Category: Non-fiction

He points to one of the water bowls. I hesitate. “No, no, nothing scary,” he says. I peek into the bowl. Inside the empty bowl, caked with moss, lies a small egg.

Most chronic headache sufferers have an arsenal of tools to try for every headache, but there’s always a shining star of a tool that almost always works. That’s Axe Oil for me. I genuinely believe that Axe Oil gives me relief from my headache, even if only for a few minutes.

I moved out of Singapore ten years ago, but I have fond memories of Singaporean English and I’m happy for any opportunity to hear it.

It’s been a couple of years since I discovered a charming pattern to my train of thought during yoga practice. Twenty minutes into the practice, I’m in a beautiful state of mindlessness and mindfulness. The mind shows me flashes of random memories from years ago, even as it settles with my body into position. I’m at peace, allowing my mind to travel to vague, hazy images from the past.

I know vessels carry memories and tell profound stories, but I always associated those with ‘important’ vessels. I’m ever so amused that humble and nondescript vessels like woks and tongs and tadka pans are also candidates.

(Written for In Plainspeak‘s November issue – read the original here) The first time I heard the phrase ‘Butterfly Effect’ was in Jurassic Park, when mathematician Ian Malcolm uses it to explain Chaos Theory: ‘A butterfly flaps its wings in Peking, and in Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine’. Can such seemingly disconnected events…

I’m standing at a Safal store, staring at their limited stock of fruits with utter dismay. I have apples at home. I also have bananas and pears. And papayas. I need another type of fruit, but they only have pomegranates, which I just had, and they have honeydews, which I’m not sure I should have…

I swear I promised to not watch Chekka Chivantha Vaanam expecting anything because I’d been so disappointed by Kaatru Veliyidai. I resolved that I would not dissect the movie’s female characters. I’d heard good things about it, I’d stayed away from reviews, heck, I hadn’t even listened to the songs – I was expecting only to…