My newspaper column for February is on sleep and its deprivation

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“…Now I count sheep, or my version of it — I decorate houses in my head. Not a thwarted interior designer, I have no clue why I do this. I suspect I’m looking for the perfect bed, with that gentle, form-hugging dip in the middle that will cradle me to sleep. Like fairy tale insomniac Goldilocks braving a den of bears to find sleep, I’ve tried this solution and I’ve tried that. But when all’s said and done, throughout my life, what’s worked best on restless nights is the soothing act of writing. Sometimes about sleep.”

Please click on the gorgeous painting by Van Gogh of his Bedroom at Arles to read my column in full.

My first newspaper column for 2021 is about the art of leaving

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“Trump may be an extreme example; of bad grace, ill intent, reprehensible actions, and orangeness, but it’s not just those we place on pedestals who make debacles of departures. In more modest ways, we’re all deficient in the art of leaving well. In my personal life, I’ve been hopeless. Not only do I not know 50 ways to leave lovers, I haven’t even mastered one…” Do click on pic for the rest of the article?

In my last newspaper column of 2020, I discuss autism

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I am autistic, but I didn’t know that before this year. In my last column of 2020 for newspapers Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, I write about this life-changing discovery for the first time, along with my love and concern for the young neurodivergents growing up in an inhospitable world. Please click on the image for the article. And the image, in fact, is an illustration for my children, scrawled one sleepy afternoon seven years ago, of their Mommy as Wolverine, long before these revelations had emerged. Juxtaposed here with its inspiration.