Date: 18/08/2026
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A little girl once asked her grandfather:
“Grandpa, why do you always smile when Grandma is angry?”
He thought for a moment.
“Because,” he said, “I have learned something very important.”
“What?”
“That she will eventually stop being angry.”
The little girl considered this carefully.
“And what happens if she doesn’t?”
Grandpa smiled.
“Then I smile a little more.”
The girl burst out laughing.
Grandma, who had been listening from the next room, called out:
“I heard that!”
Grandpa immediately stopped smiling.
The little girl laughed even harder.
Perhaps long relationships have their own secret language.
A little patience.
A little humour.
And the wisdom to know when silence is the safest answer.

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

Date: 18/08/2026
All Rights Reserved by the Author

In the Gulf of Guinea, off the western coast of Central Africa, lies the small island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe.
For centuries, its islands have been part of the wider story of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean world. One remarkable chapter is preserved in the roças—large plantation estates created during the Portuguese colonial period.
In 2026, UNESCO inscribed The Roças of São Tomé and Príncipe on the World Heritage List, giving the country its first World Heritage property. The serial site consists of six roças: Monte Café, Água Izé, Diogo Vaz, São João, Sundy and Belo Monte.
The estates were highly organised agricultural complexes combining plantations, industrial facilities, residential areas and social infrastructure. They were primarily associated with coffee and later cocoa production.
But this heritage also carries a difficult history. The plantation system depended on forced migration and forced labour after the abolition of slavery. UNESCO’s recognition therefore preserves not only beautiful architecture and landscapes, but also a history that deserves to be remembered honestly.
Sometimes heritage is beautiful because it celebrates the past.
Sometimes it is important because it helps us understand it.

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

#HeritageStories #SaoTomeAndPrincipe #Africa #WorldHeritage #Culture #ConverseWithASmile

Date: 18/08/2026
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“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
— Confucius
There are moments when starting again feels harder than starting for the first time.
We remember what went wrong. We remember the effort, the disappointment, perhaps even the words of those who told us that it would not work.
Yet beginning again carries something that a first beginning does not: experience.
We know more now.
We have learned what to avoid, what to value, and perhaps most importantly, what truly matters to us.
A second beginning need not be a repetition of the first.
It can be wiser, quieter and stronger.
Life rarely gives us the privilege of choosing every circumstance.
But it often gives us another morning, another page, another opportunity to begin.
And sometimes, that is more than enough.

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

Date: 17/08/2026
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At a small family gathering, there was one empty chair at the dining table.
A little boy walked towards it and announced, “This one is mine.”
His grandmother smiled.
“No, that is Grandpa’s chair.”
The boy looked at his grandfather, who was standing across the room.
“But Grandpa isn’t sitting there.”
Grandpa laughed.
“That’s true. But I have been sitting there for thirty years.”
The boy thought for a moment.
Then he dragged another chair beside it.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll sit here. We can both have a chair.”
Everyone laughed.
Sometimes children solve problems that adults make complicated.
There was no argument.
No negotiation.
Just another chair.
Perhaps there is a little wisdom in that.
When there is not enough room for everyone, sometimes the answer is not to decide who should move.
Sometimes we simply make more space.

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

Date: 17/08/2026
All Rights Reserved by the Author

In the western Indian Ocean lies Comoros, an island nation whose history has been shaped by Africa, the Arab world and the wider Indian Ocean trading network.
In July 2026, Comoros reached a remarkable milestone: it received its first inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The property, called The Medinas of the Historic Sultanates of the Comoros, consists of six historic towns. Their urban origins reach back at least to the 11th century, while several developed into city-states around the 14th and 15th centuries.
The old medinas contain stone houses, palaces, public spaces and defensive structures. Their architecture also reflects centuries of movement and exchange across the Indian Ocean.
What makes the story especially beautiful is that this is not heritage frozen in the past. UNESCO notes that many social traditions and practices connected with these historic towns remain alive today.
For Comoros, 2026 is therefore more than a date on a heritage list.
It is a moment when a little-known chapter of island history has received a place on the world’s cultural map.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
@conversewithasmile
#HeritageStories #Comoros #IndianOcean #Africa #WorldHeritage #ConverseWithASmile

Date: 17/08/2026
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“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
— Steve Jobs

There are things we do because we must, and there are things we do because something inside us keeps pulling us towards them.
The second kind often takes longer.
We may begin without knowing where the journey will lead. We may change direction, make mistakes, start again, or discover that what we first imagined is not quite what we wanted.
But the search itself teaches us.
Sometimes a person finds a calling early in life. Sometimes it arrives after decades of experience.
And sometimes, when we think we are beginning too late, we are actually beginning at exactly the right time.
The important thing may not be to have all the answers.
It may simply be to keep looking until we find something that makes the journey worthwhile.

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

Date: 16/08/2026
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My wife once asked me to choose between two shirts.
I made the mistake of answering honestly.
“I like the blue one.”
She looked at the other shirt.
“So you don’t like this one?”
I immediately realised that the question had never been about shirts.
It was a negotiation.
I looked again.
“The other one is also very nice.”
She smiled.
I had survived.
Marriage, I have discovered, is sometimes less about having the right answer and more about understanding which question you have actually been asked.
And after many years, one learns another important rule:
When someone asks, “Which one do you like?”
There is usually a correct answer.
You just have to find it quickly.

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

Date: 16/08/2026
All Rights Reserved by the Author

On the western side of Madagascar lies one of the strangest landscapes on Earth: Tsingy de Bemaraha.
The Malagasy word tsingy is associated with the sharp limestone formations that dominate this extraordinary landscape. Here, erosion has carved the rock into a vast forest of narrow pinnacles, deep gorges and dramatic stone formations.
Some of the limestone pinnacles rise to around 100 metres, creating a landscape that looks almost impossible—part natural cathedral, part stone forest.
But the real wonder is not only geological.
The forests, lakes and mangrove areas around the limestone formations provide habitat for rare and endangered wildlife, including several species of lemurs and birds.
UNESCO recognises the region for both its exceptional natural beauty and its remarkable biodiversity. The Tsingy landscape forms part of Madagascar’s Andrefana Dry Forests World Heritage property.
Madagascar has been isolated for millions of years, allowing life there to evolve in remarkably distinctive ways.
It is a reminder that nature does not need to imitate anything elsewhere.
Sometimes, it creates a world entirely of its own.

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

#HeritageStories #Madagascar #Tsingy #Nature #Africa #ConverseWithASmile

Date: 16/08/2026
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“Not all those who wander are lost.”
— J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
A road does not always need to lead directly to a destination.

Sometimes we take a turn because something catches our attention. We stop somewhere unexpected. We meet someone we had never planned to meet. We discover a place that was never on the itinerary.
Years later, those unplanned moments may be among the ones we remember most clearly.
Life is rarely as straight as the maps we draw for it.
A detour may slow us down, but it may also show us something the direct road could never have revealed.
Perhaps the important thing is not always knowing exactly where we are going.
Sometimes it is having enough faith to keep walking.

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

Date: 15/08/2026
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A little boy once went onto his terrace with a kite on Independence Day.
He struggled for several minutes.
The kite rose, dipped, twisted, and finally landed on the neighbour’s roof.
He looked at his father.
His father laughed.
“Try again.”
The second attempt lasted longer.
The third went higher.
By sunset, the kite was dancing above the rooftops.
The boy looked up proudly.
His father said nothing.
He simply stood beside him.
Perhaps that is how many of life’s journeys begin.
A little hope.
A little failure.
Someone beside us saying, “Try again.”
And then, one day, the thing that refused to fly begins to rise.
Happy Independence Day.

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