the world, I wanted to be telling stories, I wanted to be taking risks, and I..."

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 14:39:41 -0400

“I wanted to be roaming the world, I wanted to be telling stories, I wanted to be taking risks, and I wanted to be having fun — and doing it all on someone else’s dime.”

- Christiane Amanpour on starting at CNN. 2010 Harvard Class Day speech.

Ninth-standard students at Adugodi Government Girls High School...

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:49:57 -0400

Ninth-standard students at Adugodi Government Girls High School edit their documentary on Bangalore’s population explosion. (The scene on the screen shows women fighting for scarce water in the slums.) The filmmaking team is one of 16 in Bangalore creating multimedia projects, supported by my foundation and Adobe.

Varalakshmi, 13, at school in Bangalore

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:42:31 -0500

Varalakshmi, 13, at school in Bangalore

"This is a very beautiful country. Everyone can come and settle here. Everyone can get respect here...."

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:59:17 -0500

“This is a very beautiful country. Everyone can come and settle here. Everyone can get respect here. Even poor people have a place here to stay and to live their livelihood.”

- Varalakshmi, 13, on India. Her mother is a maid; together they stay under a sheet-metal roof.

Calcutta scenes

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:18:00 -0500

A slum building, from the bottom

Stairwell outside Indian Coffee House

Foot transportation

In front of a hospital

See sign: "Prosperity"

Calcutta scenes

"Spray the D.D.T. to drainage to avoid the mosquitos."

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:48:00 -0500

“Spray the D.D.T. to drainage to avoid the mosquitos.”

- Slogan from a government school-submitted entry to my foundation’s annual poster contest. The theme: “Healthy environment starts at home.”

Where American directness fails

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:12:27 -0500

Where American directness fails:

NYT on the difficulties of Indian-Americans returning to India for work. The reporter interviews an Indian bureaucrat who sacked an Indian-American hire, saying the new guy had “misunderstood nearly everything”:

“To prove his point, Mr. Brahmachari, who was two hours late for an interview scheduled by his office, read from a government guide about decision-making in the organization. Mr. Ayyadurai didn’t follow protocol, he said. “As long as your language is positive for the organization I have no problem,” he added.

As the interview was closing, Mr. Brahmachari questioned why anyone would be interested in the situation, and then said he would complain to a reporter’s bosses in New York if she continued to pursue the story.”

Coconut crisis

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:25:24 -0500

Coconut crisis:

NYT on a shortage of coconut pickers in the southern state of Kerala: “Unlike northern states, where caste remains a force and education remains out of reach for many, Kerala has a 100 percent literacy rate, and the shackles of caste are looser than ever.

But this has created a crisis of its own: If no one wants to pluck coconuts anymore, how will this industry survive?”

"You think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on..."

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:29:06 -0500

“You think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time. Travel is not merely the business of being bone-idle, but also an elaborate bumming evasion, allowing us to call attention to ourselves with our conspicuous absence while we intrude upon other people’s privacy - being actively offensive as fugitive freeloaders. The traveller is the greediest kind of romantic voyeur, and in some well-hidden part of the traveller’s personality is an unpickable knot of vanity, presumption, and mythomania bordering on the pathological. This is why a traveller’s worst nightmare is not the secret police or the witch doctors or malaria, but rather the prospect of meeting another traveller.”

- Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

'Our India and Its Progress'

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:34:59 -0500

Among a bookseller’s bug-eaten stacks, I found an eighth-grade social studies textbook from the year 1966. Published in Bangalore for kids in the nearby town of Mysore, it covers topics from farm irrigation to the Himalayan mountains. Our India and Its Progress also provides endless amusement, and not just because of the title. Imagine 13-year-olds studying this:

“Generally, when the father, mother, brothers and sisters combine and live together, we call it a family. But house-hold servants may also live with them. But they do not belong to our family.”

“The villages are insanitary. Their dwelling houses are ill-ventilated, and easily lend themselves for breeding diseases. The villagers are ignorant of what is happening abroad. On account of their foolishness, living has become miserable…They were dirty clothes and town rags. Poverty is not so much the cause for this. It is their laziness.”

“The villager toils hard throughout the day. He should have some recreation. This is furnished through the radio.”

Why everyone should live in England. From a bus-stop ad in...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:41:56 -0500

Why everyone should live in England. From a bus-stop ad in London.