Java: Garden of the East

Java is unusual. It is green; it is full of trees, fields and villages. The cities have an old world charm. There is a slow pace at which life unfolds. This book of photographs tries to capture these timeless features.

West Java

Java is unusual. It is green; it is full of trees, fields and villages. The cities have an old world charm. There is a slow pace at which life unfolds.

Waiting for the Monsoon

In India the monsoon makes landfall in Kerala, first. It then travels across the subcontinent and brings water to a thirsting land. There is a precision as to when it will arrive. Meteorologists play god in announcing its arrival with a confidence seldom seen in the other sciences.

Waiting for the Monsoon

In India the monsoon makes landfall in Kerala, first. It then travels across the subcontinent and brings water to a thirsting land. There is a precision as to when it will arrive. Meteorologists play god in announcing its arrival with a confidence seldom seen in the other sciences.

7 Nov 2009

Manado: Paradise Undiscovered

I came to know of Manado when I was a schoolboy. It was from the name of a famous Indonesian actress, Maria Manado. She was a beauty in her time, having appeared in numerous Malay movies. So it was that we came to associate Manado with paradise: a place where there were beautiful women.

7 Nov 2009

Palembang: The Malay World

The flight from Singapore left at an early hour. It was full. Almost all the passengers were Chinese Indonesians returning from their shopping and medical trips. The journey was short: within an hour we were already landing in Palembang.

7 Nov 2009

This Unfair Life

It happened one day when I was resting in the shallow waters of the large river. For several days I had been trying to get at an impala that had come to drink from the bank. I was hungry, and the water levels would soon rise when the rains came. In desperation I waited in […]

7 Nov 2009

Discovering Paradise

I came to know of Manado when I was a schoolboy. It was from the name of a famous Indonesian actress, Maria Manado. She was a beauty in her time, having appeared in numerous Malay movies. In the early 1960s she married one of the Malaysian sultans and came to live in Cameron Highlands where, […]

7 Nov 2009

The Malay World

The flight from Singapore left at an early hour. It was full. Almost all the passengers were Chinese Indonesians returning from their shopping and medical trips. The journey was short: within an hour we were already landing in Palembang. I could see the wide expanse of the brown river beneath and the large tracts of […]