A few years ago, my children and I were the “last straw” in someone else’s life. This friend had endured a series of calamities in her family and we arrived with ours at [...]

I love doing laundry. I enjoy sorting the clothes by color and fabric, choosing the water temperature and pushing all the machine’s buttons. (For many years, we washed clothes by hand. I [...]

This morning an elderly neighbor called to ask if I could help her find a new maidservant, someone to wash the floors and do the dishes. The old one, she said, had been stealing from her. A gold [...]

After my mother died, my sister Lucy kept discovering interesting things she had left behind. One of the most fascinating was a do-it-yourself autobiography which someone must have given her (it [...]

On this day of turmoil and revenge, I thought it would be nice to remember the joys of childhood and innocence.  One of the questions we are so often asked at Latika and Karuna Vihar is [...]

“Well, who’s behind the anti-corruption bill?” she said. “I have friends in Allahabad who say that Prashant and Shanti Bhushan aren’t quite as clean as they make [...]

A little girl and her mother came to see me last night. “She’s got these white patches on her legs,” the Mom said, trying to sound casual. “It started with just one, but [...]

Everybody wants a job. “Jo, there’s a woman at the gate. Says she knows you. She looks like a job-seeker. What do you want me to do?” That’s my husband speaking and I am [...]

Yesterday I was invited to an amazing all day workshop at a cafe in a nearby village. “Himalayan Tapestry Creative Day” was billed as a day for women to learn a wide range of crafts [...]

My friend Ana of I Made It So has this wonderful weekly feature on her blog where she invites readers to dig into their blog archives and recycle a favorite old post. She provides a theme each [...]