Life and death in the Barrios

I hear the Taxi’s horn behind me and stick out my arm to wave it down. It pulls up behind me; an old Toyota, one of the many that comprise the fleet of well-used, beat-up cars that serve as collective …

Semana Santa in Bluefields

“How much longer?” my dad asks next to me, his voice sounding slightly pained. I look over at him, wondering if he is talking in his sleep or just resting his eyes. He is jammed up against the window of …

Let’s (not) talk about sex, baby

I knock again on the door, more firmly this time. “Bueeeenas,” I call through the chipped blue door. I hear a creak from inside and move to the window. The top glass pellet is missing and I peer through the …

Be gentle on my curves

“Do you want some tea?” My dad asks. We are sitting in the large kitchen of one of the nunneries, the young novice looking with controlled curiosity at her unlikely guests. My dad is giving me that slight michevious there-is-something-more-to-this-question …

Bloody beginnings

My dad’s very auspicious in a very weird sort of way. He isn’t really religious; I just think spending so much time living among blood-thirsty demons, angry ghosts and ancestral spirits has gotten to him a bit. So when we …

Religious Fascism and Chubby Babies

“I wish everyone on this bus could just get off! “ Arthi, my Indian-Malaysian friend groans at me from the side. I look at her, stuck in the middle of three seats on a rickety old Bus, in the middle …

Enter Waifdom

Auroville Even the name has a certain mystique to it. Somewhat out of place in the sleepy state of Tamil Nadu but oddly right where it should be next to the old French colony of Pondicherry. I had little expectations …