What are words worth?

It's been raining through the afternoon and even now I can hear the wind rush through the streets as it makes its way to or from the sea, carrying with it the varying moods of the New England winter. My landlady, Vera, told me this old regional joke: "If you don't like the weather in New England, well--just wait a minute!" And each of us travelers must discover the import of that in the gloves and scarves we carry in our bags and refrain from discarding too early, or, for that matter, putting away our short sleeves and sandals before the leaves turn, just because the calendar has announced the advent of cooler weather. I've been packing all day--make that two "all days". Stuffing things I can't bear to leave behind and things that seem to have grown arms and legs and girth. Books that probably would have cost me less to buy on Amazon and delivered to India than to box and ship--clearly, sales at the Harvard Bookstore Warehouse do not carry a warni...

I had walked down the passage many times, narrowly missing rushing students and their bulky backpacks as I dawdled, reading the notices pinned on the soft boards along its length or the announcements sliding across the display screens at every archway. It seemed to me like just another corridor where no one lingered, apart from under the tallness of the Great Dome at one end or midway down in the sudden, imposing expanse of Lobby 7 before it narrowed again to lead you decisively toward East Campus. So when students casually kept referring to "The Infinite" I had to ask, "But what is that?" It is--only somewhat fancifully--referred to as MIT's spinal cord, this 825-foot corridor that runs east to west through some of MIT's main buildings, passing by the administrative offices and student affairs and several departments and labs. Apart from the fact that it is among the longest (but considerably shorter than that of Freie University, says Wikipedia) uni...

This morning I found on my Facebook wall a post by a friend, a photograph of a public art project along one of my hometown’s most popular promenades, Tank Bund: a large “Love Hyd” written in a combination of Devanagiri and English script. Earlier this year, some parts of Hyderabad city came alive with paint as artists from around the world reimagined broad swathes of street-facing walls and leaving passers-by a legacy of vivid images. Picture courtesy: Sadhana Ramchander I was sorry to have missed all that, but am looking forward to catching up with the new colour as I get back to my daily commute. The past few years have seen a renewed interest in public art, an acknowledgement that cities are spaces of life and experience, not just places for commerce. From locations as far apart as Taipei in Taiwan and Kobe in Japan and Long Beach in Hawaii, there have been attempts to revitalize city centers particularly in regions where a post-industrial economy has led to slow econo...