May is one of the hottest months in India. There are scattered pre-monsoon showers in some parts of the country, but for most of the plains and much of the peninsula, May is the warmest and driest month of the year. It precedes the onset of the monsoon rains, and therefore means that reservoirs, rivers,…
Summer is usually a time for travel. Some people escape the heat of the plains and head for the hills. Others simply want to escape their daily routines and look for beaches and forests. The smartest ones find ways to cool off within their city – perhaps just indulging in delicious afternoon siestas. I usually…
For the past few decades, sustainable living has been focussed on three R’s – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. The idea was to focus on consumption patterns, do away with excess, and extract the maximum utility from every object. For example, if you celebrate Deepavali by lighting lamps and distributing gifts and sweets, an organic lifestyle…
When Cape Town’s water crisis became global news, a reporter looked into how the tourism industry was coping with the problem. Apparently, there was a hotel that asked its patrons to avoid flushing the toilet unless absolutely necessary (they had used a colourful slogan about letting the yellow mellow and flushing down the brown). It…
Author: Yasaswini Sampathkumar Sometimes when I read about amazing people and their life’s work, or about desperate situations that seem beyond redemption, I wonder whether there is room for personal change. For example, when I saw about the doomsday list on BBC’s website about major urban centres that are about to run out of water,…
Author: Yasaswini Sampathkumar When I was pregnant, I had a very clear idea about how I was going to raise my child. Those were probably my last moments of certainty as a parent. Before my son was born, I hadn’t accounted for the fact that I was giving birth to a living, kicking, idiosyncratic little tyke…
“Can we visit one of the living root bridges?” asked my aunt, before planning a visit to Guwahati. Tribes in the Khasi hills of Meghalaya that border Assam have been using the adventitious roots of the native Ficus plants to create organic, natural, zero-waste constructions that are now popularly known as living root bridges. They…
1. Gift Vouchers: I know they are not the first thing that come to mind when you want to give your loved ones a thoughtful gift full of warm holiday wishes. And yet, two years after I received one, I think of a gift voucher as the nicest thing a friend has done for me.…
