“Happiness writes in white ink on a white page.” The French writer Henry de Montherlant said it; these days, the words have been spilling from Salman Rushdie’s lips as he makes the rounds talking about his new memoir, “Knife: Mediations After an Attempted Murder.” I just started reading the book in which, as the title suggests, Rushdie reflects on matters of life and death after a … Continue reading White ink on a white page
My pandemic isolation began on March 12. At first, I welcomed the days spent alone at home. And though I felt stressed about having to suddenly pivot and shift my classes online, I relished not having to rush out of the house every morning. But as the days turned to weeks and then months, a strange sort of loneliness set in and I found it dangerously easy to slip into a morose mood.
Determined not to spiral downward, I began posting about the things that made me smile in this strange and trying time when the news seemed to get worse by the day. COVID-19 had killed more than 100,000 Americans. Millions were unemployed. Countless businesses shuttered, maybe forever. And then America exploded over police brutality against people of color. The Black Lives Matter movement that had been born years ago was again at the forefront of our collective consciousness. Continue reading “The stories I will live by”
I turned 51 today. Last year was the milestone year. The big 50. I felt OK about it. 50 is the new 40, my older friends told me. I celebrated with a big party. My brother came from Canada, my cousin from New York. My sisters-in-law traveled great distances, too. Then everyone went home and life resumed, no different, really, than before. Today is different. … Continue reading Fifty-one
Hasan Zeya used to boast about how he was still practicing medicine into his early 80s. But at 84, he no longer is happy about his age. His daughter, Rena, passed away last week, days shy of her 52nd birthday. “She did a bad thing. She cut ahead of me in the queue,” he tells me at her funeral Sunday. Tears well in his eyes, … Continue reading Rena
Shonakaka with me, (from right), my cousin Jayanta, my brother, Shantanu, my cousins Sudip and Suman at our grandfather’s house in Kolkata. Circa, 1968. The last time I saw Shonakaka, I knew he was ill. Gone was the mirth; his enormous zest for life reduced to a meager smile. At a family gathering in New Delhi last December, he could hardly eat a thing. Shonakaka was suffering … Continue reading Shonakaka
Wendy at Cafe 640 Last September, my friend Wendy was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma. Breast cancer. Her mammogram nine months earlier was clear. “That’s how fast it can happen,” she wrote on her blog, “which is why I’ve already been pretty open and honest about my story.” I saw Wendy Thursday at a gathering to celebrate her last day of radiation. She announced that … Continue reading Wendy
