india | The Smart Set

Read like a guest, not like a tourist!

ENG 310 — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 01:20:09 +0000

Every time you pick up a novel from another country, you open the door to a new journey. You might discover new (to you!) foods and customs, pick up a few phrases in a foreign language, or gain a new perspective on something you thought you understood. If you are fluent in English — a […]

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Belonging

Usha Raj — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 11:30:00 +0000

One evening when I was seven, my mother showed me and my brothers a large neon sign on the side of a high-rise in the heart of the bustling city of Calcutta. Against the dark outline of the building, a huge ceiling fan whirred, its blades outlined in neon. As I watched, the projection faded, replaced by the outline of a table-top sewing machine with the wheel on one end turning around as […]

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In Srinagar

Kanan Gole — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 12:30:56 +0000

In my time wandering the city of Srinagar with my host Hilal, we attempted a hike up the Shankaracharya Hill. A temple built in the 14th century for Lord Shiva sits at the peak and is an important site for the Hindu population of the city. We could have taken an auto-rickshaw, but the fare was unreasonable, considering that I was one of the […]

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Time Measured in Tea

Geeta Kothari — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 12:30:30 +0000

I arrived at the artists’ residency late in the afternoon with a small suitcase, my computer, and my notebook. Located in the outer reaches of New Delhi, the residency offered space to eight writers and visual artists to work for up to two months. If you’d asked me, I’d have said I had big plans […]

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Going the Right Way

Kanan Gole — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 14:00:33 +0000

Sitting at yet another job interview for an NGO, the question arises again. After hearing it repeatedly over the past three months, I am prepared for it. “But, what are you doing in India? What made you move here?” The interviewer is curious, perhaps because she hasn’t come across many like me. We, the children […]

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Fair Game

Kanan Gole — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 13:48:27 +0000

When Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss America in 2014, she was the first Indian American in the pageant’s history to win. But she wasn’t America’s – or even India’s – favorite. Tweets such as “I swear I’m not racist, but this is America” and even “9/11 was four days ago and she gets Miss America?” […]

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Total Recall

The Smart Set Staff — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 14:00:58 +0000

In the midst of Volkswagen’s latest scandal, we take a look back on the love bug’s long drive from a Nazi creation to a children’s television character, and how Hitler’s dream of “The People’s Car” was realized in an unexpected way over 70 years later — in India. It was Hitler who said “the people” […]

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The Naipaul Question

Morgan Meis — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 14:11:55 +0000

In a typical brain-spasm of deep insight, James Wood once wrote that V.S. Naipaul “is a writer who has a conservative vision but radical eyesight.” This, in an essay for The New Yorker a few years ago. The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French had just […]

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In the Ground

Stefany Anne Golberg — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 12:12:46 +0000

The writer R.K. Narayan was not prone to supernatural thoughts. He understood as well as anyone why The English Teacher — his 1944 novel about a grieving professor who learns to communicate with his recently deceased wife through trance writing — would inspire bewilderment in his readers, and even rage. In the first half of […]

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Typists Wanted

Erica Westly — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:12:43 +0000

After days of planning, I was finally sitting on the metal stool next to the sidewalk typist’s desk. Two typewriters covered the entire surface of the desk — one for English and one for Kannada, the local Indian language — sitting back to back. A thick white rag strategically placed beneath the typewriters enabled the […]

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