In India, right now, 'tis the season to be holy. Everyone's just winding down from a birthday bash for Ganesh the elephant-headed god, Dussehra's already at the doorstep, and Diwali will be here ...
Mumbai: Life Along the Railway Tracks
The local trains of Mumbai are as legendary and chaotic as the city itself. Each day they chug across a vast network of tracks, ferrying millions of passengers from far-flung suburbs to work and ...
South India: Life in Pictures
In Madurai, one of south India's biggest cities, peddlers beg visitors to shell out a few rupees for their wares just outside the 350-year-old Meenakshi temple, home to a towering pillar covered in ...
Bombay: Life in Pictures
It’s hard to imagine a city as crowded, as frustrating, as vibrant, as ugly and as beautiful as Bombay.Today, Desi and I are in the city known to the world as Mumbai, but always Bombay to us. It ...
Pulao with Eggplant
Before I learned how to boil water, I read an article in a Bombay newspaper about the great filmmaker Ismail Merchant and his passion for cooking. The reporter had spent a day with Merchant as he ...
Andhra-Style Stuffed Eggplants, And Tips For Traveling Vegan In India
India is point zero for vegetarianism. More than 30 percent of the country's billion-plus residents shun meat -- in fact most people in this group have never, ever eaten a creature that once ...
Poori Bhaji
Poori Bhaji(puri bhaji) is about as delicious as Indian food gets: and by that I mean pick-your-fingernails-with-your-teeth-to-devour-every-last-crumb delicious.This is pure comfort food: the kind ...
Lovely Lisboa
The sidewalks of Lisbon deserve an ode themselves.They curve, sweep, stagger, climb and drop, leaving a visitor dizzy. But it’s not just that. Paved with sturdy, usually ivory-white cubes of hardy ...
Lucy the Road Tripper
Over the long Columbus Day weekend, Desi, Lucy and I took a short road trip through upstate New York. As much as we love to go on road trips, and despite the many, many pet parents we always encounter ...
Vaidehi Manni’s Super-Crispy Potato Vada
This recipe for a South Indian style Super Crispy Potato Vada is from my sister-in-law, Vaidehi Manni. Madras is a bursting, flourishing metropolis in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu that ...
Vegetable Vindaloo
When the flower children went east looking for spiritual enlightenment, it is not surprising that many ended up in Goa, a lush paradise along India's scenic west coast. Not surprising because not only ...
Moong Dal Dosa, and Mayberry
Mount Airy is a gorgeous, sleepy town nestled in the valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains right near where North Carolina meets Virginia. Once you've driven into town past the inevitable neon-lit ...
If Horses Had Wishes…
What comes to your mind when you hear the words "animal cruelty"?Dogs shrunk down to the bone with hunger, perhaps, or left chained and uncared for in backyards by irresponsible people? Cats with ...
Zunka Bhakar
I once spent a magical year in Pune, a then-sleepy city three hours southeast of Bombay's concrete jungle, and nestled in the emerald-green valley of India's Western ghats.To a young woman from a ...