Community & Culture
Cooking Indian Food in a Kitchen Designed for Something Else
American kitchens assume an oven, a large refrigerator and no pressure cooker. Adapting takes a few specific pieces of knowledge…
Community & Culture
Food, festivals, homesickness and finding your people in a new city.
20 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
Community & Culture
The Shape Homesickness Takes Over the First Two Years
It does not decline steadily. It arrives in a recognisable pattern with predictable peaks, and knowing the pattern makes the bad weeks considerably easier to sit through.
More in Community & Culture
Community & Culture
Celebrating Festivals Nine Thousand Miles From the People You Celebrate With
Diaspora festivals are recognisably the same and structurally different, moved to weekends and rebuilt by people who are not your…
Community & Culture
Finding Your People in a City Where You Know Nobody
Community does not assemble itself around you the way it did at home. Here it is built deliberately, through a small number of…
Community & Culture
Why Adult Friendship Here Runs on Calendars
American friendships are warm, scheduled and slower to deepen than the ones you grew up with. Reading them by Indian conventions…
Community & Culture
Calling Home Across Nine and a Half Hours
The time difference shapes family relationships more than distance does. A rhythm you choose deliberately works far better than one…
Community & Culture
Telling Rudeness From Hostility, and What to Do About Either
Most unpleasant encounters are ordinary rudeness that has nothing to do with you. A minority are not, and knowing the difference…
Community & Culture
Raising Children Who Speak the Language You Grew Up In
Children absorb the language of the playground and lose the one spoken only at home. Keeping it requires more deliberate effort…
Community & Culture
The Visit Home, and the Surprise of Being a Guest There
The first trip back is not the reunion most people imagine. Home has moved on, you have changed, and three weeks is both too long…
Community & Culture
When Your Parents Come to Stay for Three Months
A long visit from parents is wonderful and considerably harder than either side expects. Most of the difficulty is logistical and…
Community & Culture
How Regional Indian Identity Changes Shape in America
At home you are from a particular state, city and language community. Here you are Indian first, and that flattening does something…
Community & Culture
Belonging to a Place Rather Than Simply Living in It
There is a difference between having an address somewhere and being part of it. The second is built through small civic acts that…