Every year, an age-old stainless steel drum heralds the arrival of Deepavali in our household. A couple of days before the big day, the drum is emptied of all its earthly possessions, scrubbed clean ...

My earliest memories of Manapparai town, an hour’s drive from Tiruchi in the heart of Tamil Nadu, are as a child on a bus bound southward every summer. This was one stop I could never sleep through, ...