I wish I could recall the exact moment when I first became aware of an author named Alice Munro. Perhaps it was years ago in the New Yorker that I read one of her stories. I wish I could remember … Continue reading
I was driving by the local middle school the other day, when I noticed a group of students huddling around the platform of the school flagpole, lighting candles, pasting handmade cards, arranging flowers in vases. I pulled up, wondering if … Continue reading
Apparently there is a new documentary out about Deep Throat. Not Bob Woodward’s secret source dubbed “Deep Throat” in the Watergate investigation, but about that other, equally infamous Deep Throat, the movie, which made Linda Lovelace a household name. The … Continue reading
Just as I was beginning to think that P.G. Wodehouse was dated and that most people in the English speak-ing world could no longer remember who he was or what he had written, I came upon an essay in a … Continue reading
Coming home from work late one evening re-cently, I found myself teary-eyed and ex-hausted. It was the day after the election and I was bemoaning the fact that we now had a killer-robot for a governor. I was sad, too, … Continue reading
… if I am mainstream, who will be on the margins? 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 … Continue reading
The recent news-story about the 12-year-old girl who was impregnated by her 17-year-old brother, possibly through rape, once again brought home to me the inability of most Indians to deal with the subject of sex. The parents in this case … Continue reading
The gravest mistake Americans could make right now is to dismiss the need for a national soul-searching over our social mores as a whim of the religious right. Sarita Sarvate is a writer who was born and raised in India. … Continue reading
I can still close my eyes and smell the air on that bright June morning as I came out of the pediatrician’s office in tears, reeling from the news that my son was hyperactive and would need medication when he … Continue reading