September 22, 2019

This is a thought that has occurred to me, on and off, right from the time Salman Rushdie issued an apology for The Satanic Verses. And it returns, as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologizes for his various instances of blackface–though books are a very different kettle of fish from crude actions such as blackfacing….

July 12, 2019

I am surprised to realize the number of Harry Belafonte songs I heard as a child: “Day-O”, “Island in the Sun,” “Jamaica Farewell,” (which I can still remember and sing) and “Mama Look a Boo Boo” (which I only knew two lines of). I may forget, almost instantly, the name of a person I’ve just…

February 25, 2019

Barry Fruchter, an English professor at Nassau Community College in Long Island, reviewed the first, rather rough edition of Eaten by the Japanese: The Memoir of an Unknown Indian Prisoner of War in 1998, and though I have quoted paragraphs from it before, the complete review itself deserves nothing less than full publication and reading,…

December 7, 2018

We take so many things for granted. Life, breath, movement, the smooth operation of our four limbs. Until something happens to us to remind us of our fragility, that we are just bits of self-conscious cosmic dust floating around the universe. And something did happen to me: it was a long and painful mess. But…

August 14, 2018

“I didn’t know that Indians were allowed to write like this!” remarked one of three young Indians  (who had recently read The Revised Kama Sutra and Impressing the Whites, located my email address, and gotten in touch with me in Delhi in 2002–around the time that V.S. Naipaul, was being feted in Delhi). Like them,…

July 8, 2017

Imagine living in a world with just one mirror, a mirror that is permanently fogged up except for one square centimeter of clear space in which you must see yourself. That’s what you are risking when you take that first benzodiazepine pill, and particularly if you use it nonstop for three weeks or more. Russell’s…