Celebrating 15 YearsNorth of the Bible Belt and east of the Borscht Belt lies the Boarding School Belt. Of the 300 or so boarding schools in the U.S., 120 are in the Northeast, what might be called the Eden of American education. You know, that magical place where Andover and Exeter lead inexorably to Yale and Harvard.
Essays
My Redemption at the Movies
May 11, 2015
Essays
The last thing I remember about my father was him walking away wearing his camel coat. I remember him from the back, his dark hair escaping from his hat.
It was Christmas evening and it was cold, for Rome at least. He had just accompanied me to a train, which I would take to reach my cousins in Calabria. He was not happy that I was leaving, and would die a few hours later. A stroke, the doctors said.
Jesse Owens, Mr. Harris, and Me
April 21, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
This is how my mother tells it. Jesse Owens taught her to run. I am thirteen. I have just come back from track practice. I have no skill at anything athletic. But junior high for me has been a series of attempts to assimilate. That year in the yearbook, there isn’t a club I’m not in—Chess Club, Stamp Collecting, French Club, Honors Society—and because track is the only sport you do not have to try out for, they’ll take anyone, I sit in the front row of the photo, a dark spot in the expanse of white faces.
Where Does the Time Go?
April 15, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
My relationship with Joni Mitchell and her music moves through two stages. My early admiration for her—in the seventies—in some ways anticipated the zeitgeist. Then I stopped listening to her for about a quarter of a century. I began to rediscover Mitchell’s work in the new millennium, when, by coincidence, so was the rest of the world.
Bhel Puri
April 1, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
From the kitchen of Chef Jehangir Mehta
Bhel puri, a savory Indian snack or chaat, is a Bombay original.
Serves 15 people.
Pomfret Chutney Masala
April 1, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
From the kitchen of Bijoya Chaudhuri
Handed down to her son, Amit Chaudhuri
Author’s note: I grew up in Bombay on my mother’s magnificent
version of East Bengali food, a cuisine reinterpreted and perfected—and often
added to with original recipes—by my grandmother in Sylhet and then my
mother in her decades in Bombay. The recipe below is included in my mother’s
Bengali cookbook, published in Calcutta in 2010, and translated recently by
Chitralekha Basu. But this is not a dish that represents East Bengali food; it
comes out of our contact with Bombay, and is not only my mother’s version of
a well-known Parsi dish: it is her response to my craving for it. Its main feature
is the chutney in its name, made with coriander and mint leaves and coconut
pulp: the seaweed-green condiment is one of the most delicious to be found in
the Konkan region, imported, here by the Parsis, and then by an East Bengali.
Mom’s Dal
April 1, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
From the kitchen of Nirmala Swamidoss McConigley
Handed down to her daughter, Nina McConigley
Dal
1 cup of red lentils (washed well)
3–4 cups water
2 tbsp oil
1 onion
6–7 cloves garlic (cut in two)
1/4 tsp asafetida (sometimes called hing), you get this at Indian stores
1/4 tsp turmeric
Jalapeño
1 tomato (add at the end)
Salt to taste
Fresh cilantro for garnish
Papad
April 1, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
By SUKETU MEHTA
Papad was the bard of the masses. He sat during the endless school classes
on the bench next to me, composing rhymes which could be appreciated by
all for their elemental simplicity. Thus:
O dear
Come near
Don’t fear
Have cheer
Beer is here
The Kindness of Strangers
April 1, 2015
Essays, Issue 09, Issue 09 Essays
By NONITA KALRA
I am constantly asked why I persist in calling my city Bombay when it has long been renamed Mumbai. A rather articulate but annoying French academic even attributed inherent anarchy to my dissension. “If everyone called cities by the names they preferred, how would anyone know where they are?” I opted out of the argument. I would know. I would always know. With my eyes wide shut. Mumbai may be a zip code, but Bombay is my home.
Chart Showing the Ratio of Church Accommodation to the Population Over 10 Years of Age
We were on the small roads that sometimes turn gravel, sometimes dead end, when we found it. This was Vermont, about ten years ago, our first road trip together: a circuit of swimming holes, picnics, and stops for general store ice cream. We passed a series of “Take Back Vermont” signs. Somewhere along the way we came upon the man, who by all appearances seemed to be a Hare Krishna devotee, having a yard sale. It was here in the sunny warm greenness that we found THE PEOPLE’S CYCLOPEDIA OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE, WITH NUMEROUS APPENDIXES INVALUABLE FOR REFERENCE IN ALL DEPARTMENTS OF INDUSTRIAL LIFE. BROUGHT DOWN TO THE YEAR 1885.
