Kalpana Mohan
- Location
- Saratoga, California, USA
- Birthday
- October 14
- Bio
- Freelance writer in CA
www.kalpanamohan.org
kalpanamohan.typepad.com
Member, Left Coast Writers
MY RECENT POSTS
- Battle Whim of the Bovine
Mother
April 05, 2011 02:24PM - Should I be checking in at
Guantanamo Bay?
May 04, 2010 09:59AM - A Toast to Aging, at a Napa
Valley Winery
April 27, 2010 01:24PM - An Editor decomposes - after
House & Garden
March 30, 2010 09:46PM - Another Godman goes bad in
India
March 09, 2010 11:16AM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “Thank you, thank you,
thank you! A cockroach? More
like a bed
bug that no one
can…”
May 05, 2010 10:57AM - “Oh, how I wish I could
live there! Thanks so much for
your
comments. Always
thri…”
April 29, 2010 01:12AM - “Emma:
Emma: So
long since I posted on Open
Salon! Nice to see
old
familiar
avatars…”
April 04, 2010 01:47AM - “After reading your post,
I'm inclined to think I should
have
given it a little
mo…”
March 10, 2010 10:18AM - “Well-written!
Rated!”
January 11, 2010 10:24AM
Kalpana Mohan's Links
Battle Whim of the Bovine Mother
When I found out today that Tiger Mother’s cub made it to Harvard , I realized that Tiger Mother had gamed the system yet again.
I’m at work on a book these days and
I know that the main thing about the publishing world in the days
of dwindling budgets is tha… Read full post »
Should I be checking in at Guantanamo Bay?
If THAT is my passport photo, should I be checking in at Guantanamo Bay?
I don’t have a mouth that promises wild wanton whispers like Angelina Jolie’s. It isn’t bird-like and terse and taut like Jennifer Aniston’s. When I’m not smi/
A Toast to Aging, at a Napa Valley Winery
What better place to celebrate an “over the hill” occasion than a winery in Napa Valley? A girlfriend has aged gracefully. While she is crushed that the female members of her clique are younger than she is, we remind her that the male counterparts are just about ready to harv… Read full post »
An Editor decomposes - after House & Garden
When a writer friend pointed me to a story titled “Losing It” by Dominique Browning, in the New York Times Magazine of March 28th, 2010, I rushed out to my living room and pulled out the magazine to read what, seemingly, was a heartwarming story of a/… Read full post »
Another Godman goes bad in India
The weekend after Godman Paramahamsa Nithyananda was caught on camera–reaching for actress Ranjitha even as he was preaching the Bhagvad Gita–my friends in the Bay Area couldn’t stop cackling.
At a party last Saturday, an old friend… Read full post »
Won't music bring us all together?
I’d wager–although I’ve never inhaled unlike a past president–that music is like marijuana, giving an instant high to those who seek it.
I have discovered that in my home, in my children’s soul, in my husband’s heart (and on his bazaar-like… Read full post »
Ex-Letterman Writer and Me
When a male boss spreads himself under the sheets with female colleagues (and these women are excelling for reasons everyone–including the office janitor–can explain), should the underlings in the group (1) tut-tut in annoyance, gnash their teeth and try to do their job anyway, (2)… Read full post »
Why do we need a social life?
Why do we need a social life?
Some life questions like “Why do we need toilet tissue?” or “Why must you brush your teeth every morning?” don’t come up at all in daily conversation because the answers are self-evident. The subject
Gay Times in India
Today, as I read about the Indian court decriminalizing consensual gay sex, I was reminded of a conversation between my aunt and me in 1986. My aunt, then about 55, was visiting me in the Bay Area.
“What’s all this homosexuality-kemosexuality business? I think there’s
… Read full post »A Smell called Mother
Smell can be a powerful
sense. All mothers smell good, without
exception.
The loss of my mother isn’t in the voice I do not hear anymore when I call home. It isn’t so much in the small gossips and the petty he-dids and she-dids that only a mother will… Read full post »
"I wanted to ask you for your thoughts,” says an Indian-American friend whose family is devastated by the state college admissions results last Friday. “My child didn’t make UC Berkeley or UCLA. But he has top grades.”
“I know yo… Read full post »
July in India's Chennai
July in Chennai, India, is wet and dry. First the monsoons pound the ground until you can’t tell feces apart from sandalwood paste on the roads of old Triplicane by Marina Beach. Then, about the middle of the… Read full post »
Communing with Nature ain't in my nature
Our family wanted to savor the last bit of summer sun and fun before the schools reopened. We signed up early when a friend wondered if we wanted to be part of an eighteen family camping bash under the redwoods at Big Sur’s Pfeiffer State Park. Finally, our
… Read full post »Rejection Day and Night Spa: Menu of Treatments
For years I’d led the double life, slogging as a cubicle slave by day, writing software for a huge company and devouring the Writer’s Market by night. My colleagues told me I needed to be in the writing world. They saved my emails. Even I could tell I/
The Brown Frown: Don't get caught nude in the Appenzell
When I happened upon what a big huff and a puff the New York Times
made this morning about nude
hiking in the Swiss Alps I felt denuded, sheared,
of my veneer of innocence much like sheep in Auckland. If
Arab-Americans fainted at the sight of two pale rumps against
the… Read full post »
Springing into March
At 4, he wanted to take the long cut home (“I don’t like short cuts”)
God gave me a bookmonster when I prayed for a bookworm.
Then Crockett Johnson’s… Read full post »
“So, dad, how do you grade my Spinach Kootu?”
Dad shut his
eyes and pondered the question with the gravity of a professor on a
Ph. D. defense committee.
To make this traditional South Indian dish for my dad, I picked baby spinach at the local farmer’s marke… Read full post »
All Aboard the Alleppey Express
I was squatting over an Indian style toilet in a third class compartment on a train hurtling through South India. The toilet was a stained stainless steel hole in the ground. It was entirely possible that my Fallopian tubes could be sucked away… Read full post »
“So you don’t consider yourself to be Asian? What are you then?”
The gentleman was puzzled. He was Chinese-American and he was reflecting upon how our high school’s badminton team was made up solely of Asians. My son had already mentioned to me that… Read full post »
Stained, by Coffee
Coffee doesn’t just stain my blouse. It stains my soul.
Coffee addicts more than power. And the absolute best coffee corrupts so absolutely that it has been the reason I went to bed ecstatic at night so I could get up the next morning to a mind-blowing cup. The… Read full post »
Aladdin's Perfect Genie
My father, my sister and I are all confused about Vinayagam’s place in our new, reorganized family of three. Or four? We need him - at a moment’s notice - when we need him. But when we don’t want him around, we wish him to disappear into the… Read full post »
A. They don’t want to talk about poverty
B. They can’t fit in 4 song/dance numbers
C. No Indian idol will make a fine Slumdog
D. All of the above
In the opening chase scene of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog… Read full post »
Jason D. Hill
Kind of Blue
Verbal Remedy AKA Denise
Lea Lane
cartouche
Jess D. Facts
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