PinnedOde to ParrotMy brother Sanjay graduated from high school in 1991. That same year, my grandfather, or Bada Papa as we called him, was visiting from India. Bada Papa spoke to us in Hindi, which we understood but did not speak. We responded to him in English, which he understood but did…Short Story12 min readShort Story12 min read
Mar 2, 2022“It Was Something”Arnold didn’t know why he agreed to do this. “She’s very kind and a great conversationalist,” his daughters had said. He wasn’t too interested in appearance. His widow Anita had never been a looker. But she, too, had been kind, warm, generous, and always a talker — the only person…Dating5 min readDating5 min read
Feb 21, 2021Wanting Less of Alone…a practice in discontinuity It’s no fun to watch movies alone. It’s like drinking alone. It becomes overly indulgent. Soon hours pass ,and you don’t recall which movie began when. Now, with streaming television and episodics and mini-series, so many characters and storylines overlap. They begin to live on in…Solitude2 min readSolitude2 min read
Jan 23, 2021What Is Boredom?What Is Boredom? Boredom is reading every book on your bookshelves and not enjoying them, and not wanting to read any more, but going to the library to read more to fill your time. Boredom is time times inactivity. Reading is passive, unless you takes notes, outline, read aloud. Boredom…Boredom3 min readBoredom3 min read
Dec 17, 2020“Waking Up from the Dreamt-Up Life”In 2020, the humans woke up and learned that their lives were imagined. Everything that they had valued as crucial had no consequence. They had invented a world with jobs, cars, roads, homes, businesses, and it was all for naught. Some of them had even developed home units called Families…Pandemic2 min readPandemic2 min read
Nov 25, 2020The Acuity of CootiesEvery elementary school class has one — a Pig Pen. The kid who wears tattered clothes, whose butt crack hangs out his pants, whose hair is unwieldy, who never bathes, who picks his nose constantly, who farts at all decibels, who is just simply an uncared for mess. “Uncared for” is key. In second grade, Randy was that kid. Because of Randy, I was often saved from…Childhood3 min readChildhood3 min read
Oct 2, 2020Before COVID, I would swim…Before COVID, I would swim. I’d begrudgingly force myself to go to 24-Hour Fitness, that cesspool kept unclean by the bodybuilders and the folks swinging from ropes and hanging upside down on bars. …Coronavirus2 min readCoronavirus2 min read
Jun 4, 2020So I Can Hear More . . .Anti-racism involves “taking stock of and eradicating policies that are racist, that have racist outcomes, and making sure that ultimately, we’re working towards a much more egalitarian, emancipatory society.” — Malini Ranganathan, a faculty member at the Antiracist Research and Policy Center. Having read this statement, I decided to take…Race5 min readRace5 min read
Published inDiary of a Quarantined Nobody·May 21, 2020Pandemic Ramblings — May 20, 2020Sometimes, I wish I had something to say each day. Just enough to say. To fill a page. Not with utter nonsense but with lyricism and musicality and rhythm. Somedays I can write a wise prose; a mean prose that will punch you in your jaw and knock you out. …Coronavirus4 min readCoronavirus4 min read
May 13, 2020Gotta Have a Smoke — (a fictitious monologue)When this whole business of the pandemic started, I was at an AA meeting. I got my three-year sobriety coin. They started telling us that meetings were cancelled. That we could meet on Zoom, but make sure not to put our last names on our Zoom accounts so we could…Quarantine2 min readQuarantine2 min read
