I found my India in Amsterdam
It’s as if those feet that I bought in a shop in Amsterdam walked me into the museum quite spontaneously. I bought them because somewhere in the various layers of my brain, I knew they had some spiritual significance. I placed them on my altar at home, which consists of a motley collection of holy…
All that’s spice can’t be nice
‘It gets especially out of hand in the evenings when at 10 pm at night, a bus arrives on the street and twenty people stand outside it, including children talking and laughing loudly carrying bags of rice. It’s not New Delhi on the Amstel’! For a (Dutch) resident of Westwijk in Amstelveen, this strange behaviour…
‘We came from far’
My friend Sara commented ‘I feel like I’m on holiday’ as we walked through the city centre. She had travelled from Olst, near Deventer to Breda, and I from Oegstgeest. She’d never been to Breda and I once before.’ But you’ve lived your whole life in the Netherlands!’ I said. To which she and her…
The Great Indian Family Business – then and now
When I tell people I know here in the Netherlands that my parents’ marriage was ‘arranged’, they cannot hide their curiosity. So I tell them more. I tell them that at the time that the marriage was arranged, my father’s family ran a business and my mother’s father had a job as a highly respected…
Is India safe for women?
‘Stop smiling and showing everyone around you how friendly and approachable you are.’ This is one of the tips I have sometimes given to a European woman who was due to travel to India on work, in the course of a ‘Doing Business in India Training’. It came as no surprise to me when a…