When I was around ten, I discovered, all on my own, the pure joy of hitting a ball against a wall and batting it back again and again and again. I could amuse myself for hours doing this. I actually remember wondering why it was so much fun (I [...]

Walking out to my own garden to pluck lettuce last night, just before dinner, I stumbled headlong into an open pit, newly excavated to repair some leaking pipes. I had forgotten it was there. I hurt myself quite badly, enough so that Ravi [...]

One of the trickiest balances to get in teaching children art is the one between direction and imposition; between mastery and the imagination. I remember dissolving into tears in 3rd grade over a rabbit I could not get to look recognizably like [...]

Probably the only good thing about dying young is that you go out in a blaze of glory, accomplishment and the promise of great things still to happen. Nobody is tired of you yet; you have not become a burden; you have not begun to repeat all [...]

Stories are the cornerstone of all human understanding. We make sense of the world and of new information through stories – how did these same things happen to other people? How did they deal with what we are experiencing right now? What [...]

The history of disability is a history of courage. How could it be otherwise?  People accustomed to living on the margins of society have less to lose than most. They notice more and they are more accustomed to hardship than ordinary people. [...]

With my father and two dear elderly friends dying in the past month, I’m thinking a lot about end-of-life care. Living in India, this report does nothing to reassure me. In a White Paper done by the Economist Intelligence Unit, 80 [...]