SARITA SARVATE, May 08, 2008 Until recently, I liked Barack Obama more because I liked Hillary Clinton less. When I voted for him in the California Primary, I was still wondering if he was electable. My racial memory told me … Continue reading
Whenever Hillary Clinton touts her “experience,” an imaginary mockumentary plays in my head. In it, I am walking into a high rise building in downtown San Francisco, dressed in a power suit. I have an interview for the position of … Continue reading
In the last 30 years, whenever I went back to India, one of two moods invariably overcame me: a feeling of total relaxation or that of total despair. For the first decade and a half after I arrived on these … Continue reading
Growing up in India, my ambition was to learn French, the language of the intellectuals. It seemed rather a chic thing to do. Marathi translations of Emile Zola had revealed to me a world so fascinating that I wanted to … Continue reading
The word “playwright” has always evoked for me one name: George Bernard Shaw. I discovered Shaw, or GBS as most Brits would call him, in 1975, after borrowing his Collected Works from the British Council Library. I would pull a … Continue reading
Ok. I will fess up to the truth. I have been watching The Sopranos. Ironically, the show hardly entered my consciousness during its run because I refused to pay for HBO and because I do not watch crime dramas. But … Continue reading
I have always loved camping. My first exposure to camping was in graduate school at U.C. Berkeley, when my classmates took me to Yosemite National Park. Sleeping bags, tents, and camping stoves were new discoveries for me then. That first … Continue reading
Indian-American collaboration symbolizes cultural colonization? I was driving across the country on Interstate 40 with a Jewish classmate in a beat-up Toyota Corolla during my first American summer, when my friend asked, “What do you wear in India if you … Continue reading
There is a Marathi saying, “kelyane deshatana, pandita maitri, sabheta sanchar …” I can’t quite remember the second half, but the first part can be roughly translated as follows: Traveling abroad, the company of learned people, and attendance at intellectual … Continue reading
When I was in high school, my best friend Chitra and I won a debating trophy. We had traveled by cycle rickshaw to a vernacular school in the old part of Nagpur, dressed in uniforms of navy blue skirts and … Continue reading