Homage To Catalonia
In a Barcelona hotel room, I suffered a nervous breakdown. Almost. Why was I roaming the far reaches of the planet, I wondered, where many Indian women dared no
Last Word
Death of a”Saanjhi” Beti
As part of a grieving global community I mourn equally the loss of the seven astronauts. But as a mother of three girls, I somehow feel as though in Kalpana Cha
Will the Da VinciCode Mania Ever End?
At the outset, I must confess one thing; I love mysteries. Many of my literary friends consider mystery a genre deserving the label of trash. But I love a good
Politics in Education
It was when I was helping my older son with his middle-school homework that I first came across a tome titled A Message of Ancient Days. So I read about Mesopot
To Be or Not to Be Nice
I said to a friend the other day, “I wish I were a really nice person!” “But you are nice!” she replied. I didn’t know quite how to explain what I mea
Festival Season
My childhood memories of Nagpur are marked only by festivals. The onset of monsoon rains heralded Bhulabai, or little Goddess. It was the first festival to dawn
America: Welcome to the Third World
When I first came here from India nearly 30 years ago, Americans often asked me about floods, droughts, and epidemics in my native country. The patronizing tone
Poverty Caused the Tsunami
In the infancy of the 21st century, two sudden human tragedies have found dramatic attention in the global eye: the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the ts
My Brush with Evangelists
When I first came to America, people would ask me why my native country couldn’t get along with its neighbor. After all, memories of India’s three wars with
Waiting for Real Indian Chic
In the late 1970s, when I was sharing a house off of Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley with a bunch of fellow students, I once put some Bollywood music on my portable
Where are the Women?
The Iraqi war has been running on testosterone. George W. and his coterie of blue-suited white men like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft, have go
My Private Mesopotamia
For my children, the Iraqi war has blurred the boundaries between fantasy and reality. My kids are hypnotized by newspaper pictures of Pentagon war simulators,
