Rishita Chaudhary

“My soul is a hidden orchestra,” the first entry reads. “I do not know what instruments, what violins and harps, drums and tambours sound and clash inside me. I know myself only as a symphony.”

Spending most of his time alone, Soares sits thinking, celebrating the “sombre majesty of splendours no one knows”. He advocates buying books never to read them. He fondly remembers an office boy who collected travel brochures, but never travelled. He looks forward to recognition after death not because he expects to achieve something, but as a... See more

I felt an urgent demand in the blood. I could hear its call. Its whistling disturbed me by day and its howl woke me in the night. I heard the drum of the sun. Every path was a calling cadence, the flight of every bird a beckoning, the color of ice an invitation: come. The forest was a fiddler, wickedly good, eyes intense and shining with a fast... See more

This is what Camus meant when he said that "what gives value to travel is fear" -- disruption, in other words, (or emancipation) from circumstance, and all the habits behind which we hide. And that is why many of us travel not in search of answers, but of better questions. I, like many people, tend to ask questions of the places I visit, and relish... See more

I saw a tree whose every little branch expanded and swelled with sympathy for the sun,” she writes. “I was made distinctly aware of the presence of something kindred to me.” Ailanthus altissima is often considered an invasive species. Bennett’s musings have an ethical component: if a nuisance tree, or a dead tree, or a dead rat is my kin, then... See more