I always thought it strange when my father used to go on hunger strikes. Most recently, he employed it to get my mother to start going to the gym more often, a tactic that worked quite well. My brother learned the strength of it early on as well when he went on hunger strike in junior high so that my parents would get a dog (little did they know he was actually sneaking down to the kitchen after they had gone to bed, but in this case, announcing the intention of the tactic, combined with an Oscar-winning performance of a fatigued [View Full Entry]

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India is a strange place to be without family. It occurred to me that the previous times I've been here, I've been rather spoiled. I've had entire families at my disposal to take me around and look after me through the chaos of the country. On the face of things, Delhi is exactly the kind of city you would expect as a country capital. There are the austere, red brick palatial complexes built by the British which now house Parliament. A giant park extends down an avenue to India Gate, an elegant arch in the center of the city. Everywhere you [View Full Entry]

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Well, here I am again: that same sense of foreboading panic as I take in the scene at the entrance gate: all the Indians forming a mob around the entrance gate to the plane as though it's a bus stop and they won't get a seat if they don't jostle their way on first, the confused white people who join the mass because they think the Indian people know something they don't, and me on my cell phone saying all of this loudly enough so I hope people will hear and sit down until their row is called. But eventually, I [View Full Entry]

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