Gloria Arieira wins 2020 Padma Shri Award

January 30, 2020.Reading time 3 minutes.

It is with great joy that I inform you that my teacher, Gloria Arieira, has been awarded one of India’s highest civil honours

On Mafia and Meditation

December 30, 2019.Reading time 16 minutes.

I saw how perfect and uniform all of the red fruit were, but I was more preoccupied trying to remember how many of them I would need for the various recipes I would exact. It might have been that same subliminal suspicion that had made me separate, but not read, an article on the global Italian and Chinese mafias for tomatoes.

Hypocrisy today

December 15, 2019.Reading time 2 minutes.

There is a profound difference between religions that demand an allegiance to a single story and those that demand nothing

The Sabarmati Ashram

October 13, 2019.Reading time 4 minutes.

by Ricky Toledano When not in jail or walking around to unite India, this is where the Great Soul lived, founding the SATYAGRAHA movement, the unwaivering, unshakable commitment to Truth: that which cannot be defeated; that which is invincible. I held back tears when I saw his desk, the place where Gandhi sat, writing and […]

Walking the Old City

October 7, 2019.Reading time 4 minutes.

Gujarat has been at the crossroads of civilizations for longer than memory. Its most iconic city, Ahmedabad, still holds its unique architectural mix of Jainism, Hinduism and Islam. The comparison was inevitable: the old city was much cleaner and more preserved than my beloved Chandni Chowk in Delhi. Then there was the woodwork and the […]

The Carnival Seamstress

September 18, 2019.Reading time 14 minutes.

Behind the seams of Rio de Janeiro’s spectacular festival by Soledad Dominguez | translated by Ricky Toledano Monica has not slept at home since January 28. And it is most likely that she will not return to her husband and her youngest son until March 4, the day when the Paraiso do Tuiuti samba school will […]

Words matter

August 11, 2019.Reading time 8 minutes.

Although on the team of Words Matter, I decided to look at some numbers. by Ricky Toledano I threw myself on the floor of my house when the machine gunfire started – once – in an instinctive reaction, because I immediately knew from the thunder around me, and the whistling of the bullets through the […]

No one in the world is illegal

July 24, 2019.Reading time 29 minutes.

The past can be truly seductive, despite all the evidence to the contrary and the fact that no one has ever returned from it. That is why I have always been suspicious of nostalgia: it always sprouts in the present, no matter when it was sown from the seeds of what people prefer to remember, and never from the dead seeds of what they prefer to forget.

Gentrification: problem or progress?

June 2, 2019.Reading time 24 minutes.

I suspect that whomever can answer that question of whether gentrification is progress or problem shall answer all questions, because it reverts to a much more profound human challenge.