Category: Blog
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I Love Golf, Hate its Culture
I love the game of golf. I love the paradox of its simple complexity. I love the way it challenges my inner demons. I love the fact that the golf course is the one place where I am extremely patient with myself (not so patient when idiots ignore the etiquette of the game). As an…
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Introduction of Kal Penn (Indian Cultural Dinner at Illinois State University, April 22, 2014)
Obviously most college students would know Kal Penn from his role as Kumar on the Harold & Kumar movies or from the TV show House. Personally, I remember him from the wonderful adaptation of Jhumpa Laihiri’s incandescent novel The Namesake, a story about Indian immigrants and the constant struggle to assimilate. But, as I’m sure…
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Teaching Online??
At the risk of offending my employers and colleagues I cannot wrap my mind around online teaching. I realize that it’s a modern version of the old “degree by correspondence,” but I even found that to be problematic. So am I just a fuddy-duddy traditionalist” mired in the past, unable to come to terms with…
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Heady Bangkok!
Every morning at 6am, as the city raised its sleepy torso under a humid blanket, I would set out for a brisk walk on the campus of Srinakharinwirot University (try rolling that on your tongue), the fragrance of spices from nearby canteens and cafeterias wafting towards me on day-breaking slivers of light. Ah, it felt…
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Artistic Contests–A Paradox
Ever since The Dionysia in ancient Greece, competitions have been part of the artistic landscape—theatre and music competitions, painting and sculpture prizes; novels, poems, short stories, etc., all judged so that one may be deemed better than the rest; the list is endless. We have just entered the arts competition season—Golden Globes, Oscars, Grammys, Emmys,…
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Death of an Artist
The agony of time and distance is sometimes unleashed furiously upon the soul. I was browsing through some news reports when I read this phrase: “the late Chetan Datar…” Late??? How? When? I knew this man; met him on my last visit to Mumbai in 2001, when I was making a documentary about theatre in…
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An Indian Christmas
Christmas in India, a predominantly Hindu nation, is a very interesting festival. The country is so diverse, with a myriad of cultures each with its own language, food, clothing, and traditions, that I am always loath to describe any part of it for fear of suggesting a generalization that doesn’t hold true for the rest;…
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We are Penn State!
After the initial tremors of the Penn State sexual scandal had rippled away I realized that a little retrospection revealed a somber analysis that is unfortunately not surprising at all. The actions of a perverted coach, while egregious in the extreme, were not the main scandal here; the cover-up that enabled him to destroy so…
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Raising Cain–Then Downing Him!
It took Herman Cain’s sexually inappropriate behavior to threaten his candidacy. The man who has no experience in government, in fact whose chief “qualification” seems to be that he is not a politician (in a time when some sections of the electorate are leaning towards electing a non-politician to political office, and that the highest…
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When Foul is Fair
“To My Mind, to Kill in War is not a Whit Better than to Commit Ordinary Murder”–Einstein When U.S-born Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were killed by our government a few weeks ago there was in some quarters a mild tone of rumbling dissent, but the overwhelming response seemed to be a collective sigh of…