Amma, otherwise known as the "Hugging Saint," is an Indian woman -- a divine spirit by some accounts -- who is said to have the power to transmit a spark of unconditional love and compassion through her embrace. People came from all around the country to stand in...

I picked up a canvas with Banksy's beat up Buddha and wondered what the kids would make of it. So I plunked down 25 pounds and bought it. The first thing I did when I got home was pound a nail into the empty wall...

Many years ago I worked in a drab office full of cubicles where there were no secrets. One morning my colleague poked her head over the divider to tell me that she was having a visitor later that day — her best friend from college who, she confided,...

"How was Turkey?" kind friends and family have been asking. After being home for a couple of days, the only way I can think to describe it is as Lakshman says of his life in the Ramayana, "It's like something I dreamed once, long ago, far away."...

By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I was so hopelessly addicted to travel that I vowed to combine it with my ideals – vaguely defined as anti-poverty and women’s rights – and somehow cobble together a career out of it. As part of my jobs,...