Reflections from a nerd and proud “nobody.” — Having been born and grown up in a land of marvelous and awe-inspiring mythological stories, I am no stranger to tales of beings with supernatural powers. These stories from my childhood featured immortal and mortal individuals with extraordinary abilities, their interactions with ordinary humans, their feats of great strength, endurance…

A monsoon in my eyes, a tempest in my heart — It was raining hard that warm autumn afternoon. The ambient heat was nowhere as oppressive as in summer in the plains, relieved only by cloudbursts. Nor was the sky dark, gloomy, gravid with stormy monsoon showers. I stepped out onto the street sans umbrella; rain pouring from a hazy, sunlit sky drenched me cap-à-pie, water streaks down my cheeks perfectly concealing two streams of tears. Unfathomable emotions welled up inside my chest, threatening to suffocate me unless I had that lachrymose release of my grief.

Emerald jubilee Courtyard, dimly lit. Spots seeking light outnumber Exhausted streetlamps. Delhi winter chill: Miasma descends at dusk, Himalayan winds. Comfy in covers, Hazy faces mill about Minding own business. Heedless of the crowd, Arm in arm stand you and I Wrapped in a bubble. Straining eager ears, Moon peeks from…

A rose likely transcends the limitations of its name. Me, not so much. It was the third week of April. I was about to begin a brand new chapter in my professional life in a new and hithertofore unknown city—the Bronx, NY, no less! — some 8,000-odd miles away from…

You are like the scribe to my soul, Preeti. I've never felt more seen. To this day, I have never heard my mom swear. My dad's favorite road-rage expression was the Bangla equivalent of "piglet." While growing up in Kolkata, I was never specifically taught about Bangla swear words, whether…

Vignette of a daily twilight ritual in our backyard The day wears on, as days do, and even the tenacious hangers-on amongst the twilight’s photons finally take their leave. Both the streetlamp near our house and an array of porch lights hanging over the back doors of several neighbors stand…

Nature writer unshackling, budding in the backyard — The season is early winter, the day, a weekend, and the time, mid-morning, bright and sunny. I sit down in our porch/sunroom in the august company of our feline fur-babies and peek outside through the large glass panes with the express purpose of watching nature —partly at the insistence of…

“Give me your tired, your poor… Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — Conditions Apply. (With apologies to Emma Lazarus.) — “How much did you have to pay the Rabbis to get into this place?” — “This place” being New York city’s Yeshiva University, whose medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx, I was about to join as a postdoctoral fellow. My interlocutor was a uniformed US…

“It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should be only organized dust.” — Mary Wollstonecraft (1795) — It was an early August morning in Kolkata — my hometown, a metropolitan city in eastern India — when I drove my father-in-law, upon his request, to one of the embankments of Ganges, the Holy River, which demarcates the western border of the city.