Flights of Fantasy

 

  1. Adventures in Magyar Land, Linguistic and Otherwise (Added July 6, 2013)

    2. I visited Budapest for our premier conference, DSN, in end June and this is the story of my bumbling through linguistic and cultural missteps, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and which I suspect the native Hungarians did too, chuckling heartily.

     

  2. The Sum of All Things Swiss (Added March 1, 2013)

    3. My brush with Swiss punctuality as I traveled to EPFL in Lausanne in the French speaking part of Switzerland.

     

  3. A Lafayette love story (Added June 6, 2011)

I have lived in central Indiana for a while now and when people ask what I like (“love” should be the right word) I have been known to wax eloquent. So here is background reading for those who have still not fallen to the charms of our sleepy, delightful, quixotic, relaxing, rejuvenating hometown of West Lafayette.

  1. Chinese silk (Added March 2, 2008).

I visited Beijing, China for a 5 day period in October 2007 for a conference. This is my ruminations on my surprises and shocks as I got a crash course in a land whose mores I was so blissfully unaware of.

I.       Part 1 – The Welcome

II.    Part 2 – Tiananmen and Heavenly Happenings

III. Part 3 – Capitalism Chinese Style

  1. Scottish yarn (Added August 5, 2007).

I visited Edinburgh and some rural parts in central Scotland for a 2 week period in end June and early July with Somali. This is a 3-part account loosely based on incidents during our trip. There are dollops of imagination in the tales and the account is the result of my incessant romanticizing, fictionalizing, and historicizing of Scotland during and after the trip.

I.       Part 1 – The Trossachs area

II.    Part 2 – St. Andrews

III. Part 3 – Edinburgh

 

  1. Love in an undertone (Added 20th December, 2006).

This is a “loose” translation of two of my favorite romantic songs by India’s Renaissance Man, Rabindranath Tagore. I say loose because I have taken liberties and added word pictures of my own as I got carried away reading the songs and humming them. These songs are indeed poems with melody in them.

  1. The Sweetness of Liberty (Added 16th January, 2006).

The story of Alcatraz – part real story as seen through my eyes and Goofie’s but larger part seen through mists of imagination that took me back to the early days of the 20th century when Alcatraz was a federal penitentiary. 

  1. The Monkey Trainer (Added 23rd January, 2002).
    Balzak was a monkey trainer at the Woodland Zoo in Seattle. His father Viktor had been a monkey trainer in the city of Budapest on the banks of the mighty Danube, lifelong till the day their gypsy settlement had been attacked by nationalistic Hungarian mobs. He was sure that his grandfather would also have been a monkey trainer, that is if anybody could tell who his grandfather was.
  2. The Second Homecoming (Added 23rd January, 2002).
    I was exactly three seconds late in hurling the missile or else it would never have happened. I had had forebodings for the last few days. When Sumit called out to me and said, "Maya, I have been assigned to the special force for the Chief's security on Independence Day. Can you believe it? After all these years!". I had had forebodings then.
  3. The Perils of Serving the Nation (Added19th October, 2000).
    The geriatric Mr. Light-N-Shine was having trouble remembering the name of his constituency these days. For twenty-three years, he had been having trouble remembering where he had misplaced the list of his state's accomplishments which he had compiled after one particularly fruitful day of fertile imagination. But this was serious stuff - he had misplaced the briefcase with the red button.
  4. The God of Many Lives (Added 17th December, 1999).
    Countless times have I been born and slain
    In this year past
    Sometimes in the courtyards of your houses
    Some away from the flashbulbs, alone in shame.
  5. It's Yesterday No More (Added 29th October, 1999).
    Okay, so you want to go back to your roots, with shoots, branches and all the baggage of your last fifteen odd years of stay in the United States. And you are wondering which are the places in your home town Calcutta that will make your and your brood's hearts race. You have scoured the expensive glossy travel brochures that you picked up from the bookshop on the Jackson Heights corner. But that does not seem to excite you. It may be strange, but the prospect of seeing animated dinosaurs in the Science City or the roller-coasters at Nicco Park do not seem to thrill you to death as the travel guide promised. It does not even begin to touch the Calcutta that occupies prime real estate in your heart. So you have come to me to take you back to the wonders of the city that you grew up in.
  6. Of Roads I Have Left Behind (Added March 23, 1999).
    Rajat Chatterji - few would think of calling him Babla any more - had come a long long way from the cramped 10 ft by 10 ft room that used to be his world in Dakshineswar, a small village near Calcutta. Sometimes when he was alone in his office late into the night, he wondered how he had survived there, how he hadn't just stopped breathing one day in that claustrophobic cubby-hole. Come to think of it, he remembered being even quite happy and carefree in those days. Phew! his library at his New York home was double that size.
  7. A FlashBack in Black and White (Added December 4, 1998).
    Gazing back's become a favorite warm yule log
    The memories glistening with the dust of the years
    The shining patina on languid days long passed by
    Makes the eyes heavy with unwept tears.

Saurabh Bagchi
Last modified: Monday, June 06, 2011