Born in New Delhi, Ruchira has lived in Germany (two years) and the US since 1981. An erstwhile chemistry teacher, painter, adult literacy volunteer and blogger, she currently lives in the Houston area with her husband. Mother of two adult children and grandmother of two young ones, Ruchira is an animal lover (cats especially), avid reader and a generally curious person.
by Ruchira Paul “Sewer designs… For me, it took about a year to exhaust my fascination with the underground maze of waste. That’s when I realized the single most important point to grasp about designing sewer lines is that the shit must flow downhill. That’s all one needs to know. Nothing else matters.” So muses…
by Ruchira Paul Travelers to India came from all corners of the world through the ages for different reasons. The very first modern humans probably came there in order to escape harsh climate conditions elsewhere in the world. Latter day visitors arrived with varied objectives in mind. Some came seeking material fortune, some for spiritual…
by Ruchira Paul “In New York City there lived a Nickel Boy who went by the name of Elwood Curtis… When they found the secret graveyard, he knew he’d have to return. The clutch of cedars over the TV reporter’s shoulder brought back the heat on his skin, the screech of dry flies. It wasn’t…
by Ruchira Paul Coming full circle from a medieval myth to present day reality – through a path strewn with storms, fires, snakes, spiders, dolphins, falling masonry, refugee ships, ghosts and goddesses Following in the footsteps of the brilliant and exhaustive account of the British opium wars in his hefty Ibis Trilogy, Amitav Ghosh’s latest…
by Ruchira Paul Early in H.M. Naqvi’s new novel The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack (SWAC from here on out) we come across this exchange between Abdullah and a devout young Pathan as the former, in poor health and out of breath, is seen taking a drink of water from a thermos on a…
by Ruchira Paul India's art heritage dates back several thousand years. Through the ages Indian art was for the most part figurative and highly stylized. Think of the Tanjore bronzes, the Buddhist cave paintings, the stylish Mughal and Rajput miniatures. Regional folk art, murals and fabric designs too bore distinctive distortions and motifs that identified…
by Ruchira Paul “And suddenly I knew, as I touched the damp, grainy surface of the seawall, that I would always remember this night, that in years to come I would remember sitting here, swept with confused longing as I listened to the water lapping the giant boulders beneath the promenade … I wanted to…
by Ruchira Paul “There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot, dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel…
by Ruchira Paul Ruchira Paul We don't have accurate standards for measuring smell. No yard stick like the wavelength of light, nor any criterion like scale, pitch or timbre that measure sound, exists for odor perception. We don't even have very good words to describe smells. Yet like sight and sound our sense of smell…