Something about tackiness of Vegas, even the new casinos like the Wynn, infects even the writing of it. If I told you a girl named Raja dealt blackjack at a local joint, and after escaping with my money, I jogged home past a street named Heaven which dead-ends into a dirt lot, and I did […]
If the next terrorist attack on the U.S. is based inside Pakistan and conducted by terrorists allied with the army, will Obama take out the Pakistani military?
Gerry Bednob (The Forty Year Old Virgin) is currently headlining a show here in Vegas, where I’m at a family reunion. I didn’t know doing bad Indian accents could get you that far without being named Peter Sellers I’ve seen movies about Vegas more times than I’ve visited. There’s a sudden profusion of cheap […]
In recent weeks things have been happening to revive happy memories of my Doordarshan-cocooned childhood. First I discovered Shemaroo DVDs of the beloved TV serial Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, which used to be a Friday-evening fixture in the mid-1980s. Shortly …
Say you come across a tandem bicycle with no chain, no pedals and both ends pointed in opposite directions. ‘Who built this?’ you might wonder. ‘This is asinine.’ But that way madness lies. A tandem bicycle with no chains, no pedals and ends in opposite directions cannot be understood as the work of an intelligent […]
We’ve got one standard for the U.S.:
“… if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights, and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then… we will take them out.” [Obama]
We conceded to Israel the same right of self-defense after it attacked Hamas training camps and arms caches today, killing over […]
Won’t do a detailed post about my favourite books and films of 2008, but here’s a quickly thrown together list. Generally speaking, there was a decline in my reading and (especially) movie-watching this year, but even so there’s been plenty to ch…
(A belated addendum to this post)Or: How banks go from deference to derision in the wink of an eye when they discover that you’re self-employed.The story begins with a call from a bank where I have an account (one that was opened when I was working f…
Overheard recently, an enlightening conversation between my cancer-afflicted nani and her attendant Dolly, a Christian lady. Dolly was relating the story of Christ in shuddh Hindi and at one point the following sentence occurred:“Yeshu ki ma Kumari M…
My friend Amit Varma just finished up his debut novel, My Friend, Sancho, which was longlisted for the Man Asian prize. It’s the tale of a Bombay crime reporter written in Amit’s typically clean style. Here’s an excerpt
I was loafing about at the gym when I saw an NDTV clip flash by. Cool, I thought, they’re paying attention to their desi clientele.
Actually, it was an ESPN program about the two Indian dudes recruited for the Pirates farm team. The clip drips with condescension while a bunch of jocks make fun of how […]
The fiction anthology is now available online (14 of the 15 stories, that is - one was left out of the web version on the author’s request). Here’s the link. Do try to get hold of the print version though - the layout is easier on the eye and the illus…
I grew up assuming the word ‘knickers‘ was an Anglicization of the Hindi ‘nikkar.’ But it turns out they’re the 200-year-old remnants of a viral marketing campaign by a struggling New York author. (This is as far as I’ve been able to trace it, corrections welcome.)
Washington Irving, who later wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, […]
(Carrying this theme forward)Witnessed at the Crossword bookstore in the Select Citywalk mall, just a few minutes before a book reading by Ruskin Bond: a chirpy young TV reporter, mike in hand, asks children facile questions about Ruskin and his books:…