Accidental Blogger

A general interest blog

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Category: People, Places & Friends

  • Pondicherry: India’s Gallic Connection

    A few days ago I posted a Brazilian professor’s impressions of India’s erstwhile Portuguese colony of Goa on India’s west coast. Today’s New York Times travel section has an article on Pondicherry, a tiny town in south India on the Bay of Bengal which was once colonized by the French.  AS colonies go, Pondicherry was…

  • Hotel Hiroshima

    Ron Rosenbaum ponders over Hiroshima in Slate: My Amex itinerary listed my room in the Hotel Hiroshima this way: "1 KING BED SMOKING CITY." SMOKING CITY! Turns out "CITY" was shorthand for "city view." But do I need to spell out why I find the name Hotel Hiroshima so resonant? Sure, you hate the Eagles.…

  • Not Exactly The Taj Mahal

    Last night during a half hearted attempt at organizing a cluttered cabinet, I came across a couple of old roadside photographs taken during family trips to India.  They show two modest hotels with worthy names that caught our eyes. Both pictures were taken en route to more interesting places. Hotel Kant was photographed by my…

  • A Portuguese Connection

    A Brazilian in Goa – Arthur Ituassu reflects on the cultural pasts of two Portuguese colonies continents apart, that in many ways mirror each other.  Their present challenges he notes, though similar, are independent of their shared history. "Our food is Goan. It is not Indian, nor Portuguese. It is Goan. We are not Portuguese.…

  • Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), Journey in Peace (Sujatha)

    It was my first foray into the ‘Adult’  book section at the British Council Library, a neat white building with a red tiled roof. I walked past the A’s, B’s and stopped at the C’s. There, displayed in a separate group of books was a short story collection titled "The Nine Billion Names of God…

  • Fake Memories (Sujatha)

    There seems to be a sudden rash of fake memoirs unmasked this last week. Notably, a Holocaust memoir by Misha Defonseca. She apologizes to her readers thus: Now, 11 years after publishing her memoir and almost two decades since she went public with her story, Defonseca has admitted that she is actually Monique De Wael,…

  • “We Know Who You Are”

    Abbas Raza, editor of 3 Quarks Daily, recounts three tales of major and minor horror in The Smart Set. All are first person accounts; they variously involve a case of mistaken identity, a pompously pious immigration official, the unexpected outcome of making an illegal left turn on a Manhattan street and some terrifying hours spent…