How Much is Too Much? The price of pushing kids to attain elite status.
I am an English professor. That means that after thirteen years of elementary and high school, four years of university, and seven more years of graduate
Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan
Anxieties About English
My mother was an English major. After earning her B.A. from a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, she started working on a Ph.D., also in English. R
On Writing the Acknowledgments
This month, I finish my Ph.D dissertation (a dissertation that is really speaking only the first draft of an eventual book, and therefore not “finished” at
Anatomy of a Mugging
On March 1st, when my daughter, Mrinalini, and I were coming home from school on a bright, late-winter afternoon, we were mugged. I use the word advisedly. Mugg
To My Uncle Shashi Tharoor on his 60th Birthday
I’m sorry I shut the window on your fingers, curved around the frame of the steel car door. It was an accident; I didn’t know how quickly the automatic glas
On the Difficulty of Making Friends
The scene is a winter party, Chicago, the year 2015. There are large platters of powdered cookies and plates of soft cheese. There is an eight-quart stockpot of
Snoring Shanmugam, and Other Cautionary Tales
I spend much of my time reading, always have. When I was in elementary school, I even read during recess, sitting alone by the tanbark box, hoping not to be hai
There Lived a Certain Man in Russia Long Ago
On a Friday night in Chennai in September 2015, we go with friends to drink gin and eat Jack Daniels chicken at 10 Downing Street. Styled as a British pub, 10 D
Chasing the Dissertation Mouse
He showed up in May, a flash of fur and tail that my husband mistook for a cockroach and my mother identified swiftly as a mouse. He came flying out of my home
A Letter to My Husband After My First Weekend Home Alone
You’re probably not supposed to feel elated when your husband and two year old leave on a family trip without you, but I did. Thursday, after I dropped you bo
The Order of Things
On June 25, four and a half months shy of her 99th birthday, my great-grandmother, M. (Mundarath) Jayasankhini, took her final sips of milk from the hands of he
You Lose It In A Generation
You lose it in a generation. My parents came to the United States young (my mother was a teenager) and separately. They met in upstate New York, in graduate sch
