The Water at Bangla Sahib
The child-guru, the well, the epidemic, the water given freely to whoever needed it, the guru dying of the same disease he’d spent himself curing in others.
Fake Guide Stories of the Taj Mahal and Agra
How do you know when a tour guide is lying? Their lips are moving.
Earthquake-Proofing and the 1981 Building Code Divide
There’s one date in Japanese real estate that matters more than any other: June 1, 1981. On that date, Japan’s revised Building Standards Act went into effect, establishing what’s called the 新耐震基準 (shin-taishin kijun) — the new earthquake resistance standards. Every residential building in Japan falls on one side or the other of that line, …
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My First Kulhad Chai
twenty Rupees, One Cup, Total Destruction Somewhere on the Yamuna Expressway, between Delhi and Agra, in the kind of darkness that only exists on Indian highways at night, a cup was murdered. There were no streetlights, just the occasional flare of a truck’s high beams and a dhaba glowing up ahead like a campfire. This …
Confessions of A Reluctant Tipper in India
Dancing around it would make the rest of this dishonest: I detest tipping culture.
Land Rights, Setback Rules, and the Things Nobody Tells You
The cheap house you found online might be cheap for a reason that has nothing to do with the house. It might be cheap because it can never be rebuilt. Or because the road it sits on is too narrow for legal construction. Or because the land underneath it is classified as farmland and you …
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