On the 24th day of my pandemic isolation, I learned my Pishi, my auntie, had died in her home in Kolkata. The news was not wholly unexpected – she had been ill and suffering for many months. But nonetheless, a dread bore down on me so hard that it made me wonder if I had contracted the virus. How would I ever go home … Continue reading Remembering Pishi: I’ve lost a role model, confidante and second mother
I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been busy. In the months since my last post, I quit my job at CNN, moved to Gainesville, Florida, and began teaching writing and reporting classes at the University of Florida. Life changing, for sure. Now that I am a bit more settled, I plan to resume this blog once again. Hopefully, it will get a shiny, new … Continue reading Hiatus over. I’m back with a heartbreaking story from Florida
I heard Andrew Young say this morning that it’s a waste of time to protest Confederate monuments. That energy, he said on NPR’s Morning Edition, should be reserved to continue the struggle to end poverty and the racial injustice that still exists in America. Young’s position was perhaps unexpected given his vast experience in civil rights. Young marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., became … Continue reading Civil rights leader takes heat for stand on Confederate monuments
I thought I was in Amsterdam until I sat down to dine at Kantjil & de Tijger on Spruistracht. On the menu was an Indonesian feast: Pangsit Goreng, Ajam Sereh Pedis and Oteh Oteh. I ordered a sampling of savory stuff. Hadn’t eaten since breakfast and had walked all over the canal city. I was hungry. Just as I’d finished dinner, a couple of guys … Continue reading Which country is this?
I am turning 50 this week. Whoa. Seriously? The big 50? Seems like yesterday that I was bragging about not being 40 yet. Not that I am freaking out. My 20s were maniacal. My 30s, wondrous in discovery. My 40s were terrific — sorry to be leaving them. But I am truly looking forward to the 50s. My friends who have all turned officially old … Continue reading The BIG 50
It seems that in every football pool, I pick near the bottom of the first round. Funny how that works, eh? The big guns were all beyond my grasp – again. So in Euro Cup 2012, I picked Ukraine. Yulia Tymoshenko in her signature braids. Photo from The Guardian. They are the home team, after all. Who knows? Maybe their fans will boost … Continue reading Team Tymoshenko
The earliest versions of chess originated in ancient India but it wasn’t until Viswanathan Anand did my homeland claim its first grandmaster. The 42-year-old just won another world championship this week in Moscow. No. 5, to be exact. His unmatched prowess on the board now undisputed. Tied at six-six after 12 regular games, Anand and his challenger Boris Gelfand faced off in a tiebreaker, which Anand … Continue reading Of kings, queens and heroes
Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins in the 1960s “Dark Shadows.” In the late 1960s, we lived for a while in a rented house on Adams Circle in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Every afternoon, I walked home from Whittier Elementary and plopped myself down on the living room couch, waiting anxiously for Baba to return home from university. My father was a brilliant man, a mathematical thinker … Continue reading Barnabas and Baba
The place where you spend your formative years can draw you back with the pull of a magnet to metal. Or it can repel, the desire to divorce yourself from prickly memories trumping all else. I have a difficult relationship with Tallahassee, the small north Florida city where my family landed in the mid-1970s. A place that was largely black and white then and had … Continue reading Tallahassee
