Be Happy, Along with Me!

When my daughter was turning one this February, she exhibited a lot of changes in the way she tried to speak, react, understand what we were telling her. She had always been a fan of the Kulfi man who rings a bell and rides across our street everyday on his tricycle. Since almost when she was six months old. Around the completion of one year, she had learnt how to imitate how the kulfi man rang the bell. Whenever he passed by, I would ask her (in Tamil) "Kulfikaaran epdi mani adichaan? (How did the Kulfi man ring his bell?)", and she would lift up her right index finger and sway it in the air rapidly back and forth. For those of you who know Tamil, I was using the word 'kulfikaaran' which is not an approved usage of referring to any person. Such a usage is slightly demeaning in the literal sense. After a few occasions of usage, I paused to think a bit. If I was using a language which would actually put that kulfi man one step lower in the society, what would my daugh...

October 2010. I landed in Kathmandu at the Tribhuvan International Airport. Tribhuvan - the name in itself felt divine to me, I don't know why. I was travelling completely on my own and was clueless about the immigration formalities or if even there was something like that to be done. It was a small airport with not much people around. One would think of it as a small guest house on first sight. I still remember how one of the few airport staff present there read the cluelessness on my face and readily helped me out. Yes, that was when I was impressed with the beautiful nature of people in that country. Over the next one week, my stay was in Nepal for a workshop on Earth Observation for Climate Change actions in the Hindukush Himalayan region. I have always been excited to meet new people, especially from other countries, after my training in climate change issues with the British Council in India. Nepal also gave me a lot of interesting people to meet. I reached a neat lodgin...