-
1 week ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Meena Kandasamy |Vaishna Roy |Kalpish Ratna
The Silk Road! The dizzying words had entranced me since I was seven. Now that I was actually here, what would I find? It was my first morning in Samarkand, City of Stone. I had arrived in a confused blur of geography and exhaustion, and sat up half the night trying to make sense of both. From the airplane window, the tidal upheaval of mountains still seemed to surge with the chthonic passion that had moved them 50 million years ago.
-
2 months ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vaishna Roy |Kalpish Ratna
There is a rainbow on my kitchen counter—scarlet tomatoes, amber-in-the mud potatoes, emperors-in-purple slumming as brinjals, a Mardi Gras frolic of bell peppers mauve, green and gold. The street below my window is a rainbow surge too, a Moebius strip of shifting hues, a Monday morning world on the move. I usually resent such parallels, but today’s headlines make this a comparison I can no longer avoid. That rainbow on my counter is crowded with diversities of colour, texture, taste, terroir.
-
Jan 14, 2025 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vaishna Roy |Kalpish Ratna
Yesterday, when I was looking for tomatoes, I was ambushed by a snake. There it was, the only live thing in a cart of shrivelled vegetables. Subtle, as only a serpent can be, it was a skein of silver, discreetly plump. Only a faint green stripe on the office suit betrayed a depth of coolth. An exceptional green, that, Pantone 2020. Jade, with an emerald flash, a giggle of peridot in moonstone suavity. A meditative green, halfway between idleness and epiphany. How could I walk past, uncaring?
-
Nov 19, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Mujibur Rehman |Vaishna Roy |Kalpish Ratna
I am changing our taxonomy. No longer can we be called Homo sapiens sapiens. There is nothing sapient about us anymore. Homo stultus should be our new cognomen. I don’t say this because one more democracy has opted for an autocrat; or even because all human existence is now extracorporeal, lived out on microchips. These count, yes, but something else compels me right now. I am in a café. A guy across the room has a plastic bottle poised above his plate. His face is intent, beatific. His fist tightens.
-
Oct 16, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Kalpish Ratna |Peter Ronald deSouza |Vaishna Roy
From the list of those slings and arrows Hamlet whined about, the one that targets me most is “contumely”. This archaic noun of insult, poised delicately between pity and scorn, is one I encounter every day. Unlike Hamlet, I don’t expect it only from the rich. I get it from humanity, en bloc. Why, from my kitchen, this katha of woe? My kitchen is the only place left where I can escape contumely. The reason is very simple: there are no chillies in my kitchen. No elegant green flâneurs swagger here.
-
Oct 2, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Banu Subramaniam |Kalpish Ratna |Anand Mishra |Saba Naqvi
Two recent calamities, geographically distanced, began in the death of trees. A landslide annihilated two villages of Wayanad district in Kerala. Two oceans west, in Brazil, a new viral disease menaced pregnant mothers. Many babies were born with small heads, brain damage, and blindness during the 2015 Zika fever outbreak in Brazil. When the congenital Zika virus syndrome spread globally, all attention was focussed on Aëdes aegypti, the mosquito vector.
-
Sep 15, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Kalpish Ratna |Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay |Vaishna Roy
Rain. The pavement market is deserted. Vendors shelter under awnings and watch their tarped carts wearily. Anybody who rushes out in this deluge to shop for lunch must be either madly improvident or improvidently mad. I’m not here to shop for lunch. I’m here to confront one of my deepest fears. I’m here to tame a crocodile. ***Crocodiles glisten, sated and torpid, fusiform torsos humped against the rain.
-
Aug 15, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Kalpish Ratna |Amey Tirodkar |Vaishna Roy
“Kokrabokra” was my father’s onomatopoeic rejection of anything awry: tangles, asymmetry, scatter, spillage. A messy guy, he could by simply entering a room, catapult it into chaos. But “kokrabokra” never applied to that. It was his label for my geometry homework. “What is this kokrabokra?” he exclaimed over my take on Euclid and Pythagoras. At the word, I pictured a bunch of demented Greeks jabbering in dismay as they huddled over my notebook. “Nonsense!” retorted my father.
-
Jul 14, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Kalpish Ratna |Furqan Qamar |Vaishna Roy
“This way or that?” I asked. The knife-edge gleamed chancily as my hand curled tighter around the solid wood of its handle, index finger extended to steady the blade. I was eight. Ten minutes ago, my mother had slid a peeled onion into a bowl of cold water. Now she patted it dry, handed it over, and turned her back on me. “This way or that?” I repeated. “Either way.
-
Jun 15, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Kalpish Ratna |C.P. Chandrasekhar |Vaishna Roy
“Mrs Hudson’s breakfasts grow more insufferable by the day,” murmured Sherlock Holmes. “Congealed porridge, soggy toast, watery eggs, all this I have long endured, consoled by marmalade alone—but this!” He shook the familiar squat jar angrily. “This brand’s been tart and witty for years, what’s turned it into this vapid slither and slop?” He picked the offending jar and hurled it out of the window. I held my breath for the sound of shattering glass. All I heard was a dull thwock.
