TRAVELS IN 2025.. HOPES FOR MORE TRAVELS IN 2026

Travels in 2025 — Notes from a Medico-Anthropologist

As each year draws to a close, I am seized by a familiar and slightly irrational feeling: that I have not travelled enough. No matter how many borders were crossed or itineraries carefully assembled, the world always seems larger than the year allowed. And yet, when I pause and look more closely, I realise that travel is not only about accumulation, but about depth.

If there is one city I truly came to know in 2025, it is Istanbul. No longer a point of transit between continents, it became a place of return and quiet familiarity. Istanbul revealed itself slowly—through ferry rides on the Bosphorus, long conversations in cafés, and the sense of standing at a civilisational crossroads. Through Istanbul, I felt closer to Iran—culturally, emotionally, intellectually. It is one of the few places where friendships with Iranians living in Iran can still be sustained, where conversations interrupted by borders can be resumed, and where continuity quietly resists politics.

France appeared repeatedly on my map this year, and with each visit my affection deepened. France has a way of rewarding familiarity: the more time one spends there, the more it reveals its layers. Its landscapes, its food, its attention to the everyday rituals of life, and its deeply humane approach to healthcare and social care continue to move me. I even found myself toying—only half-jokingly—with the idea of a resident visa, imagining a life structured around long meals, thoughtful conversations, and a medical system that treats dignity as a social right rather than a privilege.

Mexico remained a place of grounding and renewal. There is something about Mexico that allows both work and reflection to coexist without friction. In the final days of 2025, Mérida offered me a rare combination: peace and productivity. Days unfolded gently, without urgency, allowing space to think, to write, and to inhabit time more humanely.

India called twice this year, both times drawing me back to Kerala. The journeys themselves became part of the narrative. Once, I flew all the way from Miami via Doha with Qatar Airways; the second time, I followed a less familiar route with Azerbaijan Airlines, travelling from Istanbul to Bombay via Baku. Even destinations we know well can feel new when approached from a different angle.

Other chapters of the year unfolded across Morocco and Tunisia, with a brief pause in Qatar en route to India; in Jamaica, whose rhythms still feel strangely familiar; and in Porto, where quiet beauty lingers without demanding attention. I also rediscovered the pleasure of train travel in Europe—through Belgium and France, and on a short but memorable journey from Frankfurt to Strasbourg—moments of slowness that feel increasingly precious in a hurried world.

Among many flights, those with Air France and Qatar Airways stood out—not merely for comfort, but for the subtle continuity they offer between cultures and continents.

Looking ahead, January gestures toward Guatemala and Mexico; February, perhaps back to Turkey and Kerala once more. Beyond that, the map remains open. There are many places I still long to see—and just as many that gently call me back.

Travel, I am learning, is not measured by distance alone, but by how deeply one arrives.

Worldliness as Cultural Capital: Notes on International Childhood

Worldliness as Cultural Capital: Notes on International Childhood

What appears at first glance as precocious independence among certain children is, on closer inspection, a form of early-acquired cultural capital, in the sense articulated by Pierre Bourdieu. I am not describing children shaped by migration born of economic necessity, but those raised within transnational circuits—familial, educational, and social—that normalise movement across borders, languages, and cultural codes.

These children learn early how to navigate cities such as London or Paris, how to read social cues in unfamiliar environments, and how to remain simultaneously engaged with multiple national contexts—Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, or the Eastern Mediterranean. Their multilingualism, ease with travel, and familiarity with institutional systems reflect what Arjun Appadurai has described as the production of global cultural flows, where mobility itself becomes a formative social condition rather than an exception.

By university age, autonomy is assumed rather than taught. Managing shared living arrangements, negotiating travel logistics, or organising social life across borders is taken for granted. A striking observation, consistent across regions including Asia, is the prominence of girls within this cohort—self-assured, academically successful, and socially competent. Here, gender appears less as a constraint and more as a site of accelerated agency, echoing broader discussions in feminist anthropology regarding changing forms of female subjectivity in transnational settings.

A small ethnographic moment illustrates this quietly. A sixteen-year-old girl selects an ethnic restaurant(indo-pakistani?) in an unfamiliar city for her French grandparents, orders on their behalf, checks the bill for errors, and offers to pay. Nothing remarkable on the surface—yet deeply revealing of an embodied confidence acquired through repeated exposure to cultural navigation.

Children raised between places—whether in the Cayman Islands and London, Turkey, or Cochin in Kerala—develop what might be called a habitus of mobility. Their competence is understated, untheatrical, and practical. If the future belongs to those able to move fluidly between worlds, then it is already being rehearsed—carefully and confidently—by the young.

Babies Without Diapers: What the Amazon Teaches Us About Care

Along the vast arteries of the Amazon River, Indigenous societies have raised infants for millennia without what the modern world considers indispensable: diapers. This is not an absence born of deprivation, but the presence of a different logic of care—one shaped by climate, ecology, and an intimate attentiveness to the infant body.

Among many Amazonian communities—such as the Yanomami, Kayapó, Ticuna, and Shipibo-Conibo—babies are typically carried naked or lightly wrapped. They are held close to the caregiver’s body in slings, hammocks, or cloth wraps, maintaining constant physical contact. In this context, the infant is not managed at a distance but read, interpreted, and responded to moment by moment.

Caregivers quickly learn an infant’s signals of elimination: a change in posture, restlessness, a facial expression, a brief vocalization. When the signal appears, the baby is held away from the body and allowed to urinate or defecate onto soil, vegetation, or water. The practice resembles what contemporary Western parenting literature now calls elimination communication, though in Amazonia it is neither named nor theorized—it is simply how one cares for a child.

Rivers, central to Amazonian life, make frequent washing both practical and routine. Infants are bathed multiple times a day, reducing skin irritation and infection without the occlusive warmth and moisture that diapers create in tropical climates. In such environments, diapers would not only be uncomfortable but potentially harmful.

Equally important is the social context. Childcare in Amazonian societies is communal. Mothers, grandmothers, siblings, and other relatives share responsibility. This collective attentiveness makes diaper-free care feasible and sustainable. The burden of constant vigilance does not fall on one isolated individual, as it so often does in nuclear-family settings.

From an ecological perspective, diapers never made sense here. Disposable diapers introduce waste into environments where decomposition is sacred and cyclical. Cloth diapers, meanwhile, would require drying and laundering in humid conditions where mold and bacteria thrive. The Amazonian solution is neither primitive nor romantic—it is environmentally rational.

Contact with missions, health posts, and urban centers has introduced disposable diapers into some communities, particularly in peri-urban settings. Their use, however, is often sporadic. Cost, disposal difficulties, and cultural mismatch limit adoption. Where diapers appear, they are usually regarded as temporary conveniences rather than improvements.

Anthropologically, this form of infant care reflects a broader philosophical difference. Western diapering is based on containment: managing bodily processes through technology to preserve cleanliness and convenience. Amazonian care is based on attunement: responding to bodily rhythms as part of relational life. The infant is not something to be managed but someone to be listened to.

There is an irony here. In recent years, Western parents—concerned about skin health, microbiome development, environmental sustainability, and infant autonomy—have begun to rediscover diaper-free practices. What is often presented as innovation is, in fact, a return.

The Amazon reminds us that many so-called necessities are cultural artifacts. When we step outside our assumptions, we sometimes find that what we thought was indispensable was merely habitual—and that other societies have long known gentler, more attentive ways to care for the human body at its very beginning

i AM AN EXILE ONLY BECAUSE I HAVE NO DESIRE TO RETURN

I hope to return to Istanbul soon, and perhaps listen to stories carried from Tehran. In preparation, I have been reading Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul, a book rooted in a city where memory, melancholy, and longing assemble like evening mist over the Bosphorus.

I have lived a wandering life, and sometimes I wonder what it is like to belong to one place for most of one’s days, as many do. Pamuk writes from that rootedness. Yet some of the writers who shaped the modern imagination—Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul—were sustained not by rootedness but by exile. They crossed languages and continents, drawing nourishment not from soil but from the absence of soil.

Pablo Neruda once wrote:

Exile is not being without a country;

It is being without a return.

It is the endless road,

The endless search,

The endless longing.

I, too, am an exile from Australia—not through politics, religion, or necessity—but because the desire to return quietly extinguished itself. Other fires rose in its place.

Pamuk says his imagination requires him to remain in the same city, on the same street, in the same house. Yet Pessoa, in The Book of Disquiet, speaks from the opposite condition:

I am nothing.

I will never be anything.

I cannot wish to be anything.

Apart from that, I carry within me all the dreams of the world.

The window of the room becomes the threshold between the intimate and the infinite. Outside, the street moves with lives we do not know. The world endures—real, impossibly real—with its hidden mysteries, its stones, its beings, and the quiet whitening of hair beneath time.

---

🇪🇸 

Versión en Español

Espero regresar pronto a Estambul, y quizás escuchar historias traídas desde Teherán. Para prepararme, he estado leyendo Estambul de Orhan Pamuk, un libro nacido de una ciudad donde la memoria y la melancolía se entrelazan como la niebla del Bósforo.

He llevado una vida nómada, y a veces me pregunto qué significa pertenecer a un solo lugar. Pamuk escribe desde ese arraigo, mientras que Conrad, Nabokov y Naipaul fueron alimentados por el exilio. Neruda dijo:

El exilio no es no tener país,

sino no tener regreso.

Yo también soy un exiliado de Australia; no por necesidad, sino porque el deseo de volver se apagó. Pessoa escribió:

No soy nada…

Llevo dentro de mí todos los sueños del mundo.

La ventana se convierte en frontera entre el alma y la calle infinita donde la vida continúa, silenciosa e inabarcable.

---

🇫🇷 

Version en Français

J’espère bientôt retourner à Istanbul, et entendre peut-être des histoires venues de Téhéran. Pour m’y préparer, je lis Istanbul d’Orhan Pamuk, où la ville devient mémoire et brume sur le Bosphore.

J’ai mené une vie nomade. Parfois je me demande ce que signifie habiter un seul lieu. Pamuk est enraciné; Conrad, Nabokov et Naipaul, eux, furent nourris par l’exil. Neruda écrivit:

L’exil n’est pas être sans patrie,

mais être sans retour.

Moi aussi, je suis un exilé de l’Australie, non par contrainte, mais parce que le désir de retour s’est éteint. Pessoa écrivit:

Je ne suis rien…

Je porte en moi tous les rêves du monde.

La fenêtre devient le seuil entre l’intime et l’infini, tandis que la rue poursuit sa vie, réelle, mystérieuse, indifférente.

It Is Easy to Learn to Speak English Poorly

by Yehuda Kovesh MD (London), FRAI (London)

---

A Frenchman’s Remark

A French academician once observed:

“English is a language that is relatively easy to speak poorly.”

And indeed, with its two hundred thousand words, English can be spoken intelligibly using only two hundred. Consider the travel agents in Vietnam who hang signs proclaiming “We speak English” yet manage only the simplest exchange:

“How much is the bus ticket to Ho Chi Minh City?”

“Ten dollars.”

---

The Many Variants of “English”

There are countless versions of English that jar the ear — for instance, the curious “Singlish” of Singapore. Yet the best and worst English I have heard has not come from Asia at all, but from countries where it is native: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia — and from India, where English occupies a unique space.

In India, English is both a colonial inheritance and a tool of brilliance: while many speak it poorly, some of the finest and most precise speakers of English I have ever met were Indian.

Across Asia, linguistic divisions often mirror social ones. In Malaysia, for example, Indians generally speak English better than the Chinese, who in turn speak it better than the Malays. In barely a century, English has dethroned French as the language of international discourse.

---

The Rise and Decline of French

For centuries, French was the language of the educated classes across Europe, the Near East, and the Far East — everywhere except the British colonies. Its decline may have come from complacency. Many French speakers, secure in their linguistic superiority, failed to learn other languages, thereby losing curiosity about the wider world.

I often observe a similar smugness in English-speaking societies — in the UK, the US, and Australia — where monolingualism is the norm. I admire a Vietnamese or Khmer who speaks to me in English: for them, it is a second or third language. But in much of the Anglophone world, learning another tongue is considered unnecessary.

---

Multilingual Virtues

In Malaysia, Indians and Chinese are typically trilingual: they speak Malay, English, and their ancestral tongue — Tamil, Hokkien, Cantonese, or Mandarin. (Tamil is as distinct from Bengali as Greek is from Swedish.)

Ironically, immigrant parents often discourage their children from speaking their native language at home, fearing it will hinder their success — a phenomenon common among Mexican families in the United States. Meanwhile, indigenous languages fade in Australia and the US, and regional dialects have nearly vanished in France.

---

The Beloved Language

Those struggling with French pronunciation and grammar may find comfort in knowing that more than sixty percent of English vocabulary is French in origin. Alexandre Dumas once said, “English is all French, just pronounced differently.”

A BBC documentary traced the gradual evolution of English — from its British and Breton roots through waves of Saxon and Norman conquest, which left a flood of French words embedded in its structure.

If one knows even three thousand English words, one can speak it remarkably well. The New York Times once noted that the average English speaker uses only six hundred unique words daily — a humbling thought.

---

The Music of Language

I love the Spanish language: ornate, sensual, descriptive. Yet a well-written English passage can be equally mesmerizing. Who could resist lines like these from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda:

Y sabré acariciar las nuevas flores

Porque tú me enseñaste la ternura.

And I shall know how to touch the new flowers gently,

Because you taught me tenderness.

---

The Future of English

There are now more non-native speakers of English than native ones. Some say this means English is “dying” — not in vitality, but in ownership. The native speakers of the UK, the US, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Africa are now vastly outnumbered by those learning it across China, India, and beyond.

Many of today’s finest English writers are not native speakers. India alone has produced a remarkable literary lineage — from Amitav Ghosh and Kiran Desai to Pankaj Mishra and Jhumpa Lahiri.

The Caribbean too has enriched English letters: Trinidad gave us V. S. Naipaul, St Lucia gave us Derek Walcott — both Nobel laureates. India, though having only one Nobel laureate in literature, Rabindranath Tagore, will surely produce more.

The flourishing of literature remains one of the clearest signs of a society’s civilisation. Indonesia, for instance, teems with fine writers; Malaysia and Singapore, less so — a telling commentary on their cultural priorities.

---

The Evolution of Words

Before 1600, revolution referred solely to the motion of celestial bodies. Before Hans Selye published his study of stress in 1953, the term belonged to mechanical engineering. And as for joie de vivre — the English language, ever playful, turned it into gay.

---

Epilogue

Yes — it is easy to learn to speak English poorly.

But to speak it well — to shape it with grace, precision, and warmth — is to wield one of humanity’s most extraordinary tools of connection.

EARLY ONE MORNING IN FOR COCHIN ON THE LAST DAY OF THE JEWISH YEAR 5785

As the hotel faces the Arabian sea and the inlet into the backwaters of Kerala, nothing better than a morning walk. Even at that early hour, the walk along the sea/bay shore was busy with people of all ages, all religions.

Some older people had staked out a piece of the sidewalk near the ocean and has a BEACH HEALTH CLUB and you can see several of them doing power and cardio exercises. Good Luck to you, mates!

You tend to see older, 20s 30s and above , i suppose the younger ones are still sleeping. there is no shyness about exercising in public and all sorts of poses can be observed, some yogic and some particularly individualistic. 

Fishing boats are returning home and at one part of the beach, there is an active fish market. i am told that since the advent of mobile phones, the fisherman cell them on line before reaching back to the shores. you can get the freshest of the catches in this informal fish market

The Cochin inlet was formed or "split by the river" around 1341 AD due to heavy floods from the river Periyar, which caused the ancient harbor of Muziris to become silted and created a new, larger opening at Cochin. This natural event led to the decline of the older port and the rise of Cochin as a major trading center. 

The chinese fishing nets which are seen dotted along the estuaries were introduced by the greatest seafarer of the 14th Century, Admiral Zheng He who visited Cochin four times on his various voyages

While the young people follow the fashions of Dubai and the Gulf where a sizeable portions of the remittances come from, most of the people adhere to local forms of clothing, convenient and cool in this hot humid climate 

At a time of islamophobia in the west, it is a nice lesson to be learned from Cochin where Muslims, Hindus and Christians coexist and they celebrate each others festivals. While older women tend to wear distinctive muslim garbs, the younger ones are indistinguishable from the rest of the population in their way of dressing or speaking or education. There is no discrimination against muslim girls being educated.

At this early hour, most of the stalls and cafés were shuttered but this roadside stall whips out hot milk tea, like chai latte of the west. The owner gives a welcome nod and pours out a steaming hot glass tumbler of tasty tea. The price of this refreshing drink is only 10 indian rupees, which is like 10 cents in the dollar or euro! Starbucks with their labour exploitative practices will not survive in Fort Cochin!

Fort Cochin was colonized by the three maritime powers of the west, first by Portuguese, Vasco da Gama was here in 1505, then came the Dutch in the early part of the 17th century and followed by the British who ruled for over 150 years until the Independence of India in 1948. Each colonizer left their mark in architecture and you can see the distinctive european features in many of the surviving building. The above is a good example of the British Colonial Architecture.

This street which now houses some fancy cafés, is called Burgher street not after the famous american concoction but during the dutch times, many traders lived there. To the jewish population, who were mainly merchants, the Dutch were benevolent.

This was the home of the last of the leaders of the Jewish community which alas is no more in Fort Cochin. Mr Samuel Koder of Iraqi origins was a leading industrialist and philanthropist.

The prominent jewish merchant during the Dutch era was Ezekiel Rahabi, whose family had migrated here from Israel during the Dutch occupation of Cochin. There is a tale of Ezekiel donating wood for the green mosque of mattancherry.

• t was built as a residence for the Dutch governor, Hendrick Adrian Van Rheede, or to accommodate soldiers.

I arrived back to the hotel which is also built during the time of Dutch occupation of Fort Cochin

Who was waiting for me at the entrance, but Gunpati, the Ellegua of Hindus, the spirit that opens the doors for you. A good metaphor of welcome for me . Gracias

🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵

🔵 🌟💫🌙💫🌟🔵

🔵🔵🕊 🔵🕊 🔵🔵

🔵   Ꮭ’ᎦᎻᎧNᎯ    🔵

🔵       ᎢᎧᏌᎯ        🔵

🔵 🍎🐝🍯🐝🍎🔵

🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵

HAPPY 5786

PEACE FOR ALL THE PEOPLE ON EARTH 

AS MOTHER TERESA SAID : WE DEFINE OUR FAMILIES TOO NARROWLY. LET US EMBRACE HUMANITY. 

UPPER CLASS BUT HOMELESS. NOSTALGIA FOR IRAN

🕌 Nostalgia for Iran | دلتنگی برای ایران

---

مقدمه | Introduction

فارسی

امروز، یکشنبه‌ای در ایالات متحده است. صاحب‌خانه به ساحل رفته و من توانستم از سکوت خانه لذت ببرم.

اما این سکوت، پر بود از مهربانی‌هایی که از ایران می‌تراوید.

English

Today, being a Sunday in the United States, and with the owners of the house gone to the beach, I could finally enjoy the silence.

But that silence was filled with tenderness—a tenderness that seemed to pour in from Iran.

---

ایران و فرهنگ | Iran and Culture

فارسی

ایران کشوری است دورافتاده از جهان غرب، اما جایی که عاطفه و محبت را در بی‌پیرایه‌ترین شکل می‌توان یافت.

هرگاه سخن از ایران به میان می‌آید، همواره یاد فرهنگ آن می‌افتیم، چه گذشته و چه امروز.

امروز نیز از این قاعده مستثنی نبود. به آهنگ‌های محسن یگانه گوش می‌دادم؛

آهنگی که بیش از آن‌که موسیقی باشد، شعر و فلسفه بود. و البته به یاد فرامرز اصلانی افتادم…

English

Iran is a country so isolated from the Western world, yet one where affections are expressed in the most innocent and genuine way.

When one speaks of Iran, there is always mention of its culture, past and present.

Today was no exception. I found myself listening to Mohsen Yeganeh—his popular song, more poetry and philosophy than music.

And, of course, remembering Faramarz Aslani…

---

شعر | Poem

فارسی

سفر کردم که یابم بلکه یارم را

نجستم یار و گم کردم دیارم را

از آن روزی که من بار سفر بستم

به هر جایی که رفتم در به در هستم

فراموشم مکن من یار دیرینه‌ام

بیا، خالیست جای تو به بالینم

تو را در خواب‌های خویش می‌بینم

در آغوشم بگیر، از خود رهایم کن

گرفتار سکوتم، من صدایم کن

میان روزهای خویش جایم کن

English

I traveled, hoping to find my friend.

I found no friend—and lost my homeland.

Since the day I set out on this journey,

Wherever I have gone, I remain homeless.

Do not forget me, I am your old friend.

Come—your place is empty beside me.

I see you in my dreams.

Hold me in your arms, free me from myself.

I am a prisoner of silence—call me.

Give me a place in the days of your life.

---

تأمل | Reflection

فارسی

این شاید بهترین توصیف از وضعیت کنونی من باشد:

اشراف‌زاده، اما بی‌خانمان.

English

This, perhaps, summarizes my current situation:

Upper class, yet homeless.