I’m currently reading Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games, set in modern day Mumbai.  It’s led me to research the geography of India, to see which state Mumbai is in and what languages they speak.  There’s a glossary at the back of the book to teach me words I do not understand. I feel the tensions between the […]

We took our little dog for a walk in the park last weekend, and as we were leaving, I looked out the window and said, “Golly, are those men playing cricket?” And indeed, they were.
Cricket may have originated in England, but it comes to Dallas/Fort Worth by way of India. Certainly, imperialism has its evils, […]

My first review for The Armchair Traveler Reading Challenge takes us to the three Indian states of Punjab, West Bengal and Maharashtra, with a brief trip to the beach in Goa.
Monica Pradhan’s The Hindi Bindi Club shares some history, customs and flavors from the various parts of India, flashes of color floating in the melting […]

Something of the divine has touched me this week. I started a new book, Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. A dozen books were waiting on my shelves to be read, and none of them seemed right, until I spotted this one, a recent birthday gift from a dear friend. I felt something akin to […]

The Namesake took me on a journey from India to New England and back to India, and when I put the book down, it guided me forward to Russia.
Gogol’s parents moved from India to the United States, landing in the Boston area, where Gogol’s father taught school. Their early adventures include a small drama around […]

My man used to ask me why our gay friends always wanted to hang out at gay bars. After all, we don’t always want to hang out at straight bars. They should live a little, mix it up, you know?
The reason was obvious to me. People want to hang out where they can be comfortable […]

I’m not sure who “they” are, but they say that with good writing, the writer disappears, so you never think about technique; you just get swept away in the story. I really enjoyed Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, but I was a little distracted for the first few chapters, because everything was happening in the present […]

I love to watch Mira Nair’s movies, especially the ones filled with the color and beauty of India, like Monsoon Wedding and Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love. One movie she directed that didn’t take place in India was Vanity Fair, but it too had her color and beauty infused into it.
I had a problem […]

It seems the founders of my little Dallas suburb were fans of literature, just like me. After all, they named the town after “America’s first man of letters,” Washington Irving. Credited with creating the short story, Irving was from New York City and served as a US ambassador in England and Spain.
Nowadays, there’s a very […]

Lots of people in the US are fascinated with India. It was the birthplace of Buddhism and other such Eastern philosophies. Yoga is huge among the Burkinstock crowd, and even Madonna is doing it. Then there’s the whole tantric philosophy espoused by such great individuals as Sting and Scarlett Johansson (rumor has it).
I live in […]