January 22, 2024

Here’s a quick follow-up to my previous post on Parkinson’s, and it comes from someone who hasn’t done more than around 150 pages of reading on the subject. I am not a doctor, and though I heard, this morning, from my G.P., that I was a fine patient to have, I accept that as an…

December 31, 2023

Five years after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, I am surprised, delighted, and grateful to be still alive, though life itself, the basic tasks of life, have become five to ten times as hard. 8.5 million sufferers are not incentive enough for Big Pharma companies to invest in research–the potential superprofits are not enough make…

February 8, 2023

Six weeks ago [nearly 10 weeks now], I was in a potentially deadly accident, and had a miraculous escape with only six stitches to my scalp and a few joints and my back in deep pain, bruises in around six different places. After 2–4 weeks of rest, physical therapy, and x-rays, I am grateful to…

December 29, 2022

My name is … my name is … not Slim Shady, but Richard Crasta or Benny Profane or Vijay Prabhu. Paperbacks Currently Available From Amazon and from the admirable Barnes & Noble, and more on the way. (By the way, don’t give up when Amazon tries to distract you by giving you alternative choices or…

October 26, 2022

[The story of what happened before my novel “The Revised Kama Sutra” was published by Viking Penguin India. [from “The Killing of an Author””} One of the two editors who had been holding out (the other being Morgan Entrekin of Atlantic Monthly Press), and one who according to Harriet had almost offered and then changed…

February 28, 2022

Are You a Madrasi? [An Excerpt from the memoir by John Baptist Crasta, Eaten by the Japanese. This scene takes place in Rabaul, New Britain, in a Japanese POW camp.] I had an attack of malaria in the first week of July 1943. I could not get even a drop of hot water. There on…

July 5, 2021

Here it goes, the Top Ten plus a few songs of the Master (that mind-blowing genius called Bob Dylan) that have most moved me, or that I can sing along with, or that make me laugh. Because it’s so hard to choose only ten, I may add a few more, as part of a shortlist…