Sunday Long Reads: Remembering singer Mukesh at 100, global heatwave, floods, tribute to Milan Kundera and more

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What happens when we make peace with ourselves, our present and our past

In the stars’ individual brilliance, I saw a safe future for myself. (Credit: Suvir Saran)

When I was five years old, we left home in Delhi to move to Nagpur where Papa would work at the National Academy of Direct Taxes. The world I had gotten accustomed to was changing and taking turns least expected by my juvenile brain. I wondered how Mom would function in a new place, with new challenges to tackle, and still have us three kids and my father to puppeteer through our challenges in life.

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Watching nature come alive in the little-known Nagzira Wildlife Sanctuary near Nagpur

The Nagzira forest might be small in size but packs in a punch. (Image credit: Getty Images)

Who among us doesn’t love an underdog? Being no exception, I’m constantly on the lookout for people and places and things that pack a bigger punch than they promise. In this, Nagzira Wildlife Sanctuary felt like an ideal candidate.

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A journey through Egypt, ponderous with history, yet weightless like a dream

Luxor (Photo credit: Adityavikram More)

We look at the sky and ponder over ‘possible worlds’. What about the impossible worlds that exist in our very own?

“Egypt is a funeral civilisation,” our guide pronounced as we stared at the long-dead toes of a girl. A doctor had created a special contraption for an aristocrat’s daughter to walk when she lost a part of her foot. The invention left us dumbstruck. Even as the Stone Age was ending, Egyptians had started building gold-covered tombs and temples that would last millenniums. Heck! Even their dead feet lasted that long.

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The global heatwave and the ongoing flood situation in north India show that there is no conquering nature

A flooded road behind the Red Fort as the swollen Yamuna river inundates nearby areas, in New Delhi. (PTI Photo/Kamal Singh)

Whenever I see pictures of Shimla or any of our tottering tacky hill stations, I am uneasily reminded of my walk-in closet. When I have to open the closet door, I brace myself. Stacked almost ceiling high, higgledy-piggledy one on top of another are decades worth of empty cardboard boxes, brown-paper bags, carry-on luggage and even a couple of perfectly good printers rendered obsolete due to the criminal unavailability of cartridges and miscellaneous items. I open the door and step back. Removing a single item means you have to deal with the consequences — an avalanche of stuff tumbling down at your feet.

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A tribute to the genius of writer Milan Kundera (1929-2023) can only only be paid by going over and beyond his written words

Kundera’s kingdom of words hasn’t been without criticism though (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Asimple answer to the question, how do we mourn the death of great authors, would be: by reading their work.

In the case of Milan Kundera, a tribute to his life could only be paid by going over and beyond his written words. The little empire of words which he created was far more chaotic and deconstructed than the philosophical readings of Jacques Derrida or fictitious works of Denis Diderot, both of whom were great influences on Kundera’s works.

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Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan is the newest destination for those seeking to go off the grid

Shipwreck graveyard in Moynaq (Credit: Conor MacNeill)

Not too long ago, Moynaq was a thriving fishing town. But now there is nothing that indicates the past – except a “shipwreck graveyard”. Ironically, it is the most popular tourist attraction these days, offering visitors a chance to physically place themselves at the centre of the crisis and visualise what the locals mean when they talk about the sea and the fishermen with their unique customs, about children playing on the beach and markets selling a variety of catch.

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