Wit is the salt of conversation… There is no better way of unwinding after a long day or during a weekend than having an informal chat session with friends. In the middle class Bengali society, sitting together in a group and having such a discussion is known by the Bengali term Adda (আড্ডা). Adda usually refers to an informal and often impromptu exchange of views among a group of people. The beauty of it lies in its sense of freedom. Nothing...

I lost my schoolteacher father this day three years ago. In his mature years, especially after his retirement, my father had a single addiction: his daily sojourn to the local vegetable market. It was a ritual that he never liked to miss. Colored Pencil Drawing Tutorial  I often wondered what my father used to get from those daily visits. He needn’t go to the market every day. Had it been for buying vegetables and fish, one or two weekly...

One of the few luxuries that I have is a weekly shave at my barber’s. The main attraction that nudges me to take the sojourn is the gossip sessions I have with Janardan, my barber. He is there on the roadside throughout the daylight hours. His fixed place of work is under the shade of a tree but in summer and the rainy season, he will hoist a long piece of cloth and hang it over his head from the branches of a tree. It serves as a shade....

A few days ago I went to the local stationery store to buy a few binder clips for my writing/drawing board. The man at the shop gave me a blue-bordered white cardboard box with five clips. I paid him and then looked at the box more carefully. When I turned the box over, I found the words ‘Made In China’ inscribed in bold letters. The inscription took me by surprise for I never expected that such a simple device like a binder clip...

There is a proverb in Bengali that goes like this: আপনি আচরি ধর্ম পরেরে শিখাও (Before teaching others, do it yourself). Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to the citizens of India, published or broadcast in the media with unfailing regularity in the last few months, reminds me of that Bengali phrase. The appeal is to those Indians who can afford to pay the full price of cooking gas to give up subsidized cylinders. It is claimed...

No, I am not referring to, what the French call, a tête-à-tête. I am thinking of the action involving the ending of a telephone conversation between two speakers by cutting the connection. I am also thinking of so many moods and manners that I have experienced at the moment of putting the receiver back again to its resting place. Those moods and manners undergo radical transformation depending on the people I am talking to, their age, sex and...