By: Arjun Pinto, Dubai
Another Weekend in the Desert! With nothing to do, I just wanted to relax, especially since I was having a Friday & Saturday off. This was time to laze around. Sipping on my Bacardi I just went on googling until I typed ‘MANGALORE 1930.’ Immediately, I could see a few photos of my sobith Kodiyal. While going through the black shade snaps

 By: Chris Rego, UAE
India's erstwhile pride, Bombay or Mumbai as it called now has now turned out to be its biggest prejudice. Imagine the gall of some outfit, one that almost borders on a terrorist one, to say that Mumbai is only for the Maharashtrians! Oh yeah, those goons got it all wrong under the pretext of standing up for the "Marathi Manoos". What - "standing up?" Is the Marathi Manoos such a spineless blunder that he can't put up with some healthy competition from his very own countrymen

 By: Anil D'Souza, Halealve, Kundapur
After having resigned from my job, I was enjoying a couple of months at home during the rains last year and one fine day I met Cecilia aunty (Eddie's wife) after the morning mass. "Hey Puta, How are you. How's Life?" she asked me. "Fine Thank you. How you are aunty. How is Uncle Eddie? Heard he had a severe heart attack and also heard about his rendezvous with St. Peter. It's been a year and half since I met him

 By: Harsh Raj, Mangalore
"Behind the success of every man there is a woman", say's a quote which has become almost a cliché for any introduction to a women oriented program. However I am not left with many other options than continuing with the same old Quotable quote. Yes, it is difficult for me to share my credits of success with anyone, but then it would be criminal on my part if I deny the share of my credits

 By: Chaitra Rao, Bangalore
English is a very funny language. I've been thinking of this subject for a while now but what gives me the momentum to write this is a trivial incident that happened one evening when I was in my hometown. There was a salesman at the door trying to sell an Atlas. My mom told him that we already have one, to which the salesman asked 'Ma'am

 By: Merwyn Machado, Australia
Thanks to the GFC which has cut the consumption of KFC at home, I am now called the house-man. Although I fancy the more regal "Ghar Ka Mard" over the plain old Queen's English version, living down under which boasts of some of the most bewildering assortments of shapes, sizes & colours all cocooned

 By: Chris Rego, UAE
There I was breezing through life in the erstwhile land of Milk and Money on an H1B visa, hankering for that Holy Grail - the Green Card, deluding myself into thinking that my hardworking, intelligent, intensely focused rough and tough but upwardly mobile ‘Made in India butt' was very

 By: Anil D'Souza, Halealve, Kundapur
The title is nowhere near to what it actually means. I am not that old to write an autobiography, but I intend to write one when I am old. Hope someone will publish it. I just finished reading Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography "My Experiments with truth" and was mightily impressed by Bapu’s life

 By: Chris Rego, UAE
My dad had a date with his maker on 13th March 1997 and off he went forever into the great beyond. His passing away left a gaping void in my life and no matter what I did; there was precious little around that could fill the empty space in me. Every moment at home in Mangalore was spent moping around. I needed a radical change

 By: Chris Rego, UAE
Ever since I set foot in Mangalore, I've had this itch in me and it's making me restless. I have to do something to keep myself occupied but there is precious little to do or see. What do I do besides swat flies and dab at my forehead and underarms to stop dripping perspiration on the sofa as momma and

 By: Anil D'Souza, Halealve, Kundapur
It was a Friday afternoon, the time was quarter to two and Eddie as usual, after downing two pegs of whiskey and gulping down two Tanghri Kebabs was lying down on the bed. Ah nice breeze! What more can a man ask for on an afternoon, that too in the coastal calm town of Kundapur? Just as he was about..

 By: Irwin Rego, Bahrain
Just the other day my five year old son Ethan put the question that kids at his age usually do "What happens when we die?" I responded in the manner most parents would "If a person is good on earth, he goes directly to heaven, a beautiful and happy place - if he is bad, he goes to hell". Then came

 By: Chris Rego, UAE
It is with a leaden heart and moist eyes that I pen this letter - in all probability my last one from the erstwhile hallowed Land of Milk and Borrowed Money. It was awesome while it lasted. But as they say, nothing lasts forever, save true love! The self-deluding bubble that had mesmerized the

 By: Chris Rego, UAE
Howdy do, momma? I hope those knees don't bother you too much and you're taking something for your flatulence too. Me - I'm fit as a fiddle – that is, when I'm not as tight as a drum! The days are rushing by and I'm swamped with work. Which reminds me, I'm not getting any younger, momma!

 By: Gopinath Rao, UAE
It was early in the morning. I was in the toilet, trying to hurry morning rituals awaiting my Manager's call. While in tension, nature's call or telephone call - seldom comes on time. We had an appointment for an important meeting today, which, as per my manager, would "change the face of the

 By: Chris Rego, UAE
The son has finally made it big in the US of A. Everything appears bright and beautiful although Xmas is almost a whole year away! He is bitten by the 'New Immigrant Bug' or NIB - the more popular acronym. For the uninitiated, by and large, NIB is a harmless bug that is known

 By: Gopinath Rao, UAE
On my recent vacation that just concluded, one of the main items in my agenda was to meet my cousin. She is happily married, has three kids; and her only complaint was that I did not go to her house in Mumbai the last seven years. It was true that I was flying via Mumbai most of the time, but the problem was managing time. Normally, I take the flight from the Gulf to Mumbai and my onward flight to Mangalore was four hours after reaching Mumbai. My cousin's place

 By: Newton D'souza, USA
It was yet another boring social-studies exam. In the sole mission of regurgitating all the 'by-hearted' dates and kings, a curious event erased my lessons, leaving the brain dead and perhaps many other infantile brains around me. 'Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople in 1642, I wrote. (It was only in the morning that I had read it as 1442, but the scene of that hanging corpse delayed my memory by two centuries).

 By: Irwin Rego, Bahrain
My recent column on the 'Throne where all are equal' encouraged some of my friends to debate on the subject of Englishism vs Americanism, the Toilet vs Restroom scenario – the use of the English language in countries the world over. Some of them already on the throes of leaving Bahrain shores for countries

 By: Gopinath Rao, UAE
I was driving down the Sheikh Zayed Road, close to Shankar's office and suddenly remembered I needed to meet him. I called him up. "Shankar, are you still in office? I am just driving down just outside your office. I wanted to drop in if you don't mind" "Yes. Come on. Even I have some work with you, just to clarify