Consonant Aspirations

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary , the English word hotel  was first recorded in the 1640s and denoted a 'public official r...

India and its immediate neighbours celebrate not one, not two but... a bewildering number of New Year's Days  (not even counting the on...

Happy Deepavali / Dipaboli / Diwali to all who celebrate it (and happy Tihar if you're in Nepal). I'm actually currently in Zunhe...

I was telling the story that I blogged about in my previous post to someone in Guwahati. When I got to the part where I was saying 'I d...

As you can guess from the title, this post is about responsibility, racism and trying to recharge a prepaid SIM card (with a phone company ...

Many English speakers would be familiar with the construction 'X cum Y' (where X and Y are nouns) to designate something or someone...

Apologies if posting hasn't been very frequent. I just spent the week in the Varanasi attending the 18th Himalayan Languages Symposium ...

I was reading one of the local papers here in Guwahati the other day, and this headline caught my eye. Most English speakers outside of I...

Just saw this making the rounds on Facebook. As I mentioned in my last post, the current conflict between Bodos and Bengalis isn't ab...

Assam's been making the news for the past few weeks, and I suppose I should add my two cents. It's not unusual to see conflict in ...

I'm used to certain labels like 'Asian', 'East Asian' or even 'Oriental' (when I'm in the UK) in contrast to...

When I first heard the term other backward class , I thought it was a joke. Then when I read about the creamy layer  principle, I was sure...

On a completely different topic from my last post, I saw this on the screen at the SBI (State Bank of India ) ATM here in Diphu. I wonder...

If you thought this post was something about 'traditional Indian customs and practices', stop reading here. It's about my latest...

This afternoon I'm flying back to Delhi, where, with any luck, I'll catch my connecting flight to Singapore. I've given myself 6...

I've had a rather mixed bag when booking hotels / guest houses in India. My first time in Kolkata in 2009, I'd booked a room at a ...

About a week ago in Nepal, I realised that I couldn't view Lauren's blog , except via an RSS reader. The reason was that Blogger had...

My arrival at the new Delhi International Airport started out well enough. The new terminal is much better than the current Kolkata Airport...

For the past few days I've been trying to reserve an Indian Railways ticket for my train ride from Guwahati in Assam to Dimapur in Nagal...