I woke up one morning recently to the following message from a friend: “This is particularly for you to know. Daniel Craig performed Macbeth yesterday. My cousin was there.” Accompanying t...

I challenge William Wordsworth, whose 250th birth anniversary was celebrated last year, to live in present-day Calcutta and produce a single line of the poetry that he wrote. We know how much of his ...

These days the kitchen sink is where I meditate. Just as I think that I have finished washing all the dishes, I realize that I have not been able to scrape all the tea leaves off the bottom of the tea...

One superstition that keeps me going — or not really — is that of “ek shalik”. The shalik, or the Indian myna, I have been told since early childhood, is ominous when it i...

What I miss the most during the lockdown are the little trips that would take me away from Calcutta for a day. Yes, I would love to stand before the Himalayas again and meditate on my littleness, or t...

Two weeks ago, we lost a beloved member of the family to Covid-19. She was Mangala Bag, my mother’s attendant. She had cared for my mother, who is very ill, and all of us, deeply. She was only 5...

A dear friend claims that she once had two unfailing landmarks on Fern Road, between Ballygunge Terrace and Kasba bridge: one turn past an istiriwala and the next past a brown-and-white cow....

Once upon a time, running away was quite a tradition for children. The Bengali classic, Bari Theke Paliye, by Shibram Chakraborty, turned into a memorable film by Ritwik Ghatak, has Kanchan, a de...

No pair can be hotter than Amitabh and Rekha on the big screen. “Main aur meri tanhai...” says Amitabh, and Rekha appears. He woke up and found her true. I always wonder, though, why she s...

Of all the time spent at a hospital, I think the dreariest is the bit spent at the admission and insurance counters. On this occasion at the admission counter, I was again being asked for the details ...