Too Much Information – Week Ending May 6

What follows is a hyperlinked version of the weekly newsletter of the Information Program of Open Society Foundations. Next week Becky Hogge will take up the newsletter one again. You can continue to follow new editions at her blog. News Turkey’s 138 Forbidden...

[Review] The Argumentative Indian

After all my dramatic agony and breathless complaining, I am glad I endured. The Argumentative Indian is neither easy nor fun to read. The first three pages of every chapter and sub-chapter are essentially wordy justifications of why the topic is deserving of...

Street Poetry from Calcutta

An eBook version of Kalam’s annual anthology of poetry from marginalized communities in Calcutta is now available on Rising Voices. A $5 PayPal donation is suggested. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of poetry, at least compared to...

Three Years Later

Three years ago I decided to start a weblog. I opened an account on Pitas.com, wrote a couple entries, and then decided I wanted more control so I downloaded B2, the software that would later be called WordPress. A week after getting the blog installed, I drove down...

We Might Well Say Small is Beautiful

A lot of people wonder why I have so many Indian friends. Me too. Surely, it has something to do with where I grew up, but that alone doesn’t explain the overwhelming preponderance of sub-continent in my life. Whatever the explanation may be –...