Krakow to Wroclaw is just over three hours by train. You must absolutely book your tickets in advance. You get about 5 minutes to find your wagon on the platform, but barring that little adventure, the ride was smooth, passing by white landscapes and small towns.
The stay was at Radisson Blu again. This one was older than the one in Krakow, and the staff were a little less helpful. It is a 10 minute walk from the Main Square.
Poland is what is called ‘Bloodlands’, the part of Europe caught between Hitler and Stalin. History. That, and it had been a while since we had a proper wintery Christmas, and seen Christmas markets.
Our first stop was Krakow because a day trip from there was reason #1 for our visit to this part of the world. But before that, I finally found out the reason for my Eastern Europe fixation, thanks to Anna Funder’s Stasiland. She calls it horror-romance.
The romance comes from the dream of a better world the German Communists wanted to build out of the ashes of their Nazi past: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. The horror comes from what they did in its name.
Except for a two-hour delay in our return flight, which we spent parked in a Munich runway as snow fell around us, it all worked out very well!
(more…)
Compared to the last couple of years, I read fewer books in 2025, but I think the variety was higher. That probably explains the highest number of fiction books in a long time.
And so, once again, like 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 , and 2024, presenting #Bibliofiles 2025’s list of ten (plus the long list). From the 58 books I read this year…
(more…)We’re nearing the day since the last time I stared at mortality – 3 years ago. And almost 5 years since I faced my own. To be honest, while I was going through it, I really didn’t think of it that way. From advising D on picking cabs from a certain direction (because of roadwork) to calming down the cab driver when he realised what was happening, to ‘checking in’ on Foursquare before the procedure, I still felt it wasn’t time. I think only idiocy or youth makes one capable of that, and given my age, it was clearly the former.
Cut to today. As if the daily exercise regimen wasn’t reminder enough, the quarterly medical checks drive home the point of how much extra work one needs to do to live even a semblance of life as one wants it. It’s not much really – a little bit of red meat, a little bit of alcohol, dessert once in a while. It shouldn’t be this difficult before hitting 50!
(more…)Neha Dixit
‘The Many Lives of Syeda X’ is the kind of book that forces one to look at one’s privilege at an individual level, and holds a mirror to all of us at a societal level. Neha Dixit has researched this book for nine years, and the breadth and depth of her 900+ interactions, and her thinking, is evident in the structure and narrative of the book.
It is, as the cliche goes, the voice of the voiceless – the people whose desperate toils to survive we deliberately look away from or pretend not to see, because it is a reality we will find difficult to face if we consider ourselves human. I call it sub-human because, from our gated vantage point, in a nation whose GDP chest-thumping and gleaming malls and fancy consumer goods belies the struggle of the large majority of its population, people like Syeda exist in conditions that are perilous in terms of income, health, and safety. A poor, Muslim, woman.
(more…)