麻豆社

Pascale Harter introduces personal stories, insights and wit from 麻豆社 correspondents and writers around the world. In this edition, Celeste Hicks reveals why getting to the bottom of the territorial dispute over Western Sahara can be so difficult. On a recent trip to Laayoune, she explains, even after she'd avoided Moroccan media minders, set agendas and mysterious men tailing her group, it was still hard to know who to believe. Was that talkative man in a market really a local fishmonger ... or a government plant? Meanwhile, in northern India, Anthony Denselow explores the "city of widows": Vrindavan, a place teeming with shrines and temples, and also a haven to thousands of bereaved women. Some come here to worship, others to seek refuge from unsympathetic in-laws. Widowhood is never easy, but some Indian traditions make it even harder. So where to draw the line between asceticism and abuse?