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…
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…
[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…
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…
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…
I joined the State Bank of India or SBI as a probationary officer in October 1975, my disservice beginning in Hyderabad for ten days of lavish food and accommodation, brain nuggets, wisdom, and sass from such bigwigs as the Chairman, R.K. Talwar, and a Deputy Managing Director in whose perfectly polished shoes you could see…
So how did that terrified and frail boy in the top right corner get to publishing this ballsy, boisterous, establishment-defying novel (see image on the bottom) 30 years later? In a way, I never knew childhood at all, except for a few memories when I was 5, and a few summer holidays, and some games…
Exactly 20 years ago, on October 8, 1999, my father John Baptist Crasta, former Prisoner of War, author of a war memoir, and father of four children, breathed his last in the S.C.S. Hospital, Mangalore, India. In his army career, he had seen action in Singapore and Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, besides Papua New…
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