Usha Alexander is the author of two novels: The Legend of Virinara and Only the Eyes Are Mine. Her writing has also appeared in The Caravan, White Wall Review, Pangyrus, Scroll, Raiot, The Punch Magazine, and the The Best American Travel Stories 2007. Usha grew up in Pocatello, Idaho. After an overlong and meandering university education, with pauses in chemistry, biology, and anthropology, she joined the US Peace Corps and taught high-school science in the archipelago nation of Vanuatu. She then went to work at Apple in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years. She currently resides near Delhi, where she muddles through learning to communicate in Hindi. Having lived in four countries (including Germany), Usha has learned to carry her home within herself, yet she frequently returns to the SF Bay Area with a certain sense of homecoming. Email: usha [at] shunya.net
Website: http://www.ushaalexander.com/
by Usha Alexander Two days in south Rajasthan with AMRIT Health Services, a not-for-profit initiative A hamlet in Bedawal village “The demand to sacrifice a goat was not something we had expected as a precondition for setting up the clinic,” Dr. Pavitra Mohan explained. A pediatrician and public health professional, he was telling me about…
By Usha Alexander In a large mausoleum on Tiananmen Square, Beijing, lies a crystal sarcophagus containing the mortal remains of Mao Zedong. Every day, masses of Chinese citizens line up on this largest of the world’s public squares to view and pay tribute to him. An immense, framed portrait of Mao gazes beatifically upon them…
By Usha Alexander “In your marriage, who is the boss?” our driver, Arman, asked in a playfully provocative tone, like he was setting up the punchline of a joke. My partner and I looked at each other, laughed, and shrugged. Arman belonged to the Minangkabau, the society recognized among anthropologists as the world’s largest and…
By Usha Alexander When I visited India the summer I turned 9, my grandmother took my siblings and me to a jeweler to select pendants to bring back to the US. My brother and sister chose the gold-tipped tiger claws, still available easily and guilt-free in India in the 1970s. But I found the tiger…