“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910) – the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens – an American author and humorist, best known for his novels ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ (1876) and ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ (1884). IN
… But let’s laugh about it “You could die right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” – Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD); a Roman emperor and philosopher, best known for his contributions to Stoicism, a philosophical school that emphasises reason, virtue, and self-control. He ruled from
(A heart-warming tale of culinary chaos, familial scandal, and one woman’s accidental rise to kitchen glory) “Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.“ – Harriet Van Horne (1920-2000); an American journalist and food writer known for her insightful commentary on food and
(A Love Letter to Political Integrity … or the Lack Thereof) SIGH, corruption – that timeless art that keeps the wheels of politics greased and the dreams of honest citizens thoroughly crushed. It’s the glittering jewel in the crooked crown of governance, the unspoken anthem of “do as I say,
“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart.” – Steve Jobs (1955-2011), American entrepreneur, inventor, and business magnate, best known as the co-founder of Apple Inc. AH, the telephone! The first one I knew was a dreadful, black contraption that
BEH Tukang was not well-to-do by any stretch of the imagination. He lived half the year in his modest house at the foot of a hill, on the edge of our village, earning his living as a handyman. The other half was spent on his paddy farm, several miles distant
I HAVE lost count of the number of forks in the road I’ve stumbled across since the 1950s – literal ones, mind you, not those fancy moral or philosophical ones people mention when they run out of sensible things to say. Most of them came and went without fanfare, vanishing
“The obsessive quest for cleanliness can become its own kind of dirty.“ – Marty Rubina, a relatively obscure but widely quoted American writer, best known for his concise, philosophical, and often paradoxical aphorisms. I WAS a toddler in the mid-1950s when I first encountered soap. Not found, mind you –
I REMEMBER the couple well – the man and his wife – whose lives were eventually shattered by a tangle of wants and needs, desires and demands, pride and frailties that never could find harmony. I knew them both before they married – Usep, the man, and Liris, the woman.
EVEN as a child growing up in the late 1950s and through my teenage years in the early 1970s, I noticed a barrier that shaped the lives of everyone in my village. It wasn’t a wall you could see or touch, but it was there, dividing us. On one side
