Queen of chess

I believe we all remember what happened in October 2020 when Netflix aired The Queen’s Gambit. A fictional girl from Kentucky did more for chess than a century of tournament bulletins. During lockdown, people who couldn’t even spell “Sicilian” were suddenly playing blitz at 2am. Online platforms exploded, chess sets vanished from shelves and for once, young girls saw someone who looked like them sitting at the board and winning. That, of course, was fiction based on a novel with the same title.

Now Netflix turns to the real thing. Queen of Chess is a 94-minute documentary on Judit Polgár. Born in communist Hungary, Judit was part of her father László’s grand theory that geniuses are made, not born. The Polgár sisters were home-schooled and they studied chess every day. So there was no ordinary childhood in the conventional sense. László laid down the discipline, structure and endless calculations for Judit and her two elder sisters, Zsuzsa and Sofia. To him, they were his experiment first and daughters second.

By 12 she was already the top-rated female player in the world. At 15 she became the youngest grandmaster in history at the time, breaking Bobby Fischer’s record. Later she broke into the world top ten. To this day she remains the only woman to have done so. She refused to play in women-only events. She wanted to test herself against the very best, and she did.

The red thread running through the film is Garry Kasparov. In fact, at times the documentary felt almost as much about him as about Judit, with the former world champion cast, fairly or not, as the antagonist in her ascent. Their first clash in Linares 1994 was revisited, including the infamous touch-move incident that caused such debate. To this day Kasparov does not quite concede that he was wholly wrong, although he has admitted that he might have let go of the knight for one-tenth of a second. For years she chased him. In 2002 she finally beat him. The handshake was not warm, and Kasparov quickly exited through a side door. The point, however, was decisive.

The documentary blends archival footage from Olympiads, Linares, Hungarian Championships with present-day interviews. Judit comes across without arrogance but there is resolve in her voice. She speaks about having to prove herself “ten times more” than if she had been born a boy. That line alone sums up half the battle.

Some early reviews praised the film for giving her a recognition that was long overdue. Others felt it did not dig deeply enough into the emotional cost of being raised as part of an experiment. There is a telling moment when she is asked how it felt. A pause, a slight drift of the eyes, but no dramatic outburst. 

Will Queen of Chess trigger another global boom like The Queen’s Gambit? I doubt it. Fiction is easier to romanticise, and that series arrived at the perfect moment during a pandemic when the world was stuck at home. Today, the chess audience is far larger than it was five years ago. Many newcomers know the fictional Beth Harmon. Far fewer know Judit Polgár, and she was the one that really changed chess history long before Netflix took notice of the game. If this film does nothing else, it should remind people where the real story began.

Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Nalanda

Dateline: 28 November 2025. The coach ride from Gridhakuta to Venu Van was brief. After all, the two sites were barely three or four kilometres apart. After the crowds and constant activity at Gridhakuta, Venu Van felt so much quieter, almost laid back. Just a gate, a park and the feeling that we were stepping into a place that once belonged to someone else’s idea of rest.

Venu Van means Bamboo Grove and the bamboo still grew thick in places, tall and closely packed. This had once been King Bimbisara’s royal garden, a private retreat that he chose to give away to a wandering teacher and his followers. It became the first vihara ever formally offered to the Sangha. Before monasteries became institutions, there was this simple gift of a grove and a king’s permission to stay.

At the centre of the park was a pond known as the Karanda Tank. Tradition says the Buddha bathed here before walking out to teach on Gridhakuta. Standing by the water, I could picture him rinsing off dust and sweat before heading into the world to speak. We wandered quietly through the grounds and stopped at the Phra Ovadapatimokkha Dhammacetiya where we prepared for some brief meditation and chanting. Beyond this, there were other small shrines and a modern Buddha statue set around the pond. Walking through Venu Van, it became easy to appreciate how a kingly gift turned into a place of residence and how from here the path led uphill to Gridhakuta and, further still, to Nalanda where the Buddha’s teachings would later be organised, expanded and housed in brick and system.

Our group returned to the Rajgir Residency Hotel for lunch and to check out before heading on to Nalanda. I had heard much about the place but like Jetavana, it did not strike me at first that this too was an archaeological park. The result of ill-preparation for this trip. From the entrance, we walked straight into rows of ruined red-brick monasteries, some walls being cleaned by workers. Courtyards opened up, then closed again. Narrow, repetitive cells lined the passageways, clearly meant as living quarters for monks. Monk after monk, cell after cell. This was a place built for people who stayed for the pursuit of knowledge. The brickwork was thick and even in ruin it was obvious how carefully the spaces had been planned to manage air, light, heat and movement. There was nothing casual about Nalanda!

After that, we exited briefly into the open area beyond the monasteries and only then were directed towards what had been identified as the library zone. By then, the idea of Nalanda as a centre of learning had begun to sink in. It wasn’t hard to imagine manuscripts being carried back and forth, debates spilling into courtyards, students memorising, arguing, revising. Thousands of students. Hundreds of teachers.

Only later were we led to the Great Stupa of Shariputra, one of the Buddha’s foremost disciples. It had been built up over time, expanded through the ages. Walking around it, I was struck by how intricate it was. Stairways climbed its sides. Small shrines tucked into corners. Terracotta panels pressed directly into the brickwork. Curious, we walked all the way around.

By then, a question had been quietly bothering me. We keep calling Nalanda a university but historically it was known as a mahāvihāra, or a great monastery. The words aren’t the same, yet both are used. Standing there, it became clear that Nalanda wasn’t a university in the modern sense. There were no degrees, no convocation halls, no institutional branding. But it also wasn’t just a monastery. It was residential, selective, structured, supported by kings and visited by monks and scholars from across the region including the Middle Kingdom and Tibet. It was committed to organised teaching across many disciplines. To call it a mahāvihāra is to use the name it had for those who lived there. To call it a university is a modern attempt to describe its scale and purpose in terms we recognise today.

By the time we left the Great Stupa, the names mahāvihāra and University mattered less. What stayed with me was that Nalanda was built for study, argument and growth, for thought carried on over lifetimes. Not a sacred site meant to overwhelm but a working place meant to endure. The ruins did not try to impress me. Instead, they suggested that learning taken seriously enough can shape an entire city and hold it together for centuries.

Finally, we left Nalanda at about 2pm and set off for Bodhgaya, the next important stop along the Buddhist trail. It wasn’t too far away, and we expected to reach the Imperial Bodhgaya Hotel within three hours. Along the way, however, we made an unscheduled stop after spotting a huge Buddha statue rising in the distance. This turned out to be Wat Navamindra Dharmmikaraj. The 108-foot statue, though still under construction, already looked close to completion. The temple itself was closed to visitors for the day, but the chief monk welcomed us warmly and personally showed us around the grounds. His hospitality was deeply appreciated. He told us that once completed, the statue would be a new landmark being the tallest Buddha image in Bihar. Depicting the earth-touching mudra, it was being built on a site of roughly two acres.

Next:

Nepal-India Day 9: Bodhgaya  

Previous: 

Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Gridhakura
Nepal-India Day 7: Vaishali
Nepal-India Day 6: Kushinagar
Nepal-India Day 6: Shravasti 
Nepal-India Day 5: Lumbini to Shravasti

Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: The sala tree 
Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: Lumbini and Kapilvastu 

Nepal-India Days 1 and 2: Kathmandu and Nagarkot

Harbin Medical University visit

Every few years, Penang seems to rediscover Dr Wu Lien Teh. Not because we forgot him, but because something happens out there in the world that suddenly makes what he did a century ago feel very current again. With Harbin Medical University celebrating its 100th anniversary soon, that old Penang connection has come back into view, and this time it came in the form of students and lecturers travelling all the way from northern China just to stand in front of a statue on our island.

Wu Lien Teh was born in Penang, studied in Cambridge and then went where he was most needed. In 1910, when a deadly pneumonic plague broke out in north-east China, killing people by the tens of thousands, he was sent to Harbin with almost nothing but a clear head. People didn’t understand how the disease spread, didn’t believe in masks or quarantine and certainly didn’t want to hear about cremation. Wu studied the outbreak, figured out it spread through the air and insisted people protect themselves. He designed a simple thick gauze mask that anyone could make. That plain-looking mask would later be recognised as the forerunner of today’s surgical masks and respirators.

When the deaths continued, Wu made a decision that went strongly against custom. He ordered the cremation of bodies to stop the disease from spreading further. It was controversial, but it worked. By early 1911, the plague was brought under control and deaths had stopped. That episode alone would have secured his place in history, but Wu didn’t leave after the crisis passed. He stayed on, built public health systems and trained doctors. In 1926 he founded what would later become Harbin Medical University.

War eventually forced him back to Penang, where he lived out his later years quietly, practising medicine while his reputation grew overseas. He passed away in 1960, long before the world rediscovered masks during Covid-19. But when the pandemic came, many people were surprised to learn that the idea of mass mask-wearing had a Penang-born doctor at its roots.

This week, students from Harbin Medical University visited Penang as part of their centennary build-up. They laid flowers at Wu’s statue outside the Penang Institute, met the Dr Wu Lien-Teh Society and tried to understand the place that molded the man who shaped their university. For them, Penang was not just another stop, but the starting point of their institution’s story.

State exco Wong Hon Wai spoke about how Penang and Harbin are tied together by Wu’s life and work. He reminded the audience that Penang has long recognised Wu’s contribution, through the Dr Wu Lien Teh Society, through roads and housing areas named after him and through the statue presented by Harbin Medical University years ago. Last year, when Dr Zhong Nanshan came to Penang to receive the Wu Lien Teh award for leadership in public health, it felt less like an honour being handed out and more like a torch being passed on.

What surprised some was how few people still know Wu’s story. China’s deputy consul-general in Penang admitted she only found out he was Malaysian after working here. Her hope was that his life could be told in more accessible ways, through short videos, documentaries or films, so that more people understand why he matters.

As Penang builds more direct air links with cities in China, these old connections become easier to renew. Harbin Medical University will mark its 100th anniversary later this year, but the story it is celebrating began much earlier, on this island. And every time students return to Penang to look for Wu Lien Teh, we are reminded that some Penangites never really leave, even when history carries them far away.

Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Gridhakuta

Dateline: 28 November 2025. Visiting Rajgir can only mean two things. One was to visit the ruins of the old Nalanda University and the other, a more significant reason for us to be in Rajgir, was to climb Gridhakuta, otherwise known as Vulture's Peak.

Getting up to Gridhakuta took less effort than I had expected. Just a leisurely 25-minute climb on a broad stone-and-brick walkway that wound steadily up the hillside. It was not a narrow trail but a proper path, wide and deliberate, its surface worn smooth by centuries of feet. Much of it followed the ancient route commissioned by King Bimbisara more than 2,500 years ago so he could walk up to meet the Buddha. Long, shallow stretches alternated with short runs of stone steps, never steep enough to intimidate, but persistent enough to remind me that this was a place to approach on foot at human speed.

Beggars sat along the edges of the walkway, some silent, some softly calling out, hands extended. Small traders laid out postcards, prayer beads, plastic bottles of water, trinkets that promise memory or merit depending on who was buying. Coloured tarpaulins strung up here and there, looking messy and improvised. I found myself a little uncomfortable for unknown reason, constantly negotiating where to look, when to move on, while careful not to trip on any uneven steps. This was not a sanitised pilgrimage route. Poverty and devotion shared the same walkway.

As the path curved higher, the noise thinned out and the beggars and traders became fewer. Wind moved more freely, chilling everyone. This was not a place designed for comfort. The sun was unfiltered despite the hazy morning, the ground uneven, the sky wide and exposed. Why did the Buddha chose to teach here season after season, I wondered, when both he and his disciples were exposed to the elements? Except for the caves that we came across, there was nowhere else to hide on this surface, physically or otherwise.

So much is said to have happened on this bare hill. Gridhakuta is associated with some of the most important Buddhist teachings. Buddha had set in motion a second turning of the Wheel of Dhamma, and great Mahayana texts such as the Lotus Sutra and the Perfection of Wisdom teachings were expounded. All these amidst stone, wind and distance.

It was also here that King Bimbisara, ruler of Magadha, was said to have come under the Buddha’s influence, power momentarily bowing before one who had been enlightened. Yet the hill also carried a darker memory of Devadatta’s attempt on the Buddha’s life, aided by Prince Ajatasattu.

Walking back down, we again passed through the beggars and small traders. This time, I didn’t feel the previous discomfort. After standing on Gridhakuta, their presence now made a kind of sense to me. They weren’t out of place after all. A back-to-reality moment, they actually counter-balanced my emotions at the peak. Gridhakuta wasn’t about a list of sermons or grand ideas, but the feeling that this was Buddhism in its raw, original form. Still unsanitised, no roofs, no quiet halls, no protection from weather or human weakness. Gridhakuta didn’t feel like a sanctuary. It felt like a place where early Buddhists had to earn their lessons.

Next:

Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Nalanda  

Previous: 
Nepal-India Day 7: Vaishali
Nepal-India Day 6: Kushinagar
Nepal-India Day 6: Shravasti 
Nepal-India Day 5: Lumbini to Shravasti

Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: The sala tree 
Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: Lumbini and Kapilvastu 

Nepal-India Days 1 and 2: Kathmandu and Nagarkot

Full moon before CNY

I woke up at five. Needed the washroom, but what pulled me out of bed was the light. It was coming in at a different angle, not the usual street lamp glow. This light was cooler, cleaner. I looked out the window and there it was, a brilliant moon hanging low in the sky. The full moon. The last full moon before Chinese New Year.

I went downstairs with the camera, wanting to see it properly from outside the house. No clouds, no haze. Just a clean, round moon, and the moonlight making the night brighter than usual. According to the almanac, the exact moment of full moon, when it would be perfectly round and 100 percent illuminated, was at 6.09 am. I was already wide awake by then, so I waited it out.

This is the result at that exact moment. A photograph of the full moon on the 15th day of the Chinese 12th lunar month. In two days it will be Li Chun, or Jip Chun to us Penang Hokkien folk; and in 14 days time, it shall be Chinese New Year. 

Mark Lindsay's Arizona

Arizona arrived in 1970 at a moment when Mark Lindsay badly needed to be taken seriously on his own terms. For most listeners, he was still inseparable from Paul Revere & The Raiders, the rousing singles, the tricorn hats, the television-friendly swagger. This album was his attempt to step out of that frame, to be heard not as a frontman in costume but as a singer with range, ambition and a sense of where pop music was heading as the 1960s gave way to something more reflective.

From the opening bars, it was clear that Arizona was not a Raiders record in disguise. Produced by Jerry Fuller, the sound was polished, expansive and unapologetically lush. Strings and brass were everywhere, sometimes swelling, sometimes gliding, always framing Lindsay’s voice as the main event. It was sunshine pop moving toward adult contemporary, music designed less for teen dance floors than for car radios and late-night listening.

Lindsay himself seemed acutely aware of what he was trying to do. In his cover notes, he talked about wanting to grow, about songs that reflected a changing America and a more personal set of concerns. There was a sense of a man consciously shedding an old skin. Vocally, he rose to the occasion. This might well be his peak as a singer: confident, flexible, capable of grit when needed and smooth when the arrangement called for it.

The title track remains the album’s centre of gravity. Arizona is bright, catchy and faintly psychedelic, with a chorus that lodges itself in the mind almost immediately. However, the lyric carried the seeds of its own unease. The narrator’s urge to rescue a free-spirited girl and bring her back to “reality” sounded very much of its time but it captured that late-60s moment when idealism was colliding with disillusion.

Elsewhere, Man from Houston allowed Lindsay to lean into a tougher, more soulful persona, while Silver Bird soared on its own sense of drama, carried by his voice and the album’s cinematic production. What stood out was not any single experiment, but the consistency. This is not a one-hit album padded with filler. It had a mood and it sustained it.

If there was a drawback, it was in the very qualities that defined it. Listeners who loved the raw snap of Kicks or Hungry may find Arizona too smooth. At times it flirted with the middle of the road. But taken on its own terms, it succeeded.

More than anything, Arizona documented a transition. It captured Mark Lindsay at the point where pop spectacle gives way to adult self-definition. He did not entirely escape his past, but for one album at least, he proved that the voice at the centre of all that Raider noise could stand unadorned on its own.

Addendum: I also own this compact disc which combined two of Mark Lindsay's albums, Arizona and the follow-up Silverbird. Building directly on the momentum of Arizona, Silverbird arrived later the same year as a natural companion piece. If Arizona captured Lindsay stepping out of costume, Silverbird was the sound of him settling comfortably into his new skin as a fully formed solo stylist.

Once again produced by Jerry Fuller, the album leaned even more decisively into lush, cinematic orchestration. The title track remained one of the high points of early 1970s pop: grand, sweeping and built around a melodic arc that called on the full range of Lindsay’s vocal power. As a successor to Arizona, the second album exchanged the open-road optimism of the earlier album for something more expansive and atmospheric.

Elsewhere, Silverbird found its strength in material that bridged Top 40 polish and the emerging singer-songwriter sensibility. Lindsay’s reading of And the Grass Won’t Pay No Mind revealed a quieter, more inward voice, handling Neil Diamond’s reflective writing with surprising tenderness and restraint.

In the end, Silverbird helped define what might be called the Lindsay sound: soulful grit softened by velvet phrasing, framed within Fuller’s refined approach. At times it edges into the middle-of-the-road territory but it never lost its poise. More importantly, it confirmed that Arizona was no one-off success. Mark Lindsay had completed his transition from teen idol to mature contemporary artist, capable of sustaining a full album with confidence, control and grace.

Side One: Arizona, Something, Sunday mornin' comin' down, Love's been good to me, Small town woman, First hymn from Grand Terrace
Side Two: Miss America, The name of my sorrow, Leaving On a jet plane, I'll never fall in love again, Man from Houston

 

QUAH, by Jorma Kaukonen

Let me introduce you to an album called QUAH. Yes, QUAH. Spelled exactly like my surname. Pure coincidence, of course, but I’ve always liked that about it. It’s a low-key album from 1974, mostly acoustic, built around finger-picking blues and folk, and it doesn’t try very hard to announce itself. You either lean in or you miss it.

This was Jorma Kaukonen’s first solo record after close to ten years as a founding member of Jefferson Airplane. If you came to it expecting psychedelic noise or group chemistry, you’d be completely wrong-footed. This is Kaukonen on his own, stripping things back, sitting with the guitar and seeing what he could do without the safety net of a band. There are eleven tracks here, and only two have vocals by Tom Hobson. Even then, the voice never really takes centre stage. The guitar does the talking.

Almost everyone I’ve played this album to reacts the same way when Genesis comes on. It’s the first track, and it doesn’t mess around. No warm-up, no scene-setting. Just Kaukonen’s fingers moving with a kind of calm authority. His finger-picking is so clean and controlled that it’s easy to miss how hard it actually is. It sounds natural, almost casual, but it isn’t.

I’ve listened to a lot of guitar players over the years, and Kaukonen is one of those rare ones who doesn’t feel the need to prove anything. On QUAH, he just plays. No tricks, no fuss. You either get drawn into it, or you don’t. And if you do, it stays with you.

ADDENDUM: I also own QUAH on compact disc format, which featured the album's original cover design. On this CD are four bonus tracks which did not make it to the record: Lord have mercy, No mail today, Midnight in Milpitas and Barrier.

Side One: Genesis, I'll Be All Right, Song For The North Star, I'll Let You Know Before I Leave, Flying Clouds, Another Man Done Gone
Side Two: I Am The Light Of This World, Police Dog Blues, Blue Prelude, Sweet Hawaiian Sunshine, Hamar Promenade

Nepal-India Day 7: Vaishali

Dateline: 27 November 2025. Another daunting day of travel was ahead of us. We were told the night before that the coach would be leaving the Imperial Kushinagar at 5.30 in the morning. That ruled out any hope of a proper breakfast. Instead, food packs would be handed out before departure. The explanation was simple enough: Rajgir was our final destination for the day, and even under favourable conditions it would take close to nine hours of driving along India’s national highways. In theory, there would be stops along the way but anyone who has travelled these roads knows that schedules here are more aspiration than promise. As it turned out, we did not reach the Rajgir Residency until about 6.45 in the evening. Thirteen hours on the road.

To reach Kesariya, and indeed Vaishali and Rajgir, we crossed back into Bihar, arriving there around eight in the morning. The Kesariya Buddha Stupa is a site of immense historical and spiritual weight. It is often described as the largest Buddhist stupa in the world by circumference, and possibly once the tallest as well. Today it rises to about 104 feet, with a vast girth approaching 400 feet, but before the great earthquake of 1934 it is thought to have stood closer to 150 feet. Seen from above, its terraced form resembles a giant mandala. Only part of the structure has been fully excavated. Much of it still lies buried beneath earth and vegetation.

Kesariya is bound to one of the most poignant episodes of the Buddha’s final journey. As he travelled from Vaishali towards Kushinagar, knowing that his parinibbāna was near, the Licchavis of Vaishali followed him in grief, unwilling to turn back. To persuade them to return home, the Buddha was said to have given them his alms bowl as a keepsake. Tradition held that an original mud stupa was raised here to enshrine it, and that successive generations added layer upon layer, until the monument grew to its monumental scale. The alms bowl itself has long since disappeared, its fate unknown.

After lunch at the Vaishali Residency, our next stop brought us deeper into Vaishali, to the Buddha Relic Stupa, among the most sacred sites in the Buddhist world. According to the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, after the Buddha’s cremation at Kushinagar, his relics were divided into eight portions and distributed among eight clans. The Licchavis received one share and enshrined it here. For centuries, the stupa lay hidden as an unremarkable mud mound. Excavations in the twentieth century revealed, deep within its core, a small casket containing relic ash mixed with earth, along with a fragment of conch, two glass beads, a thin gold leaf and a copper punch-marked coin. These relics are now preserved nearby in the Buddha Samyak Darshan Museum and Memorial Stupa.

We still found time to visit Kolhua, where the Ananda Stupa and Ashoka Pillar stood side by side in one of the most striking archaeological ensembles in India. The Ashoka Pillar, rising some 18.3 metres, is among the emperor’s finest surviving works, remarkable for its restraint and state of preservation. A bell-shaped lotus supports a square abacus, above which sits a single, life-sized lion facing north, towards Kushinagar. Nearby, the Ananda Stupa commemorates the Buddha’s devoted cousin and attendant. Tradition places the Buddha here during his stays in Vaishali, and it was in this area that he delivered his final discourse and announced his impending passing. Scattered around the main mound are the remains of dozens of smaller votive stupas left by ancient pilgrims.

Our final visit of the day was to the newly inaugurated Buddha Samyak Darshan Museum and Memorial Stupa, built to house and interpret the relics discovered at Vaishali. We spent a short while there in quiet contemplation, largely oblivious to the curious glances of other visitors. From there, at last, we pressed on to Rajgir, arriving exhausted, with the long day finally behind us.

Next:

Nepal-India Day 8: Gridhakuta (Rajgir) 

Previous: 
Nepal-India Day 6: Kushinagar
Nepal-India Day 6: Shravasti

Nepal-India Day 5: Lumbini to Shravasti

Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: The sala tree 
Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: Lumbini and Kapilvastu 

Nepal-India Days 1 and 2: Kathmandu and Nagarkot

Jupiter's moons

I’m still quite thrilled from the night-sky photography I managed tonight with my Olympus. I stepped outside just to have a look at the moon. With the full moon due next Tuesday, it was already about 93 percent illuminated, blazing away in the sky. Normally that kind of brightness, plus light pollution, would wipe out almost everything else, but there it was: a sharp point of light nearby that could only be Jupiter.

Getting a photo of it was another matter. I had to handhold the camera and drop the shutter speed to a risky one-fifth of a second. Most of the shots were a mess, either blurred or streaky beyond saving, and I was close to giving up. But one frame survived. When I pulled it up on the computer, I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was better than anything I’d managed in all my previous attempts over the years. Sharp and without any streaky lines. I could clearly make out the four Galilean moons. A quick check online confirmed their positions relative to Jupiter, and that was the moment it really sank in.

Speaking of Jupiter, it turns out my timing couldn’t have been better. About 20 days ago, on the 10th of January, the Earth passed directly between the sun and Jupiter. That put the planet at what astronomers call opposition, when it sits opposite the sun in our sky and is at its best for observation. In fact, Jupiter was actually closest to Earth a day earlier, on the ninth of January, at a distance of about 633 million kilometres. At opposition it was shining away at magnitude –2.7, the fourth brightest object in the sky after the sun, moon and Venus. But with Venus tucked behind the sun in mid-January, Jupiter has effectively been the brightest starlike object in the night sky for weeks now, visible for much of the night. Given that Jupiter takes almost 12 Earth years to complete one orbit of the sun, this kind of alignment only comes around roughly every 13 months. The next one won’t be until 10 February 2027, which makes nights like this feel a bit more special.

Mamas and Papas

The Mamas & the Papas were part of my growing-up years. As teenagers, we knew California Dreamin’, Monday, Monday and Dedicated to the One I Love because they turned up regularly on Radio Malaysia and Radio RAAF Butterworth. Beyond those three songs, the rest of their output was largely a mystery to me. That is why, when a friend passed me a copy of 20 Golden Hits in the 1990s, I was taken aback to find a double album’s worth of material. It said a great deal about how deeply the group had once lodged itself in our everyday lives.

Listening again to 20 Golden Hits reminded me of just how brief and explosive the moment of The Mamas & the Papas really was. For a group that existed for barely three years, their hold on the sound of the mid-1960s remained strong. This compilation, first issued in the early 1970s after they broke up, captured that moment almost in full. With only five studio albums to their name, a collection like this felt definitive.

At the heart of the record is the group’s unique vocal chemistry. John Phillips shaped their songs and harmonies. Michelle Phillips added a cool presence, visually and vocally. Denny Doherty carried many of the leads with a smooth and elastic voice. And then there was Cass Elliot, whose sheer presence and personality gave the group its most recognisable human centre. On these recordings, their voices did not compete so much as complement, stacking emotion in layers.

The songs traced their rise and decline. Early hits like California Dreamin’ and Monday, Monday were fully formed, confident and expansive, while later tracks carried a sense of strain within the members. Creeque Alley turned their own history into pop mythology, name-checking friends and failures. Even the title of Dedicated to the One I Love carried a hint of fragility, as if everyone involved knew how precarious things already were.

California Dreamin’ remains the emotional core of the album. The song that came to define sun-drenched West Coast longing was written during a bitter New York winter, when John and Michelle Phillips were holed up in Greenwich Village and dreaming of escape. The imagery of brown leaves and grey skies is not symbolic so much as literal. It came from what they were living through at the time. The stop at a church, the pretending to pray, the ache for warmth and light, all grew out of that moment. Even the haunting flute solo felt like cold air moving through an empty street, a sound that carried the chill of that season straight into the song.

What made 20 Golden Hits particularly satisfying was its sound. Issued at a time when stereo remastering was taken seriously, it allowed the group’s harmonies to breathe. I could hear how carefully constructed these songs were, even when they presented themselves as effortless.

As a portrait of a band, 20 Golden Hits succeeded because it was more than a convenient collection of hits. It was the sound of a brief, intense California dream, captured at its height and preserved just long enough for us to hear its radiance.

Addendum: I also own a compact disc of the best of the Mamas and the Papas, where Mama Cass’ solo work after the band’s breakup is represented by four songs: Dream a Little Dream of Me, It’s Getting Better, Make Your Own Kind of Music and I Can Dream, Can’t I?

That compact disc, with its handful of solo tracks, hinted at a much larger and more complicated chapter in Cass Elliot’s life after the Mamas & the Papas came apart. When the group fractured in 1968, she emerged both liberated and exposed. For the first time, she was free of the internal politics and personal entanglements that had defined the band, but she was also left to navigate an industry that had never quite known what to do with a woman of her size, intelligence and force of personality.

Cass moved quickly into a solo career, releasing Dream a Little Dream in 1968, followed by Bubblegum, Lemonade &… Something for Mama and Make Your Own Kind of Music. Although commercial success was uneven, she continued to work steadily and refused to disappear quietly.

Her personal life remained turbulent. Deeply affected by the breakdown of the band and by years of being underestimated and judged for her appearance, she worked hard and struggled with health issues. By the early 1970s, the optimism of the “California dream” years had given way to a more demanding reality.

Cass Elliot’s death in 1974 at just 32, closed that chapter and froze her public image in place. In the years since, she has often been remembered as a tragic figure or as a symbol of a lost era. Yet looking at her life after the Mamas & the Papas, what stands out is not failure or decline, but persistence. She kept working, experimenting and asserting her presence in a fast-moving industry. If there is sadness in that story, it lies in how little time she was given to finish becoming who she wanted to be. 

Side 1: California dreamin', Dedicated to the one I love, I call your name, Twelve-thirty (young girls are comin' to the canyon), Creeque alley
Side 2: Dancing in the street, For the love of Ivy, Go where you wanna go, My girl, Look through my window
Side 3: Monday Monday, Words of love, Twist and shout, I saw her again last night, Dream a little dream of me
Side 4: People like us, You baby, Got a feelin', Trip stumble and fall, Straight shooter

Walk for peace

Since last month soon after retuning from my trip to Nepal and India, I've been following the daily progress on the Walk of Peace involving some 20 Theravadin monks - and a dog named Aloka - in the United States.  This is just about the best positive exposure for Buddhism that I've seen in many years! What makes the Walk of Peace so arresting is not the immense scale of the walk but the way it unfolds almost without explanation. Twenty monks in saffron robes walking along highways and rural roads, day after day, from Texas towards Washington, DC, is not something most Americans expect to encounter in the course of their ordinary life. There are no banners, no speeches, no appeals shouted through loudhailers. The message arrives on foot at walking pace, and asks nothing except to be noticed.

The journey began in October 2025 at the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth, led by Bhante Pannakara, a former IT engineer from Vietnam, and from the outset it was conceived as an act of presence rather than persuasion. Over roughly 2,300 miles, crossing Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, the monks have moved steadily eastward through towns and countryside, through rain, shine or snow. Their symbolically potent destination is the White House, where they are expected to arrive in mid-February 2026.

What they carry with them is deliberately spare. There are no sermons delivered at street corners, no leaflets handed out. The monks walk largely in silence, relying on mindfulness and the rhythm of their steps. Food and shelter come from the spontaneous generosity of strangers along the way. In an age of constant messaging and aggressive visibility, the refusal to explain oneself loudly becomes part of the meaning. Peace, compassion and non-violence are not demanded by the monks. Instead, they are acted out for all to see.

Walking with them is a stray dog named Aloka, who has quietly become the most recognisable figure of the pilgrimage. Aloka’s story began far from America, in Calcutta, India, where the dog first attached itself to Bhante Pannakara and began following him on his walk to Bodhgaya. It was not trained or summoned; it simply stayed. Over time, that companionship endured, and Aloka was eventually brought to Texas, where it settled into life at the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center. When the Walk of Peace began, Aloka joined without ceremony, padding along highways and back roads, sometimes trotting ahead as if scouting the way, more often keeping pace beside the monks, step by step, mile after mile. The dog neither chants nor teaches, yet its presence is powerful enough: loyalty without ownership, movement without destination, trust without words. For many who encounter or follow the pilgrimage, Aloka the Peace Dog has become its living emblem.

The public response suggests that something in this simplicity has struck a nerve. People line roadsides, slow their cars, offer flowers or join their palms in respect. Across social media, images of the walk have circulated far beyond the places the monks physically pass through, drawing followers from across religious and cultural lines. By January 2026, more than a million people were following the journey online, not because it promised spectacle, but because it offered a rare sense of steadiness in motion.

The walk has not been untouched by hardship and challenges. In November, a traffic accident in Texas seriously injured two monks. One of them, Bhante Dam Phommasan, later lost his leg as a result of his injuries. The incident cast a sharp light on the vulnerability inherent in such a journey, yet the walk continued, not as an act of defiance, but as a continuation of intent. Suffering, in this context, was not hidden or dramatised; it was absorbed into the larger discipline of endurance and compassion.

There is also a larger institutional story running quietly alongside the pilgrimage. The Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center has plans for an ambitious temple complex in Fort Worth, envisioned as a vast space of practice and contemplation. While the walk inevitably draws attention to this vision, the monks have been careful not to turn the journey into a fundraising exercise. The emphasis remains firmly on spiritual example rather than material outcome.

Seen as a whole, the Walk of Peace feels less like a campaign and more like a long sentence written across America one step at a time. It moves through regions marked by different histories, tensions and identities, yet refuses to take sides or offer solutions. Instead, it insists on a slower register, one in which national healing is imagined not through argument or policy, but through patience, restraint and the simple act of showing up on foot day after day.