A Medley with Rupee 1
This essay won the Barbra Naidu Memorial Prize for Personal Essay 2020 in the open category. The theme was Making Do. The judge, noted writer and journalist, Samanth Subramanian has...
The Day We Made Water Fly
Ajji used to make everything a game. The most fun one I can remember is changing the piece of plastic stuck over the stitches on her stomach, so that they...
Nkosi Sikelel Malayalees *
*God Bless the Malayalees “You can expect to find a Malayalee in every nook and corner of the world”, is accurate for my family tree. My great grandfather worked in...
The Rising Hill
I hail from Darjeeling, a small town, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayan region in West Bengal. My family has been living here for 65 years now. Originally, our...
In Blocked Letters
You, the speaker, are distinct from you, the listener. And sometimes you just loathe (or love) what’s going on in your head so much, you need to put in words, maybe read later, maybe get other people to endure the abstractions up there.
Untold histories paint poor pictures
Albin Fernando was my great grandfather and the editor of the newspaper ‘Tamil Mani’. He was known to be a daring reporter in Tamil Nadu during the ‘50s & ‘60s...
My Ammachi’s kitchen is not in the corner of the house
Kitchens are always accused of curbing women’s freedoms but I learnt how to own things here – words, thoughts, my body, and my mistakes. In that sense, kitchens are liberating to me.
Father, Son and the Holy Patriotism
As I ramble through old photos, I make my 2nd phone call in 10 minutes to my now annoyed achacha asking about his life a few decades ago. My ever...