Known Turf

Imagine then, my perplexity when I found myself trudging from hotel to hotel, baggage in tow, and my friend refusing to check in anywhere. T...

Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales (Aleph 2023) is just out. This is a new edition of Known Turf (2010), with a fresh Introduction...

Eight years ago, I had my first essay accepted in the Griffith Review. ' Embodying Venus ' was a meditation on women's bodies an...

  I was looking for a bright yellow photo to post on social media for Basant Panchami. Among my saved photos, I f ound this one. I am in a ...

Bread, Cement, Cactus: A memoir of belonging and dislocation  is available in the USA, UK and in India, in print as well as in ebook format....

New book, published by Cambridge University Press. Out today. A brief extract is available here: https://ninedotsprize.org/extract-f...

Behind all funerary efforts and expenses is the urgent need to confront the loss of someone with whom you had (and continue to have) a uniq...

My mother attempted to buy vegetables last week, right outside the gates of the housing complex, and she witnessed police officials prevent...

As a child, I had thrilled to the story of a powerful, warrior woman on the throne of Delhi but had never wondered about who her ancestors ...

If you run an online search for good roads in India, you might come upon a question someone asked on Quora: Why aren’t the roads in India...

I don't know what made me think of pedal-boats. Perhaps it was the whiplash of January rain. Perhaps it was the feeling of being cram...

I don't know what made me think of pedal-boats. Perhaps it was the whiplash of January rain. Perhaps it was the feeling of being cram...

If I was a builder who built a sub-standard building that collapsed and killed a few people, or if I was an engineer who inspected and cert...

Double sighted After years, I hopped onto a double decker bus. I'm not sure why I say “hopped”. Hopping was as unlikely as gr...

Can’t say I wasn’t warned. Friends who’d been to Dhaka before told me not to make elaborate plans; the traffic wouldn’t allow me to get aro...

The paths of glory, a poet has said, lead but to the grave. What the poet may not have imagined is the path that leads to the actual graves ...

A few months ago, I had the good fortune of being invited to the Women of the World Festival, held in Brisbane this year. Because it fo...

One of my favourite experiences while traveling in more developed nations is the button you can press whenever pedestrians want to cross ...

One of my enduring memories from the first time I visited Melbourne is walking around looking for lunch and spotting a compact row of bri...

The naming of streets is a tricky business. In the old days, streets got their names off occupations. There could be named after a Baker, a...