Year: 2011

  • Shrinagar

    Shrinagar  (Sri- rich /abundance  Nagar- a Town)  is the capital of Kashmir and it has clearly been a favourite destination for Moghuls, Britishers and anyone who has a love of nature and beauty. The Moghuls thought of it as a place for rest and relaxation and somewhere to take the Begums – so they planned…

  • Indian Independence Day 2011 and some snake charm

    Its the 15th of August 2011 and India’s Independence Day. I was busy catching up on emails and sorting out paperwork at my desk.Holidays are good days for catching up on such things, since we chose not to go to the Red Fort in the pouring rain. I got up to tidy away some box files that had been on…

  • Kashmir – where beauty pays a price

    Most Europeans would not entertain the idea of visiting Kashmir. Last year there were quite a lot of disturbances there and for years it has been plagued by the unhappy politics being played out by India and Pakistan. I ask myself whether this is this the price you pay when there is so much beauty…

  • Sentiment sound if not the spelling

    But what they don’t say is women need to do so too. Everywhere you go in India you find the men wearing safety helmets but the women and children riding on the back are always without any protection whatsoever. Less important, more dispensable, or just a question of cost ?

  • Slut walks and walking tall

    Delhi has just experienced its first ever Slut walk. Just saying it is distasteful in my mouth and I really cannot imagine why oh why anyone could have happily attached such an awful name to such a good cause. But that is just me and perhaps we need to get beyond the names to see…

  • The Island

    The Island by Victoria Hislop is a story written about the island of Spinalonga off the coast of Crete. The island was a leper colony from 1903 to 1957.It was probably one of the last active leper colonies in Europe. The story : The Petrakis family lives in the small Greek seaside village of Plaka.…

  • Life leads

    One thing leads to another – how many of you find that in your lives you take a path, visit a place, meet a person and this leads you into something unexpected, new, different or exciting. My present little journey started with a British Contact Group Coffee morning- pretty ordinary you might think. This lead me…

  • How our eating habits can affect the handicapped.

        Pictures courtesy of Sochyo No I have not gone completely mad. There is a correlation and I wonder how many of you might be able to guess what it is ? I recently had the opportunity to visit a wonderful NGO called MESH- It stands for Maximising Employment to Serve the Handicapped and…

  • Facing it

    Is there an acceptable face to these children ? One that we can live with. Are these faces better examples of what I described in my previous post ? Yet it is what we come across all the time. Rich dark hair sometimes unkempt but more often carefully braided or pigtailed, dirty grubby clothes and dirty faces sweating in unbearable…

  • A different face

    Living in India means that you often encounter street children begging on the streets or living on the roadside. We talk about their plight and their life. Some beg,some sell pens or flowers, some play with siblings or carry the babies. Some of us develop relationships with these children and give them support whether it…