Abhijit came home from school mid-day and announced he was never going back. No ammount of coaxing would make him spill out why. “Amaye marte marte merey phelo, tao ami school jabona,” he cried out defiantly. The volunteers at the NGO tried to teach him for a few months but he kept running away to [...]

“Night come tenderly,
Black like me.”
~Langston Hughes
I teach two of Maya Di’s sons and on that account she struck up a conversation with me. She’s worried that her younger sons will turn out to be like her eldest- he is in jail for stabbing a man who refused to pay his mother for the sexual [...]

I don’t usually talk about Ali, except for to say, “Oh, I used to know a guy who went to the Delhi British School,” or “Your name is Mohammad too?” His name was Mohammad- Mohammad Saqawat Akhtar. “It’s a very rare name,” he had said. But Jahaan kept calling him “Abdullah,” I don’t know [...]