people, not pedigrees, were my ticket to success — If you resonate with my writing, you can sign up for my monthly-ish newsletter. Last summer, a famous author told me that she didn’t think I would ever find a job that was a good fit. My heart sank, but I let her finish. “You’re just going to have to…

a love letter to New York, city of my heart — This is a cross-post of my newsletter, which you can receive via email (monthly-ish) by subscribing here. The last time I went to New York City, I sat beside my father in Yemen Café on Atlantic Ave with cardamom chai and a fat slab of baklava, watching the TV flip…

On the racial violence I have wielded upon myself and others in my judgments of beauty — and how to reimagine a kinder world forward. — This is a cross-post of my newsletter, which you can receive via email (monthly-ish) by subscribing here. I write this from my family home exactly a month after George Floyd’s murder. The last few weeks have been a strange mix of violence and comfort, where I’ve felt both annihilated by…

finding myself in name + sound — Language is a magic that both empowers and exposes. Through our speech, we touch others but also, inescapably, bare who we are — how old, healthy, happy, or familiar. As children, we delight in language, fearlessly botching Arabic emphatics or Norwegian retroflexes until they click exactly right. Slowly, though, we…

thoughts on whether Hindu universalism can play out in the flesh — Flanking Mother Mary on Navnath’s Maruti Suzuki dashboard was a small gold-painted Ganesh statue. From his rearview mirror dangled a plate of silver and blue Urdu text. A few frames of the Sacred Mosque of Mecca were taped up for good measure. I stared at the religious insurance and asked…

On and on the Great River rolls, racing east. Of proud and gallant heroes its white-tops leave no trace, As right and wrong, pride and fall turn all at once unreal. Yet ever the green hills stay To blaze in the west-waning day. — Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, Moss…

across three himalayan passes — Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature. Abhishek must have noticed something in my expression…

nine months in India’s taxis, Olas, Ubers, and autos — What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see specks dispersing? Rajkumar The driver of my first taxi in Mumbai was a squat man with eyebrows as thick as his mustache, black and caterpillar-like. I had just landed in the…

communists, camels, and thoughts of the future — March 2018 In my grandfather’s lawn in Lucknow, the air has grown lighter and the magenta dahlias are tall and as big as fists. My body appreciates the sun and the tranquility. …