Jo’s Blog

Our first Christmas without Moy Moy. I love Christmas. But I am so grateful for the Indian tradition of not celebrating festivals for the year after a loved one dies. Because everything feels hollow this year. We seem to be moving in a parallel [...]

I woke up feeling sad. At breakfast I asked Ravi how he was doing and he said “You know I told you I’ve never really been sad in my life. But I’m sad now.” Ravi and I are like twins sometimes. This didn’t bode well. [...]

Children’s Day can be perfunctory (school-kids get a toffee and watch a cartoon in assembly) or educational (kids get to listen to a speech about Chacha Nehru) or, if their school is really creative – it’s a chance for teachers [...]

Mindfulness haunts us these days. We can’t stop thinking about Moy Moy. Often, we think so much we forget that she is gone. Yesterday, Ravi and I were about to go for our morning walk. He said “Let’s go quickly so we can get [...]

Moy Moy died one month ago today and I have not been able to write anything about her beyond the odd notes to close friends. What has happened feels so large, so heavy and so overwhelming I don’t know how to approach it. Wherever I go, [...]

Avinash Pasricha and I go way back. In 1982, when Ravi and I were living in Delhi, I wrote occasionally for Span Magazine, the PR organ of the US government in India. My first article was on cooking American food in an Indian kitchen. The [...]

In India, autism is still widely misunderstood and, outside of the large cities, often undiagnosed. This article is the first in a bimonthly series that will address early child development.