Date: 31/08/2026

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The first thing that surprises many people about Malawi is the water.

This is a country often described through its warm people and beautiful landscapes, but one extraordinary feature dominates its geography—Lake Malawi.

Stand beside it and, in some places, you can easily forget that you are looking at a lake.

The water stretches towards the horizon.

The far shore disappears.

Small boats move across the blue distance.

For people living along its shores, however, Lake Malawi is not simply a beautiful view. It is part of everyday life.

People fish there.

Children grow up beside it.

Villages and communities have built their lives around its changing moods.

What I find beautiful is the contrast.

A vast body of water can make a person feel very small.

Yet the same water can become completely familiar to those who live beside it every day.

Perhaps that happens with many great things in life.

What looks extraordinary to a visitor may simply be home to someone else.

And that may be the real beauty of travelling through stories.

For a few moments, we get to see another person’s ordinary world—and discover that it is extraordinary after all.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India

Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

#Malawi #Africa #HumanStories #AroundTheWorld #ConverseWithASmile

Date: 31/08/2026
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“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”
— William Wordsworth
Some people enter our lives quietly.
They do not make grand promises.
They do not announce how much they care.
But somehow, they stay.
They remember a difficult day.
They ask about something you mentioned months ago.
They call when they have no particular reason to call.
Years later, we may forget the details of many important occasions. But we remember these people.
Perhaps because kindness has its own way of remaining.
It does not always arrive with flowers or speeches.
Sometimes it is simply someone sitting beside us when words are not necessary.
Someone who says, “Take your time.”
Someone who does not disappear when life becomes inconvenient.
We spend much of our lives meeting people.
But only a few become part of our story.
And perhaps the most precious ones are those who never had to say,
“I am here.”
We simply knew.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

Date: 30/08/2026
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My phone rang one afternoon.
“Hello?” I said.
A woman replied, “Is this Mr. Sharma?”
“No.”
There was a pause.
“Oh. Sorry.”
That should have been the end of it.
But then she asked, “Are you at least having a good day?”
I laughed.
“I was. Now I’m curious.”
She laughed too.
“Wrong number, then.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” she said, “I hope the right person answers somebody’s call today.”
And she hung up.
The whole conversation lasted less than thirty seconds.
I never knew who she was.
But I remembered it.
Funny, isn’t it?
Sometimes a small accident interrupts an ordinary day and leaves behind a smile.
A wrong number.
A stranger.
Thirty seconds.
And suddenly, the day feels a little less ordinary.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

Date: 30/08/2026
All Rights Reserved by the Author

Imagine entering a city where there is no sky above you.
Instead, there are underground streets.
Long galleries.
Cool stone walls.
And everywhere, bottles quietly waiting for time to do its work.
Welcome to Cricova, Moldova.
Near the capital, Chișinău, old limestone galleries were transformed into one of the world’s most remarkable underground wine complexes. Cricova was founded as a winery in 1952 and became famous for its vast underground galleries.
What I find fascinating is the idea itself.
A place created by taking stone from the earth was later given a completely different life.
The underground spaces became streets of wine.
Some galleries were even named after famous grape varieties.
Today, Moldova’s underground wineries at Cricova and Mileștii Mici are recognised on UNESCO’s Tentative List as an extraordinary example of industrial spaces adapted for winemaking, storage and cultural heritage.
There is something almost poetic about it.
Above the ground, life moves quickly.
Below it, bottles wait.
Perhaps good things often require exactly that-
the right place,
a little patience,
and enough time.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

#Moldova #HeritageStories #Cricova #HiddenWorlds #ConverseWithASmile

Date: 30/08/2026
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“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
— Aeso

There are people who notice.
They notice when someone has become unusually quiet.
They notice the tiredness behind a smile.
They notice that an old neighbour has not opened the door for a few days.
Most of the time, they do nothing dramatic.
They simply ask, “Are you all right?”
That question can mean more than we realise.
We live among people who are busy, connected and constantly communicating. Yet sometimes a person can go through an entire difficult day without anyone genuinely noticing.
Perhaps kindness begins there.
Not with grand gestures.
With noticing.
A friend who remembers.
A colleague who asks.
A neighbour who pauses.
A family member who listens without immediately offering an opinion.
We may never know which small act of ours stayed with someone.
But perhaps that is not the point.
The point is to notice while we still have the chance.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

Date: 29/08/2026
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My wife once gave me a shopping list.
It contained six things.
Six.
I was confident.
I returned home with seven.
She looked at the bags.
“Where is the bread?”
I froze.
“Ah.”
“And the milk?”
Another pause.
“But you bought biscuits.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“They were on special offer.”
She looked at me quietly.
“Were they on the list?”
“No.”
“Then why did you buy them?”
I thought carefully.
“Because I saw them.”
She laughed.
“That explains everything.”
I went back to the shop.
This time I returned with the bread and milk.
And, just to be safe, another packet of biscuits.
Some lessons in life are learned slowly.
Especially when shopping without a list.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

Date: 29/08/2026
All Rights Reserved by the Author

Some rivers run towards the sea.
The Reka River in Slovenia does something far more mysterious.
It enters the earth.
Near the Škocjan Caves, the river disappears beneath the limestone landscape and continues its journey through one of Europe’s most remarkable underground systems.
UNESCO describes the Škocjan Caves as one of the world’s largest known underground river canyons. The underground passages, waterfalls and enormous chambers were formed over thousands of years by the action of water.
What fascinates me is how ordinary the beginning of the story sounds.
Water finds a way.
It keeps moving.
A little at a time, it wears through rock.
Years become centuries.
Centuries become millennia.
And eventually, a river has created something so immense that human beings can only stand inside it and wonder.
There is something humbling about that.
We tend to think of nature as dramatic storms, mountains or oceans.
But sometimes nature works quietly.
A drop.
A stream.
A river.
Patiently doing the same thing for longer than any human life can imagine.
Perhaps that is why places like Škocjan leave such an impression.
They remind us that time itself can be an artist.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

#HeritageStories #Slovenia #SkocjanCaves #Nature #ConverseWithASmile

Date: 29/08/2026
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“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

I sometimes wonder why we postpone the things that matter.
We wait for a better day.
More time.
More money.
A more convenient moment.
But life rarely becomes perfectly convenient.
There is always something else to do.
Perhaps we don’t need a grand beginning.
We can start with something very small.
Call someone we have been meaning to call.
Say thank you.
Write the first sentence.
Forgive an old irritation.
Help somebody who needs us.
Small things may not look impressive when we begin them.
But they have a habit of growing.
A conversation can become a friendship.
A page can become a book.
A small kindness can stay in someone’s memory for years.
Maybe we don’t have to wait for the right moment.
Maybe this moment is already enough.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

Date: 28/08/2026
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An old gentleman once called his son and said,
“I have some good news and some bad news.”
His son immediately became nervous.
“What is the bad news?”
“I forgot why I called you.”
There was a pause.
“And the good news?”
The old man laughed.
“I remembered that I wanted to call you.”
His son started laughing too.
“Dad, that’s not exactly good news.”
“Oh, it is,” he replied. “It means I remembered you.”
The conversation lasted only a few minutes.
They talked about the weather.
The neighbours.
An old family story.
Nothing particularly important.
But when the call ended, both of them smiled.
Perhaps that is what family conversations are often like.
We don’t always call because we have something important to say.
Sometimes we call simply because someone has crossed our mind.
And sometimes, that is the most important reason of all.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

Date: 28/08/2026
All Rights Reserved by the Author

There are bridges built to carry people.
And there are bridges that seem to carry something more.
In Bhutan, traditional wooden bridges called cantilever bridges have long formed an important part of life in the mountain landscape.
One of the most striking features is the small prayer flags often tied around them. They move in the wind while people cross from one side of a valley or river to another.
The image is simple: a bridge, a river below, mountains around it, and coloured flags moving above.
But there is a story behind those flags.
In Bhutanese Buddhist tradition, prayer flags are believed to carry prayers and blessings through the wind.
The bridge therefore becomes more than a piece of engineering.
It becomes a meeting point between the practical and the spiritual.
You cross it because you need to get somewhere.
But as the flags flutter above you, the journey becomes something else too.
Perhaps that is what makes Bhutan so fascinating.
Its traditions are not always displayed behind glass in museums.
They are woven into ordinary life.
A bridge can be a bridge.
And at the same time, it can be a quiet reminder that every journey carries something unseen with it.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

#Bhutan #HeritageStories #Culture #Himalayas #ConverseWithASmile