He is stretched out on a rock, his lips curled in a characteristic sardonic smile. His wisecracks are strewn like graffiti all over the rock as though he had just scattered them.  Oscar Wilde reclines languorously under a verdant canopy, undiminished by age and untarnished …

Soon after we returned from the family trip through Egypt, I published a few stories on its historic sites.  But the one story I wanted to write on Cairo was on its Coptic legacy. I wandered through Coptic Cairo, admiring its many splendid churches, photographing …

Scores of scooter-borne Santa Clauses wove nonchalantly through chaotic traffic. Floating markets sold plastic pots, flowers and fruit to customers in houses that also miraculously floated on the Mekong river. Disembowelled and dried snakes hung from hooks while live specimens eyed us warily from glass …

The plane tilts alarmingly to the side preparatory to landing at Ataturk International Airport.  I gasp at the twinkling lights of Istanbul as they seem to rush towards me. The Bosphorus is ablaze with a zillion lights shimmering through a miasma – probably of suspended …

When you’re working in the petroleum industry, you  will, willy nilly, find yourself in  Texas, Okhlahoma City, Rotterdam, Tehran, Beijing and Singapore, at some point in your career. If you’re a man, you’d probably land up in Riyadh and Ras Tanura on the Red Sea …

Oktoberfest in Munich is an unmitigated, but not altogether unpleasant assault on all your senses – visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory and olfactory. Of course, everyone present, including yourself, is both perpetrator and victim. During the fest, Munich, in the evenings, is a visual delight with …

If you visit Athens wide-eyed about modern Greeks with the genes of Socrates, Aristotle or Plato, you might come back a bit disappointed. Like Indians, modern day Greeks have to bear the burden of history and the expectations that arise from it.  The Greek economy …

I spent six weeks in Geneva in 1980 when my husband was on duty at the UN offices. I used this time to wander around, even learnt roller-skating on the banks of the lake (I was young then ) and checked out every attraction including …