India

Cartoons have been art's most common language going on 50 years, ever since Roy Lichtenstein painted Mickey Mouse and Edward Ruscha conjured Little Orphan Annie. Make that 140 years if you believe (as I do) that the brushy, broken, unfinished-surface look of Impressionist paintings was derived from the oil sketches that artists of the French Academy used to map out the slick, highly finished surfaces of their often grandiose canvases. They called those preparatory sketches cartoons, and the Impressionists latched onto their raw energy.

Babulal Mahato hides in paddy fields each night as Indian security forces search for Maoist supporters. Along with dozens of residents of an remote eastern village in West Bengal state, 85-year-old Mahato does the same when the Maoists come. "I am too old, so I hide," said Mahato, his eyes weary after spending many sleepless nights outside. "Many villagers have already left their homes and fled, fearing getting caught between the Maoists and police." In Lalgarh, a cluster of 150 villages, daily rebel ambushes, police raids and civilians caught in the middle may be a sign of things to come as the government prepares an offensive against Maoist insurgents.

A silvery chime breaks the dawn stillness, the gentle summons to meditation. Through the net canopy, which bars Dracula-like mosquitoes from my bed, there is a gauzy view of blue and onyx sky and, if I crane my neck, a ruffled patch of the Bay of Bengal. There is the slap-slap of sandals in the hallway as obedient guests of the Park Guest House head down to meditate at the sea wall bordering the courtyard.

"Jullay! Jullay!" We hear it everywhere, from the breathtaking passes to the giant prayer wheels of Leh. It's a word of welcome with the friendly flexibility of "aloha." "Jullay!" Welcome to Ladakh, or Little Tibet, as it is sometimes called--a land where travelers can find what hardly exists anywhere else: a continuous culture of Tibetan Buddhism dating back more than 1,000 years.

Once upon a time, for a few fleeting hours, I was a god. But it wasn't as much fun as it sounds. Or nearly as ego-gratifying. Back in the 1970s, the overland route from Turkey to India offered a fine catalog of horrors--the sort of experiences travelers find useful in their endless games of agony one-upsmanship. The 5 1/2-month, low-rent grand tour I took at age 19 provided a bountiful sampling.

The way to see Kerala is by boat, in my case a paint-chipped old launch chugging peacefully through 50 miles of the inland canals and narrow lakes that define this sliver of a state on the southwest coast of India. Along the waterways, village life unfolds as it has for centuries on the Malabar Coast. Families harvest coconuts for food, oil and fiber in tidy communities of thatch-roofed buildings settled on tiny spits of land.

The call center job came with a good salary and good perks, especially compared to many other opportunities for young people in India. But as 26-year-old Vaibhav Vats says, it was doing him no good. His weight grew to 265 pounds and long overnight hours gave him little time for a social life. Eventually, he quit. "You are making nice money. But the trade-off is also big," said Vats, who spent nearly two years at an IBM Corp. call center handling customer calls from the United States.

In a sign of how the once-mighty U.S. dollar has fallen, India's tourism minister said that greenbacks would no longer be accepted at heritage tourist sites such as the Taj Mahal. For years the dollar was worth about 50 rupees and tourists visiting most sites in India were charged $5 or 250 rupees. With the dollar at a nine-year low against the rupee -- falling 11% in 2007 and now hovering at about 39 rupees -- that deal has become a losing proposition for the tourism industry.

If France ever decides to call off its revolution and go back to having a king, the line to the throne could begin at the doorstep of a genial, plump Indian man with a name as outsized and incongruous as the massive fleur-de-lis over his porch. Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon would answer the doorbell, and the call of duty, if the French nation needed him. A restoration of the monarchy in France is, of course, improbable.

Walt Disney Co. has reached a deal to more than double its stake in Indian TV and movie content maker UTV, the two firms said, underscoring the U.S. entertainment firm's efforts to expand globally. Disney will raise its holding in UTV Software Communications Ltd. to 32.1%, the same level as UTV's founders, from 14.9%, by acquiring 9.35 million shares for 8.05 billion rupees ($203 million).