Tea strainer at the local, friendly, lesbian-run megacafé:

The base for Tibetan prayer wheels in Central Square, Cambridge, say ‘dream’ in Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil and Gujarati. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure it’s not Berkeley:

I’m sorry, Mr. Vassanji. I adore your short stories, but your novels move so slowly, they drive me batty. I gave up on your latest a hundred pages in. A refined reader like Jabberwock is what you deserve.
But I did spy one intriguing passage, the reason why I picked up The Assassin’s Song. And it […]

I was sitting in a Davis Square café the other night when a tall, shambling desi dude wearing a corduroy jacket with arm patches massacred the Shins on open mike night. He called himself Azeem, and he was pretty good with the guitar, but he brought a song with almost every note out of his […]

The Punjabi-owned grocery in Davis Square takes its ethnic grocery responsibilities seriously. It’s tailor-made for those times when you’re dying for some dum aloo, corned beef and Guinness.
Previously: Brownspotting in Davis Maidan

The short-lived Bhoja Café

I’ve lived in plenty of interesting hoods: Williamsburg with its blend of Latino and Polish. The Nuyoricans and Dominicans of Loisaida (Lower East Side). A corner of Harlem with African immigrants, upscale art cafés and a smattering of Caribbean desis, the devout coming bleary-eyed into the mosque at four in the morning […]

Dado Tea in Harvard Square and Tea Zone in Somerville are two of the innumerable specialty tea shops which dot the Boston area. From fancy shops on Newbury Street to the humble Tea Zone, I’ve never seen a place so obsessed with tea, or with such a density of Indian restaurants. It’s almost as if […]

Inman Square by MIT reminds me of those havens of arts and noshing, the Mission in S.F. and Adams Morgan in DC. The Islamic Center:

Punjabi Dhaba usually promises better than it gives: bland samosas and ok-ok chai. But the paranthas bring it.