About Tahir Shah: Tahir Shah is an Anglo-Afghan Indian author, journalist and documentary maker. He lives in Casablanca, Morocco.
Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside us al, dulled by endless television reruns and by a society that reins in fantasy as something not to be trusted, something to be purged. But it's in there, deep inside, a spark waiting t...
We had the kind of conversations that only great friends can ever share. They were touched with magic.
To be selfless, you would give charity anonymously, walj softly on the earth, and look out for others-even total strangers-before you look out for yourself. For the Arab mind, the self is an obstacle, an impediment, in humanity's quest foe real progr...
To Succeed, you must reach for the stars, and let your imagination find its own path
I believe that Marrakech ought to be earned as a destination. The journey is the preparation for the experience. Reaching it too fast derides it, makes it a little less easy to understand.
My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charge...
There is nothing like a train journey for reflection.
Stories are a communal currency of humanity.
My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to -- because, given the right conditions, the stories activated, sowing themselves.
Stories are not like the real world; they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.
A journey of observation must leave as much as possible to chance. Random movement is the best plan for maximum observation
Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.
There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades.
A cross between a foreign legion boot-camp and a secret-society initiation ritual, the ordeals were grounded in pain. One thing was obvious: the agenda, which was dedicated to grave discomfort, had been drawn up by a passionate sadist.
The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer ha...
The pursuit of illusion is not about studying for prizes, or for study's sake. There's no right or wrong, no pass or fail.
My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it.
Where does one go in a tremendous city like Calcutta to find insider information? I recalled India's golden rule: do the opposite of what would be normal anywhere else.
Calcutta's the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat.
Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.
