Empathy, the Wikipedia entry on the word tells us, includes “caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person’s emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling; and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other.

It was a hot August afternoon when I stood on the tarmac at the St Louis airport staring at the tiny 7-seater that looked like a toy plane. What? I thought. I would have to get on that? Was this some kind of a joke? Three other passengers were also waiting, but they seemed strangely unperturbed.

Where do you stand on this matter of pulling down statues, a hot topic during the ongoing Black and Indigenous Lives Matter campaigns? Do you favour putting up statues at all? Who, if anyone, would you put one up to?

During the long lockdown in early 2020, I took stock of my shelvedunread books. A mint-green hardback covered book-spine caught my eye;A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

When my niece Mubasshira and her husband Morsed told me that they had moved from East London to Kent, I had little idea of the area in which they relocated. Prior to my two-week trip to the UK this year, they gave me their address which contained the name of

His style and content both grew organically out of the soil of the world he built in his works.

A few weeks ago, flipping through TV channels brought me to Beautiful Creatures.

I was introduced to the Summoner series in a time when I was craving to read and delve into a new world with very little time to spare.

Such thoughts of my motherland made me sad and tears welled up in me. Two days later--at noon-- I entered my village-- oh so eagerly!

It was during the Cold War that some Americans academics began to construct the category of "South Asia Studies". Subsequently, the influx of South Asian students in western universities boosted the demand for courses in South Asian culture as well as politics.