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India – Incredible and Intoxicating: A Week in The Golden Triangle
I don’t know if the phrase Stockholm Syndrome carries any weight in India but it describes my relationship with the country succinctly and accurately. It’s a part of the world that introduces you to norms entirely warped from an occidental orientation (such as the curious cruelty of the caste system) and surreptitiously swipes closely held luxuries upon entry, personal space being the most glaring example. And I can’t wait to go back. Not even the English language escapes distortion although there is precious little of it around. ‘Road’ no longer refers to lane adorned tarmac used by relatively homogeneous motor vehicles. Instead a ‘road’ is a disheveled morass of fumes, both…
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Rio de Janeiro to New Delhi: Poverty and Pride of Slum Life
If sitting on the Copacabana, sipping beer and gazing across the idyllic Rio coastline is not heaven on earth, then it is astonishingly close. The weather is invariably stunning, the water glistening and all watched over by Christ the Redeemer himself. I can’t claim to be a beach lover, but nowhere has been closer to converting me than the Copacabana. However, this is all a matter of perspective. Because my Brahma wasn’t served from an Irish Bar wedged into the sand in the middle of the beach. It was brought to me by the array of people that trudge up and down the beach, a case of beer on their…
