Backflap

Colombo was a major link between East and West in the heyday of steamships and ocean travel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This book is an attempt to look at Colombo and Sri Lanka through the stories of well-known international figures who visited the Colombo port. It is a social document recording the racial hierarchies and imperialist impressions of some of the visitors and a throwback to a nostalgic era of luxury hotels, high tea and much else.

This book is an intimate portrait of a tigress who became a national icon. In November 2023, Maya vanished without a trace from Maharashtra’s Tadoba-Andhari reserve. Of striking composure, she hunted in the open, carried her kills past idling jeeps and often paused before cameras as if aware of the attention she drew from admiring humans. Her calm around people, hold over a vast and contested territory and fierce care for her cubs pushed Maya’s story far beyond Tadoba’s forest roads.

This book encapsulates the various experiences of life from the author’s personal prism. He shares his thoughts and hopes these resonate with the readers. Kapila, who is chairman at Society for Care of the Blind, Chandigarh, writes about people he came across during the humdrum of life. The snippets and essays move through light humour to a serious mode before moving back to the light mode.