Shashikiran Mullur

Coffee Planter's Diary

Locked Down Plantation, Elephants, Sandalwood Smugglers

It's a blue-topped bright-green world now during June, and more avians than ever in the twelve years I've known the place have flown into the plantation.

Musing

Ramachandra Guha’s Gandhi

Gandhi's time in India ended differently than in Africa. Even before the bullets came for him, Gandhiji had begun to wonder if it wasn't time he left.

Bangalore

Lockdown: Mask to Taste, Damn the Distance

These actions are not going to erase the wrongs being done to people that deserve gratitude, not this pain. There's going to be a price to pay. It'll hurt.

Bangalore

Businesses Might Open, With None to Man Them

The migrants might come back to Bangalore, because one needs to make a living, but it would be interesting to see how we will regard one another in future.

Bangalore

Some Fresh Wind In My Sail

In fifty years, the Guardian says, temperatures in India would rank with Saharan Africa. My son would be eighty then. My grandson would be fifty-five.

Bangalore

What's in a Name?

As regards Zuriberg, they say the owner used to be a doctor in Switzerland. And Maple up the street belongs to an elder who taught physics in North America.

Bangalore

Lockdown Diary: Cures and Other Responses

He has a course of preventive medicine for COVID 19, to be taken twice a day, for five days. Did she pick it up? Absolutely. Are we taking it? You bet.

Bangalore

Lockdown in Bangalore Lifted a Little

And we're afraid, too. Because above all, there's the daunting question: What if one of our numbers tests positive?

Bangalore

Lockdown Blues In Bangalore

The breeze comes in now and then and soothes the face, but it smells of worry and of flagging hope. Will the lockdown end after three weeks?

Coffee Planter's Diary

Malnad Diary: March

The birds kept up their pitiable cries for over a half-hour. I cannot say what was up with them. Did they sight a cat? Was one in their numbers cuckolded?

Travel

Bowing In, Bowing Out

I remember the scene because it reminded me of the preliminary rituals of the Indian arranged marriage.

Travel

Only a Prayer

They were Buddhist women both, defending Muslim custom in multiracial Malaysia.

Travel

A Sorry Episode at the KLCC

Could he be armed? I thought. He was not big, but he had youth and was wiry, and he had an energetic stride.

Travel

Penang Post

Not one revealed a hint of xenophobic resentment toward alien people arriving from all kinds of places to settle into a life of leisure in sea-facing homes. Nobody I met expressed envy at the class of accommodation the expatriates were investing in.

Travel

How Old Is He?

For eighty odd years the only times the old man’s hands have rested is one day each Chinese New Year.

Travel

Whiling Time Away in Convivial Kuala Lumpur

The movies. Morning walks in the KLCC park. Looking for vegan restaurants. Reading wherever I’ve found shade. That’s all I’ve done in KL through the year.

Travel

Celebrating My Birthday Solo, in Rainy KL

Evenings, I could see in the far distance the approaching rain, the dark clouds that had opened up, and were steadily closing in, shrinking the world.

Coffee Planter's Diary

A Vegan Prayer Ceremony for Chowdy This Year

When he brought his machete crashing down, slicing the banana and the vibhuti, and cracking the coconut, there wasn't in this year's poojé the yellow of yolk or the goo of egg-white.

Travel

A Very Short Trip to Korea

An account of a very short business trip to Panjo and Wonju in South Korea. We managed a quick side-trip to the Guryongsa Temple.

Indian Journeys

The Fortune Select Grand

The Fortune Select Grand is new, I'm told. There’s a bareness in its rooms, rather like in a budget hotel. You get only one key, even if you’re with spouse.

Travel

Singapore: A Walk in the Padang Area

I stay a distance from the monuments. This is work-hard-play-hard Singapore, and I need a moment to contextualise these sacrifices.

Travel

At Hanoi's Old Quarter

At the Hanoi Opera House, locals have massed again and again to mark momentous events. In 1945, Uncle Ho proclaimed a sovereign Vietnam to them.

Travel

Paris and Milan: Some Shows and Sights While On Business

Before the Picassos, it was possible to linger before each display, lose oneself in it, read descriptions unobstructed. Most tourists were out at the Duomo.

Travel

Putting Aside Some Thoughts Before I leave For Paris

I'll go to the Picasso Museum, and the Louvre Apple Store. I can't take the rainy, windy cold anymore, so I'll leave the Parisian streets to themselves.

Travel Featured

Dolce Far Niente

"We are simple people," Leonard said in his soothing voice on our way back. "Our approach to life is dolce far niente."