India
Gonpo’s Library: A Tibetan History Project in McLeod Ganj
Gonpo has a little café in his community library in Mcleod Ganj, the Himalayan town that’s home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile. I got a peach iced…
The Tiffin Lady: Shifting Hate
CW: This story details racism and sexual violence. Please take care of yourselves. <3 Cities in the West are swaddled in myth. New York is a postcard of Sex-in-the-City glitz…
They call us trouble
I was 12 and at a big family gathering in the summer holidays, eating spicy fried fish by a dam. The aunts were in one corner, the uncles in another,…
A Cultural Eye-opener For Southern India
The Chenda melam drums kicked in and my head bobbed without hesitation. Some sounds are so embedded in our memory that they pull a reaction before we even register. Hanumankind’s…
A Survival Guide for “Hopeless Romantics”
Growing up in Mumbai, India, and travelling the world, the types of romantic pursuit I’ve seen modelled are centred on hyper-masculinity, egoism and casual rudeness. Men have this ideology that…
How to be Culturally Sensitive in India’s Religious Cities
Millions of people travel to India for leisure every year, enamoured by the exhilarating and romantic possibilities the country holds for them. But India is not a country of just…
Swimming in My Father’s Ashes
Somebody once told me that if you want to go to India, you have to give yourself time. Time to see, to taste, time to sink into the spirit of…
White Feminism and Cultural Appropriation Beyond Clothes
You’re at a house party and a woman you don’t know won’t stop blabbering to the group about her three-month trip to India and Nepal. “I just got back! Like…
The Halloween Puja
I’m going to be a boxer. I walk to town and ask my tailor to make me a baby blue bathrobe with a hood. This requires a fair amount of…
No One Ever Told Me How to Reject a Billionaire
I have a habit of getting into cars with strange men. And despite what your mother may have told you about such activities, I’ve had a good run. I’ve lived…