Johnson was scrubbing the paint off his hands with a rough stone. A stone he had carefully picked up from a small natural stream flowing through the coffee estate and draining into the gully that took the water to the coffee plants downstream. His hands were getting...

I was on a two and a half hour long bus ride back home, and I often listen to audio lectures or interviews on such journeys. On this particular journey, I was listening to something, and my attention was drifting as I had slept quite late the previous night. Suddenly,...

  I often return to a memory from when I was not more than five years old. I was sitting outside my house with an empty milk packet in my hand. I washed it, poured a little water into it, and through the translucent plastic the water looked almost like ice. Like many...