Date: 21/08/2026
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The remote control disappeared again tonight,
We searched every corner, switched on every light.
Under the cushion, beneath the chair,
We looked in places that weren’t even there.
Someone said, “Nobody moved from this room.”
Someone else whispered, “Then it met its doom.”
We blamed the children, the dog and the cat,
Then found it beneath someone’s sleeping mat.
The television waited, perfectly still,
While the family argued with remarkable skill.
Finally, Dad found it and proudly declared—
“I knew it was here. I simply hadn’t looked there.”
We all laughed, though nobody knew
Why finding a remote felt like finding gold too.

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

Date: 21/08/2026
All Rights Reserved by the Author

Deep in southern Georgia, an extraordinary wetland spreads across the landscape: the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
For generations, its vast black-water wetlands, cypress forests, islands and open prairies have created a remarkable habitat for wildlife. Alligators, sandhill cranes, wading birds, turtles and many other species live within this unusual landscape.
In July 2026, Okefenokee achieved a remarkable distinction: it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, becoming one of the new natural properties recognised during the 48th session of the World Heritage Committee.
The refuge is more than a beautiful wilderness.
Its wetlands store water, support biodiversity and preserve an ecosystem that has remained remarkably intact.
What makes the place especially fascinating is its sense of mystery. Dark waterways wind beneath trees draped with Spanish moss, while an alligator may quietly appear beside a canoe and disappear just as silently.
America has its famous cities, monuments and skylines.
But places like Okefenokee remind us that some of its greatest treasures are found where there are no buildings at all.

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

#HeritageStories #Georgia #Okefenokee #America #Wildlife #ConverseWithASmile

Date: 21/08/2026

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“We are never really happy until we try to brighten the lives of others.”
— Helen Keller

Happiness is often treated as something we must find for ourselves.

Perhaps sometimes it is something we create for someone else.

A kind word.

A patient conversation.

A little encouragement when somebody is uncertain.

A smile offered to a stranger.

None of these things costs much.

Yet we rarely know how much another person may need that small moment of kindness.

Helen Keller, who lived through extraordinary challenges, understood the value of human connection deeply.

We do not have to perform great deeds every day.

Sometimes making another person’s day slightly lighter is achievement enough.

And strangely, when we brighten someone else’s day, something of that light seems to return to us.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India

Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile

Date: 20/08/2026
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Every family seems to have one person who can fix anything.
A tap starts leaking.
“Call him.”
The television stops working.
“Call him.”
Someone’s phone refuses to connect to Wi-Fi.
“Call him.”
One afternoon, a neighbour brought an old clock that had stopped working.
The family expert examined it carefully.
He turned it over.
Tapped it twice.
Listened.
Then he announced:
“It’s definitely broken.”
Everyone stared at him.
“Can you repair it?”
He thought for a moment.
“No.”
There was a long silence.
Then his wife began laughing.
Soon everyone joined her.
The expert smiled.
“I never said I could fix everything. I only said I knew what was wrong.”
Sometimes confidence is simply knowing how to look serious while having absolutely no idea what to do next.
And perhaps that is why families keep their experts around.
They may not always solve the problem.
But they usually make the problem more entertaining.

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

Date: 20/08/2026
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In northern Namibia, the vast Etosha Pan stretches across the landscape like an enormous white sheet.
The pan is the central feature of Etosha National Park, one of Africa’s oldest and largest protected areas. Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism records the park at about 22,935 square kilometres, with the area first proclaimed as a national park in 1907.
For much of the year, the pan is dry and covered with a hard, saline surface. Yet around its edges, natural springs and waterholes sustain remarkable concentrations of wildlife.
Elephants, lions, giraffes, rhinos, zebras and many other animals gather around these sources of water. The park is also important for the conservation of Namibia’s black rhinoceros.
The contrast is extraordinary.
A landscape that can look almost lifeless from a distance becomes, around a waterhole, a meeting place for some of Africa’s most magnificent animals.
Etosha teaches a quiet lesson about survival.
In a harsh landscape, water becomes life, and every drop matters.
Rajat Chandra Sarmah

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

#HeritageStories #Namibia #Etosha #Africa #Nature #ConverseWithASmile

Date: 20/08/2026
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“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
— Helen Keller, Let Us Have Faith (1940)
Helen Keller wrote those words in Let Us Have Faith, published in 1940. The sentence was not a call to recklessness. It came in a passage about facing uncertainty rather than allowing fear to dictate the whole of one’s life.
Perhaps that is what makes the thought still relevant.
A safe life can be comfortable.
But curiosity asks us to step beyond what we already know.
A new place.
A new friendship.
A new idea.
A new beginning.
Not every step will work.
Some will lead to disappointment. Others may take us somewhere we never expected to reach.
But a life entirely protected from uncertainty can also become a life that never discovers its possibilities.
Courage is not the absence of fear.
Sometimes it is simply deciding that fear will not choose the road for us.

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

19/08/2026

A correction to the information published in this post: I had stated that the Sudd Wetland received South Sudan’s first UNESCO World Heritage inscription in 2026. That was incorrect.

The correct inscription is the Boma-Badingilo Migratory Landscape, which became South Sudan’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2026.

The Sudd is currently on UNESCO’s Tentative List, not the World Heritage List.

I regret the error and thank readers for their understanding.

Date: 19/08/2026
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There was a man in our neighbourhood who seemed to have mastered one extraordinary skill:
doing absolutely nothing.
Every afternoon, he sat in a chair outside his house, watching people pass by.
One day, someone asked him, “Don’t you have anything to do?”
He smiled.
“Of course I do.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The questioner laughed.
But the man continued sitting there, completely untroubled.
After a while, children began joining him.
Then a neighbour brought tea.
Someone else brought a newspaper.
Before long, the supposedly idle chair had become the busiest meeting place in the lane.
Nobody had planned it.
Nobody had organised it.
People simply discovered that sitting together without having anywhere urgent to go could be rather pleasant.
Perhaps we have forgotten that sometimes.
Not every minute needs to be productive.
Some minutes are simply meant to be lived.

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

Date: 19/08/2026
All Rights Reserved by the Author

South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, has taken an important step onto the international heritage map.
In July 2026, UNESCO inscribed the Sudd Wetland on the World Heritage List, giving South Sudan its first-ever World Heritage property.
The Sudd is one of Africa’s great wetlands. Fed by the White Nile, its waters spread across a vast landscape of channels, lakes, grasslands and seasonal floodplains.
Its importance is not only geographical. The wetland supports an extraordinary variety of wildlife and provides resources and livelihoods for communities living around it.
The word Sudd itself is associated with the great floating vegetation and natural barriers that can form across the waterways.
For a country better known internationally through the difficult chapters of its recent history, this recognition offers another story to tell—a story of water, wildlife, landscape and cultural connection.
A World Heritage inscription does not change a country’s past.
But it can help the world look at that country through another window.
And sometimes, discovering a place through its natural beauty is the beginning of understanding it more deeply.

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

#HeritageStories #SouthSudan #SuddWetland #Africa #WorldHeritage #ConverseWithASmile

Date: 19/08/2026
All Rights Reserved by the Author

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
— Anne Frank
We often think that changing the world requires something enormous.
Perhaps it begins much closer to home.
A person who teaches patiently.
Someone who plants a tree without expecting to sit beneath it.
A neighbour who helps another through a difficult day.
A parent who teaches a child to be kind when nobody is watching.
Most of these acts will never be recorded in history.
Yet they travel quietly from one person to another.
What we do today may become part of somebody else’s tomorrow.
Perhaps that is why even the smallest good action matters.
We may not change the whole world.
But we can leave one small corner of it a little better than we found it.

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