As I sit in a café at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport in Finland, I marvel at the linguistic miracle that is the modern day airport. I am thousands of miles from home, having left another linguistic wonder (Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, India) hours ago, yet a young Indian man just [...]

Two days ago, on a windy, foggy Saturday evening near New Delhi, I accompanied my mother to an orphanage where she volunteers. The orphanage is run by an Ashram, and takes in mostly orphans, and some children who have impoverished single parents (generally mothers). The children (all Bengali boys) hail from desperately poor backgrounds, and [...]

Navigating the clogged streets of New Delhi at rush hour, near the towering Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President’s mansion), is no mean feat. Scores of buses, cars, motorbikes, three-wheelers, two-wheelers, and cyclists battle for limited space. Further, this time of year, a wintry smog cloaks the city by early dusk; and frequent security roadblocks don’t [...]

“Ok. Tata. By. Phir Milenge (see you again).” The cursive white lettering (a mixture of English letters and the Hindi Devanagari script) stood in stark contrast to the grassy green body of the three-wheeler (called “autos“), the ubiquitous mode of transport on Delhi streets.

Growing up in Delhi, I’d always been fascinated by the words [...]