Remembering Inayat
It is not a long time back and it feels very close, not like yesterday or an hour back. It felt like now. My thoughts were swimming across salty seas and cold currents, every moment I changed, the...
Category: Essays
On “Defiance,” Israel, and the “Jews Run Hollywood” Line
Maybe it’s art imitating life, or life imitating art, but Hollywood couldn’t have timed the British release date of "Defiance" any better if they tried. On January 9, as people queued to see...
Look, it’s an Orphan Soul Hanging like a Dead Crow from the Tree!
Every time I visit a supermarket or a mall to buy something, I come away with a sense of guilt because invariably I am holding a plastic carry bag like a dead rabbit. I say dead rabbit because a...
Lessons of a Lonely F. O. B.
Lonely people like to believe that animals don't think for themselves. This makes it easier to convince yourself that all the seagulls in the world all share one brain between them. This, in turn,...
Are We Cool Yet?
When my brother-in-law went to pick up his ten-year old daughter Giovanna at a birthday party, he found her cavorting on top of a loudspeaker, strutting her stuff à la go-go dancer. Amused and a...
Love on the Moon and Other Stories
Hannibal Lecter: And how do we begin to covet…we begin by coveting what we see.. Personally I find this relevant, very relevant in fact in the context of beautiful women. This time when a pretty...
McCain the postmodern candidate
Tom Brokaw was on Charlie Rose the other day and he said that Barack Obama could be our first "postmodern" president. Brokaw admitted that the didn't know what postmodernism was, but whatever it was,...
Faith and the Village Pond: the anti-Christian violence in Orissa
Suffering has an uncanny fondness for poverty; it seeks and locates people living on the brink of survival only to push them further towards the precipice. In a place where reaching adulthood through...
When Hope Floats and the Light at the End of the Tunnel is Nuclear Powered
Governance in my country suffers a tragic death every moment. It is drowned, it is smothered, it is stabbed, it is genetically altered, it is poisoned with sweet candy and it is given the quietest of...
America, Victorious
One late night during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, as the swimmer Michael Phelps smashed yet another world record, I walked through Philadelphia thinking over its history and was struck by how well...