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Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the youngest of three children of an Albanian builder, on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia. She felt that August 27, 1910, the day of her baptism, was her true birthday. At the age of 18 she joined the Order of the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto in Ireland. She trained in Dublin, where the motherhouse of the Loreto Sisters was located. She chose the name of Sister Teresa, in memory of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux....
Cypress Street
I took a stroll down Cypress Street The hot sidewalk beneath my feet. The one thing that stood out the most Where trees once stood there were lamppost. I’d never seen so much concrete No Cypress left on Cypress Street. According to my Great Aunt Gem There used to be a lot of them. They cut them down. They took their wood A treeless street is plum no good! Just like a treeless neighborhood So tell the Mayor next time they meet…...
Pickpocket
December 9: Small children on streets running around, darting in and out of traffic seemingly without a care in the world. They are usually homeless and all alone. Even at such a young age they have a profession, where they earn at least Rs 20 a day – pickpocketing. Not a profession any of you would like to practise, would you? But not having much else to fall back upon, some poor young children in Calcutta were lured into stealing....
Monsoon in Mumbai
To the people of Mumbai, the thought of rain is as natural as breathing. And they think they are always prepared for it. As the temperature drops, and there is a slight nip in the air they cannot help thinking of piping hot pakoras and garam chai or hot tea. But the visitor often drops down from the sky unexpectedly. It has the power to disrupt the lives of the people. Like it did recently....
Puppets on a String
June 10: Who is that mousy lady in a sari? What is the clown doing with a huge ball that looks like the sun? And what is this — a man with the heads of two big-eyed cows in his hands? All of them look like they want to tell a story. Their story. And that’s exactly what they do, for they are all puppets. And when their master pulls the strings and speaks from behind the curtain, they sing and dance, play and fight, laugh and cry....
Seeing the City
I have a friend with whom I argue a lot. No, that seems as if I am the one who does the arguing all the time. Half the time it is he who says something ridiculous, and then we start arguing! There is one topic that we keep coming back to argue upon. I have stayed in one city all my life — in Delhi, the capital of India. He from childhood has lived in many places — cities as well as small towns across India....
Wonder in the Sand
Adventures in the Desert Written by Cheryl Rao Illustrations by Ashish Sengupta Published by National Book Trust, New Delhi Two children from Mumbai spend a year in a small army township in the middle of the Rajasthan desert. Missing the urban sights and sounds, it takes them a while to get used to living in a place where the only excitement is a roll in the dunes. But adventure is just a sandstorm away and all too soon their stay is over....
Weave of Survival
To unravel the story behind the famed Kota doria sari, Aditi De of the Women’s Feature Service, travelled to Kota in Rajasthan recently. From there she went to the hamlet of Kaithoon, 15 km from Kota. Kaithoon is the real home of the legendary Kota Doria sari. The creation of each sari is a work of art, involving the labour of the entire family of the weaver. The weaving is mainly done by the daughters of the family, most of whom are small girls too busy working to go to school....
A Sojourn in Venice
Venice is one of Italy’s major seaports, and capital of the province of Venezia in northern Italy. It was the greatest seaport in late medieval Europe and Europe’s commercial and cultural link with Asia. It is also one of the world’s oldest tourist and cultural centres. Aditi De writes of her visit to this most romantic of cities. Venice is such a strange city. It is built on an Italian lagoon in the Adriatic Sea. It has canals instead of roads, which means there are no cars or buses, no trams or trains or bicycles whizzing past us....
Street Cricket in Calcutta: Out, Caught!
July 1: Calcutta. A city without playgrounds. But still, a city that has learnt to have fun with what there is – the streets. And street or ‘para’ cricket is one of those inventions. Cricket during the day, under the sun, and cricket under streetlights and floodlights once the sun is down. Cricket played to the cheers of the neighbourhood — the family, the pet, the neighbours, their domestic helps — in short, all. This is nothing unusual for Indians who have always spent a large part of their lives outdoors, sitting on a ‘charpai’ or stringed cot under a tree or playing games according to the season, be it ‘gulli danda’ in summer or throw a stick in mud and let it hold, during the rain....
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