“Bandra,” I told the auto driver. He looked at me suspiciously. “Bandra?” he repeated. “Yes, Bandra.” “East or West?” “West.” And with that, our highly complicated linguistic exchange was successfully completed. No interpreter was summoned. No dictionary was opened. No government officer stood between us translating my desperate request into…


Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.