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6 October 2026

There are so many things we do every day without giving them a second thought.

We call someone and ask, “Did you eat?”

We keep a cup ready for someone who usually comes home at a certain time.

We remember how another person likes their tea.

We leave the light on because we know somebody will be coming home late.

None of these things looks important.

Nobody writes them down.

Nobody gives us an award for doing them.

Yet, perhaps, this is where much of our affection lives.

Not in the big declarations, but in the habits we develop around people we care about.

Years later, we may forget many of the conversations we had.

But we may remember that someone always kept our favourite chair free.

There is an old saying, “Actions speak louder than words.”

It sounds almost too familiar now, but there is truth in it.

Love and affection often become ordinary before we realise how precious they are.

Perhaps we should pay a little more attention to these small acts.

One day, we may miss them more than we ever imagined.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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5 October 2026

Some animals build elaborate homes.

Birds build nests.

Beavers build dams.

Ants build entire underground colonies.

And then there is the hermit crab.

It does something much simpler.

It borrows one.

A hermit crab has a soft abdomen that offers little protection. So when it grows, it looks for an empty shell left behind by a snail and moves inside.

As the crab becomes larger, it must eventually find a bigger shell.

The strange thing is that a shell is not simply a hiding place.

It is its protection.

Without it, the crab is vulnerable.

So a tiny creature walks around carrying a house that it did not build.

There is something almost amusing about it.

But there is also something familiar.

We spend much of our lives collecting things we believe will make us secure.

A house.

A bank balance.

A job.

A title.

Sometimes they protect us.

Sometimes they simply become things we carry.

The hermit crab has no such confusion.

It knows exactly what its shell is for.

Protection.

Nothing more.

Perhaps there is a small lesson there for us.

Keep what protects you.

But don’t mistake the shell for the life inside it.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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5 October 2026

Myanmar lies in mainland Southeast Asia, sharing a long northern and north-eastern border with China. It also borders India, Bangladesh, Laos and Thailand.

That geographical position makes Myanmar a natural bridge between South and Southeast Asia.

But perhaps one of the most memorable ways to see the country is from the water.

In central Myanmar lies Inle Lake, a large freshwater lake surrounded by mountains and home to communities whose lives have long been closely connected with the water.

Houses stand on stilts above the lake.

Small boats move between settlements.

Fishermen work from narrow wooden vessels, and gardens can even be cultivated on floating beds.

The famous image of an Inle fisherman balancing on one leg while using the other to control his oar is unusual enough to stay in the memory.

But behind the photograph is something more ordinary and more interesting.

It is a way of life.

For generations, people have learned to live with the lake rather than simply live beside it.

The water provides transport, food and livelihood.

The surrounding mountains give the landscape a quiet sense of enclosure.

Perhaps that is why Inle Lake feels less like a tourist attraction and more like a place where nature and daily life have become difficult to separate.

We often think of rivers and lakes as geographical features.

For the people who live around them, they can be something much larger.

They can become home.

#Myanmar #InleLake #SoutheastAsia #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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5 October 2026

There comes a time when we begin to appreciate quietness differently.

When we are young, silence can feel uncomfortable. We want music, conversation, movement, people around us.

Then life happens.

Responsibilities arrive. Work becomes demanding. Children grow up. Friends become busy. The telephone rings more often than we would like.

And somewhere along the way, quietness begins to feel like a gift.

Sitting alone with a cup of tea does not necessarily mean being lonely.

Sometimes it means finally having a little space to hear our own thoughts.

Perhaps that is why some of the happiest moments in later life are not particularly exciting.

A slow walk.

A familiar book.

Rain against the window.

A conversation that does not need to be rushed.

There is a line attributed to Blaise Pascal: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

I don’t know whether we need to take the statement quite so seriously.

But I understand the feeling behind it.

When the noise disappears, we sometimes discover what we had been too busy to notice.

And perhaps that is not emptiness.

Perhaps it is simply ourselves, finally getting a chance to speak.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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4 October 2026

A sea turtle may travel thousands of kilometres across the ocean and still find its way back to the beach where it was born.

That sounds almost impossible.

There are no road signs.

No familiar buildings.

No landmarks that we can recognise.

And yet, female sea turtles can return to their natal beaches to lay their eggs.

Scientists believe they use several clues, including the Earth’s magnetic field, which may provide them with a kind of natural map.

What fascinates me most is the scale of the journey.

A turtle leaves a beach as a tiny hatchling.

Years pass.

It crosses enormous stretches of ocean.

Then, when it is mature enough to reproduce, it somehow finds its way back towards the place where its own life began.

We often think of home as an address.

For a sea turtle, perhaps home is something much deeper.

A direction.

A memory written into the body.

A pull that cannot easily be explained by words.

And perhaps that is why the return of a sea turtle feels so moving.

After travelling through an ocean without roads, it comes back to a particular piece of sand.

The place where it began.

The place it somehow remembered.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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4 October 2026

Vietnam stretches along the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with China to its north and Laos and Cambodia to its west. Its long coastline faces the South China Sea.

For many people, Vietnam begins with images of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City or the famous rice terraces.

But in the south, another Vietnam exists around the Mekong Delta.

Here, the river is not simply part of the landscape.

It is part of everyday life.

The Mekong divides into a network of waterways before reaching the sea, creating a landscape of islands, canals, orchards and villages. Boats carry people and goods where roads cannot always reach conveniently.

Early in the morning, some markets begin to move on the water.

A boat becomes a shop.

Another becomes a restaurant.

A third carries fruit, vegetables or household goods.

For someone accustomed to streets and roads, it can seem extraordinary.

For the people who live there, it is simply practical.

The river has shaped the way communities work, travel and trade for generations.

Perhaps that is what makes the Mekong Delta so interesting.

We often think of civilisation as something people build against nature.

Here, people have learned to build their daily lives around it.

The river is not an obstacle to overcome.

It is the road.

#Vietnam #MekongDelta #SoutheastAsia #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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4 October 2026

We rarely know when somebody is thinking about us.

It may happen while they are having their morning tea. While driving to work. While walking past a place where we once stood together.

They may not call.

They may not send a message.

Still, for a few seconds, we may cross their mind.

There is something comforting about that thought.

Not every relationship needs constant conversation. Some people can remain quiet in our lives and still remain close somewhere inside us.

I have always felt that affection does not disappear simply because communication becomes less frequent.

Life gets busy.

People move to different cities. Families grow. Responsibilities change. Years pass.

Yet one familiar song can bring somebody back in an instant.

Perhaps that is one of the gentle gifts of memory.

It allows people to remain part of our lives even when they are no longer physically near us.

We may never know how often we appear in somebody else’s thoughts.

And perhaps we don’t need to know.

It is enough to believe that, somewhere, someone who once mattered still remembers us with a little warmth.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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3 October 2026

Some birds travel thousands of kilometres during migration.

That alone is remarkable.

But imagine doing it while sleeping.

The common swift spends much of its life in the air. It feeds, drinks and even mates while flying. Researchers have also found evidence that swifts can sleep during flight, taking very short periods of rest while remaining airborne.

Think about the difference between that and our idea of sleep.

We look for a bed.

A swift looks for the sky.

It can spend months away from land, riding air currents and travelling enormous distances.

There is something almost poetic about an animal that seems to have no fixed address.

We measure our journeys by airports, railway stations and hotel rooms.

The swift measures its life by the movement of the air.

Perhaps that is why some birds make us look at the sky differently.

We see empty space.

They see a road.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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3 October 2026

Taiwan is a relatively small island in East Asia, lying off the south-eastern coast of China, across the Taiwan Strait.

Many people know it for its technology and busy cities.

But there is another Taiwan that begins when the roads leave the cities behind.

Much of the island is mountainous. Forests cover large areas, and some peaks rise more than 3,000 metres above sea level.

In the eastern part of Taiwan, the Taroko area became famous for its enormous marble cliffs, deep valleys and winding roads. The landscape shows how dramatically the mountains can rise from the narrow coastal plains.

But perhaps the more interesting thing about Taiwan is the way people live alongside such difficult terrain.

Rivers have cut deep through the mountains. Roads and tunnels have been built through rock. Small settlements have developed in valleys where the surrounding landscape can feel almost overwhelming.

It is easy to think of Taiwan only through the things it manufactures or the technology it exports.

But stand among its mountains and another picture appears.

An island can be small on a map and still contain an extraordinary world.

Perhaps that is one of the pleasures of travelling—or even simply reading about places.

We discover that the country we thought we knew from headlines is often much larger in character than we imagined.

#Taiwan #EastAsia #TaiwanMountains #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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3 October 2026

We often remember the big events of our lives.

The day we got a job. The day we moved house. The wedding. The journey. The award. The retirement.

But strangely, some of the moments that stay with us are much smaller.

A hand resting on our shoulder.

Someone waiting at the gate.

A cup of tea made without asking.

A familiar voice saying our name from another room.

At the time, we hardly notice these things.

Life is moving, and we are usually thinking about what comes next.

Only later do we understand that these ordinary moments were quietly making up our life.

There is an old saying: “The devil is in the details.”

I think happiness may be there too.

Not always in the great occasions we spend months preparing for, but in the little things that happen without preparation at all.

Perhaps growing older is partly learning to notice them while they are still happening.

Because some moments cannot be repeated.

The tea will be finished.

The door will close.

The familiar voice will eventually become a memory.

And one day, we may realise that what we thought was an ordinary moment was actually something precious.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com