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
Ayodhya is big enough for both a mosque and a temple The latest bomb blasts in Mumbai have prompted Indian politicians to hurl a new set of accusations at Pakistani leaders. But to many observers, this recent spate of violence … 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 only female voice heard worldwide has been that of Arundhati Roy, who labeled the war the “coalition of the bullied and the bought.” The Iraqi war has been running on testosterone. George W. and his coterie of blue-suited white … Continue reading
For my children, the Iraqi war has blurred the boundaries between fantasy and reality. My kids are hypnotized by newspaper pictures of Pentagon war simulators, just as they are fascinated by video games like Mortal Kombat on their computers. They … Continue reading
President George Bush claims to be on a mission to eliminate terrorism and promote democracy around the world. If this were really the case, Indians at home and abroad would be overjoyed, on both counts. For, India happens to be … Continue reading
How can a continent of dowries and female infanticide produce so many successful female Indian scientists, authors and explorers? PNS contributor Sarita Sarvate writes that, surprisingly, many contemporary Indian women may have more freedom than their counterparts in the United … Continue reading
Iraq war will play to a Hollywood scrip It was on a business trip to Texas recently that I finally realized how deeply American culture is mired in wars and heroes. While Congress was deliberating a resolution to attack Iraq, … Continue reading
When I was growing up in India, the word “satta” was synonymous with the word “jugar.” The former referred to stocks, while the latter meant gambling. Owning stocks and gambling money were considered vices that only the lowliest creatures indulged … Continue reading
Traveling from her California home to her native India, an educated woman arrives at her father’s funeral rite and sees how far she has come despite a “dishonorable” past that included a divorce. Her father lived on the margins of … Continue reading