Growing up in an Indian Bengali family, being good at Math was given. Growing up in the 90s, I was braving a new world of open markets, international brands and cinema at multiplexes. But, some things had remained unequivocally the same. The women from my mother’s generation were expected to…

“I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters.” J.K. Rowling Last night I lay thinking, my overactive imagination going back decades, memories suddenly dredged up by a film I saw. It had been fifteen years since I had left my city, ensconced in history, myth and folklore, a repository of…

I recently returned from Europe and one of the first things I felt relieved at coming back home to New York is the diverse array of faces around me, as I walked out of the air-conditioned confines of JFK. A teacher, writer, activist, journalist, fashionista, my myriad roles require morphing…

The Foreign Tongue The first question that my international students ask me on their first day of class is how to go about losing their foreign accents and adapting to a more American one. To this I often ask them as to why would they want to change something that…

A city beautiful in its indulgences, with an indolent manner of life reflected in its ebullient speech, Madrid was filled with sconces of 16th century houses, ancient churches and vintage stores; we stayed in a quaint apartment where the voices of happy passers-by reached up with a gusto unheard of…

Why having a Woman President isn’t about breaking gender stereotypes We often ask why a woman has to become a man to succeed in a world of men? The U.S. political debate has grabbed the headlines for the last few months, and it has been an eye-opener for a New…