By NAVEED GILANI Early on in life, I wanted to conquer the world. Somewhere along the journey, it dawned on me that I was an average dude, neither very clever nor particularly gifted in any special way so conquering the world wasn’t for me, and was happy to let other people do it. By the… Read more »

By NAVEED GILANI After graduating from college at age 20, I slogged for 45 years before getting myself a nice and comfy Lazy-boy. Now, when someone asks me what I did, I cheerfully respond with an ear-to-ear smile that whatever mundane or invigorating stuff I do, I do AT my PLEASURE, FOR my PLEASURE, and… Read more »

By NAVEED GILANI One of the many attractions of the C2C path is that the entire area is steeped in history; from the spot where William Wordsworth, the poet, said goodbye to his brother before he went overseas and died, to Shap Abbey founded in 1199, to the mysterious Hermitage carved out of a boulder… Read more »

By NAVEED GILANI You must be wondering about the trailing part of the title of this travelogue. “Coast 2 Coast” is understandable as the whole purpose is to tell you about this expedition from one coast to another, however, “Maia O Maria”, I am sure, arouses curiosity. This is a ‘wink wink nudge nudge’ between… Read more »

By NAVEED GILANI ‘The Way’ is a beautiful movie about an American father, played by Martin Sheen, making the pilgrimage to Spain’s Santiago de Compostela in memory of his son who died while attempting the same. The story is, of course, fictional but the pilgrimage is not. Known as the Camino de Santiago (the Way… Read more »

By NAVEED GILANI My eleventh grade Chemistry teacher in Notre Dame College Dhaka, Fr. Graham, once advised us to always aim high. He said something like, “to reach for the top of the door you have to aim for the ceiling” – his way of making the 14/15-year-olds understand the point. The message stuck because… Read more »

By NAVEED GILANI “Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay.” – Grace Metalious in her 1956 novel, Peyton Place That is how I was introduced to… Read more »

By NAVEED GILANI Abbu’s epitaph reads: Say not in grief that he is no more but say in thankfulness that he was It is said that in the march of life it is not important where you are but how far you have come. Like a victorious soldier Abbu had come a long way from… Read more »

By NAVEED GILANI We have all heard the phase; ‘behind every successful man there is a woman’. I don’t know how many of you from my gender agree with this but if I was to google that exact phrase I would find many additional affixes to this term that convey the worldly wisdom of my… Read more »

By NAVEED GILANI Haven’t we all heard stories form our dads or grandpas of how hard it was for them when they were growing up and how easy it was for us “modern” kids with all the conveniences in the world; that, it really sucked for them; and that, we ought to be mighty thankful;… Read more »