Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog got it badly wrong when he looked at his shadow this week. Six more weeks of winter? We are still in winter? Yes, I know it is February and normally the peak of winter, but this year winter seems to have made a guest appearance. There is practically no snow on…
If you are like me, the only time you have ever met an Amish person is when you have stopped off to look at the sturdy furniture they make. You are fascinated and mystified at their 1800s lifestyle (no electricity, cars or phones, or even indoor plumbing) but don’t know a whole lot more about…
Another year, another desi kid wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a few reports appear in the newspapers, and otherwise the event is mostly forgotten. There are the usual gaggle of desi participants – a third of the semi-finalists had desi origins, and for the fourth year in a row, the winner was an Indian-American…
In the past, I’ve written about theft from passengers’ bags by baggage handlers in Indian airports, and the mysterious chalk marks used by customs officials to mark certain bags for special treatment. Little did I know that singling out NRIs for stealing from their bags is an international practice. According to this news article, Michael…
Much is being made in Indian newspapers of A R Rahman’s two Oscar nominations (Original Score and Original Song). Nobody has seen “127 hours” or knows anything about the score or the song, but it’s an Oscar nomination! We will be even more thrilled if he wins in at least one of these categories. All…
A lot of people are going to wonder at Meg Whitman losing her bid for California Governor, despite spending about $140 million of her own money. I believe it’s the other way round – she lost precisely because she spent $14o million of her money. Here is why: 1. Voters seem to be feeling quite…
The other day I received a call from a man with a strong desi accent who identified himself as “Joseph from the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC”. I have my strong suspicions that FCC officials don’t randomly call people soliciting Do Not Call registry sign-ups, but he had a desi accent, so I decided to…
Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue”, which I read recently, is a fascinating book in many ways. The book told me so many things about Sarah Palin that I had never suspected before. For instance: 1. Sarah Palin writes beautifully. She writes much better than how she speaks or twitters. Sample this (and all this in just…
It was just a generation ago that women fought for the right to wear pants. Even a few years back, many companies in the US considered business formal attire for women to mean a skirt suit (i.e. a jacket and a skirt) rather than a pantsuit. Business formal aside, many women in the older generation…
Dear New York Times Contributor, The next time you plan to renovate the only bathroom you have in your apartment, consider these options: 1. Please stay in a hotel; 2. Stay with friends/ neighbors/relatives; 3. Take a vacation and travel somewhere; 4. Did I mention – stay in a hotel? Whatever you decide to do,…
There are a few things that stood out in Joel Stein’s Time article on the Indianization of Edison, New Jersey, his hometown : 1. There is the casual, drive-by racism: One kid I knew in high school drove down an Indian-dense street yelling for its residents to “go home to India.” In retrospect, I…
It was noon when we reached the Post Office. After processing the mailing label for our parcel, the man at the counter asked us casually,”Did you have any chance to catch the football this morning?” We gaped at him. He said “football” which could only mean NFL. Surely he meant “soccer”? R told him about…
The Imagined Universe 