Parenting, and my relationship with my daughter, is persistently fraught by the presence of two seemingly incompatible states of affairs. First, my child seems utterly familiar to me, the most intimately known person in our family: I was with her at her birth, and have been a companion and guardian since then, cleaning, bathing, feeding,Continue reading “Children: The Familiar And Strange, The Known And Unknown”
Tag Archives: childhood memories
On Becoming A Second-Class (Train) Citizen
I was nine years old when I became a second-class citizen. At least as far as train travel was concerned. Before then, before another day of infamy that lay in December, the date of my father’s retirement from the air force, my family and I had always traveled by first-class on our train travels. MyContinue reading “On Becoming A Second-Class (Train) Citizen”
Reunions And Changing Persons
A couple of weeks ago, in a reunion of sorts, I had lunch with some folks I to went high school with; six of us attended. Out of the attendees, I was meeting three after a gap of thirty-four years. This is the longest interval of time in my life between two meetings with theContinue reading “Reunions And Changing Persons”
My Conception Story
As the month of March drew to a close in 1993, I traveled to India to spend some time with my terminally ill mother. I arrived ‘home’ on March 30th; my mother passed away on April 25. In those four weeks or so, all spent in the close proximity of my mother, I talked andContinue reading “My Conception Story”
Childhood Crushes – II: Jennifer O’Neill In ‘Summer Of 42’
I wasn’t alone in wishing I was Hermie. Many teenage boys–American or otherwise-had the same thoughts on seeing Summer of 42, the cinematic adaptation of Herman Raucher‘s memoirish coming-of-age novel, a movie that made me laugh very, very hard during its screening and then left me silent and devastated as I walked back to my boardingContinue reading “Childhood Crushes – II: Jennifer O’Neill In ‘Summer Of 42’”
On Being A Bully
In the long list of personal moral failures for which I will have to atone, participating in schoolyard and dormitory bullying–even if only briefly, and in attenuated fashion–must rank among the very worst. The only exculpation I can offer in my defense is that I was young, but all bullies in school are; I’m afraidContinue reading “On Being A Bully”
Childhood Crushes – I: Nafisa Ali In ‘Junoon’
I was eleven years old when I saw Nafisa Ali, then all of eighteen years old, play the part of Ruth Labadoor in Shyam Benegal‘s 1978 art-house classic Junoon–Ruth is a young Englishwoman, living on an English military cantonment in colonial India with her family. As the Indian Mutiny of 1857 breaks out, Ruth’s familyContinue reading “Childhood Crushes – I: Nafisa Ali In ‘Junoon’”
On Being Advised To Not Take A ‘Girl’s Role’
Shortly after I began attending a boarding school in the ninth grade, I was approached by our ‘senior master’ and asked if: a) I could ‘act’ and b) if so, was I interested in trying out for the annual school play. I had done some acting in school and youth club plays in the sixthContinue reading “On Being Advised To Not Take A ‘Girl’s Role’”
On Bad Memories And Moving On
A few weeks ago, while stumbling around on Facebook, I found an old ‘acquaintance’ of mine: a man who, over thirty years ago, went to the same boarding school as I did. I poked around further; his page was not guarded by his privacy settings from snoops like me. On it, I found a groupContinue reading “On Bad Memories And Moving On”
The Joys Of Crying
I cry easily; so I cry a lot. Many, many things set me off: movies, songs, talking about my parents, a sportsman’s death, showing my daughter music videos of songs that I listened to as a teenager, Saturn V liftoffs, the misfortune of others in the world’s ‘disaster zones,’ witnessing random acts of kindness onContinue reading “The Joys Of Crying”
Samir Chopra 