Category: Reflections

Faith, Hope and Love

I was invited to be the Keynote speaker by Farmingdale State College Multicultural Committee at their annual gala. Following is my full keynote.

Mar 19th in Venice

I left India and flew back to America to my empty life. I got back into work. Amidst nightmares of losing Didi and days of bawling with grief, I somehow planned a trip – to spend Didi’s birthday; Mar 19th in Venice. Human beings are strange.

A ball, A cop and John Lennon’s Imagine

As the year passed, we discovered a phenomenon called “New Year’s Eve at Times Square”. It was all anyone would talk about – the exhilaration of the countdown leading to the ball drop and the romance of kissing a lover under a rain of confetti to the tune of John Lennon’s Imagine reminding us to live for today.

To My Santa

It was Christmas morning and I had just woken up. I was 8 years old and had never received a Christmas gift before in my life..

“Earl Gray Moment”

What tea would you like?” asked the waitress as she flipped open the top of a tea box in front of us.

“English Breakfast” said I AND Mark, almost in unison.


I looked at Mark and said “English Breakfast?”

Human No. 1

It was love at first sight. There she was, walking surreptitiously across the garden, up the steps of our deck, watching every movement around her; ready to scuttle away if I so much as breathed. She was tiny and I guessed no more than 6 weeks old. She was also skinny and wet and bedraggled, […]

Re-thinking Ginger Rogers

I am listening to my brilliant and menopausal acting coach as she goes through another oneof her hot flashes. “For a couple of minutes my brain shuts down. All I can think of is I amon fire. And I am panicking because I am in the middle of an audition which makes me feeleven hotter…“ […]

J.K. Rowling f***ing ruined my life

I stood in the corridor of a Delhi hospital watching the live feed of a Colonoscopy in progress. My sister; the love of my life, the red in my painting, the bread on my plate; was in the exam room getting a Colonoscopy. For the first few minutes of the procedure, everything had looked as […]

A Little Girl’s Odyssey

Once upon a time, there lived a little girl who dreamt to fly,
so very high
that…errrr…uhmmm… yes…very high indeed.

Little did she know, the highway to the stars was bumpy,
pitted and lumpy
this was told in some tales, the ones she didn’t’ read.

I can’t turn the page

I imagine us living on Broadway, both of us
She uptown, I downtown, I could take the train or the bus
And even if no train or bus would take me to her place,
there is at least a straight, known path to her space…

I sit down to write

I sit down to write. Never really sure if I weave a story or if it’s the story that weaves me It is creative some days but agonizing in many ways Some agonies just agonies of the art but others are peculiar to my heart. They say good stories come from heart’s deepest recesses whence […]

Glacier

When she died, I thought I had an ocean in my eyes an ocean that would never dry up no matter how many salty tears it cries. Years passed. The wound sealed. Somehow I lived. My innards steeled. Yesterday I cried again the ocean in my eyes spilled the taste of tears on my lips […]