Issue 45-46

It is easy to see why – the whole area literally sits on a soft limestone bedrock, and the elements have carved into it hundreds of bigger and smaller holes.

You rarely see wall cupboards like the one in Gayatri Manchanda's studio. From its depths the petite woman produces, one after another, canvases that portray the domes of St Vasiliy the Blessed Cathedral in Moscow, blue wild donkeys in a greenand- red landscape, a couple of abstract compositions, portraits of women, and a landscape with copper-red buildings against the backdrop of a black sky through which soars a golden aeroplane.

We're kids. We catch ten red ants in a match box. They are "the baddies." We throw them like storm troops on to the nest of quite smaller black ants who are "the goodies." We watch the vicious battle close up. With a matchstick I push back any red deserter into the acid of the battle field. I love the role of God. My matchstick is everywhere.

We are out on the ice at the edge of the shantytown that resurrects itself here each winter. Vic is padlocking the door to his shanty. Like everyone else, he's painted his name and town on the side as is required by law. But unlike everyone else, he's added his street address, state, and zip code. And below that, in letters a foot high, he's spray-painted EARTH! in bright red.

"Tomrush is a picturesque village, with grey-roofed houses clustering on the side of a steep ravine; but its beauty has been marred by the wholesale destruction of the surrounding forest," James Bourchier, a reporter for The Times, wrote in the early 20th Century. The village is just a few kilometres from Plovdiv, in the northern Rhodope, but to get there Bourchier had to cross the border into the Ottoman Empire, escorted by Bulgarian soldiers.