Immigration

One Man, Many Lives: Bhagwan Singh and the Early South Asians in America

Anuradha Kumar’s book about early South Asian immigration to America is as compelling as her subjects ♦ This story was originally published in India Today. Identity and immigration history, race, revolution and Hollywood come together in this fascinating book, which grew out of a series author Anuradha Kumar wrote on early South Asians in America …

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Writing in Past Continuous

An interview with Sunjeev Sahota ♦ A version of this interview was originally published in India Today. By his own admission, British writer Sunjeev Sahota’s novels “tend to come down to a few brown people living in north England or India”. But within this framework, Sahota wove richly detailed lives and unique voices in his …

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Invisible Man

Aravind Adiga imagines Australia refracted through an immigrant’s eyes ♦ Originally published in India Today. We use the word apocalypse, and these days frequently, to describe the end of the world. But its literal meaning, from ancient Greek, is “uncovering”. No one can say for sure whether Covid-19 is our omega, but there’s no doubt …

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Fathers, Sons and Motherlands

Book Review: South Haven ♦By Hirsh SawhneyHarperCollins Publishers India, 2016 When the Babri Masjid was demolished, I was about the same age as Siddharth Arora, the preteen protagonist of Hirsh Sawhney’s debut novel. Like him, I was a first generation Indian American, growing up in an east coast suburb; like him, the news reached me …

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From Baghdad to Your Backyard

Iraqi emigrée Roaa Sardar delivers kunafa, shawarma and more around Delhi.  ♦ The Back(lava) Story The first few times we call Roaa Sardar to ask her about her Arabic food delivery service, we can hear her baby daughter shrieking on the other end. “I’ll call you back!” Roaa says, sounding hassled. “Indian children are too, too, naughty,” the …

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How a 1.5-Generation Immigrant Came to Love the Strip Malls of America

“The Trip That Changed the Way I Travel” for National Geographic Traveller India. ♦ Washington DC, USA “Welcome to the Valley of Death,” said my dance classmate grimly. We stood on the stoop of our Kuchipudi teacher’s cookie-cutter clapboard house, contemplating the uniformity of the landscape around us. Once farmland, this developed acreage in Maryland, …

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A Strange, Familiar Place

This Place ♦ By Amitabha Bagchi Fourth Estate / HarperCollins, New Delhi, 2013, 253 pp., Rs 499 (HB) ISBN 978-93-5116-018-2 After being suspended from his government job, Naresh Kumar, the title character in Amitabha Bagchi’s previous book, The Householder (Fourth Estate, 2012), finds himself a stranger in his own house. He waits desperately for the evening, …

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