Category: Writing
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The Sunday Straphanger
We hopped a train at Bandra Junction toward the old Victoria Station, now called Shivaji Terminus, ten stops away. The tidy compartment carried just a handful of passengers scattered about on a few padded benches. Overhead the silver handles shook as the train departed. I offered the window seat to my boys. Turns out it…
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Elevatorwala
Mumbai has a wallah for everything, no task too big or small. Outside my 14th-story flat, one of four elevatorwalas pushes the button that takes us to the street and back again. The other night we ate our first dinner at a Parsi restaurant called—this is all one word—Sodabottleopenerwala. It’s a chain. Derived in part…
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Transit Post—Frankfurt
Just so I have a post from Germany. We have a decent layover in Frankfurt, and although it’s zero three hundred at my point of origin—hence the cobwebs in my head—it’s 9:35 here and past noon at our final destination. Normal workaday hours to write and post! Marginally related to all this, I’ve been tracking…
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Posting from a New Home
After five years posting from DC, BenEastBooks moves on to Mumbai. Expect the same focus on craft and reviewing serious books by independent authors. Expect new writing invigorated by travel and adventure. Expect postings flavored with the exotic, the ancient, the extraordinary, and the very new. I welcome contributions, requests for reviews, and sensible observations. When…
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Early Monsoon
We always knew the monsoon would greet our arrival in Mumbai this Thursday. We never expected heavy rains to be part of our departure from DC. Yesterday the area received 4 inches of rain, equal to about 40 days of wet weather for this time of year for DC. July commonly sees 3.75″. What better…
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Reader Wanted
Today I finished my fifth novel. Tomorrow, it will be a gift for my son on his eighth birthday. I await the sense of release, the great pocket of freedom that opens up when a large file is deleted. Last December a man walked into the SweetLife Cafe wearing nothing at all but his socks.…
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Maximum City
We are neither here nor there. The carpets are up and the curios down. The boys are packed and shipped off south for a week with Naniji. A week from tomorrow the packers arrive. They’ll invade for 3 or 4 days to box up several categories of shipment: 700 lbs of air freight; 7k lbs…
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Diplomatic Training
U.S. diplomat Ben East revisits his old training grounds with his sons, eight and ten.
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Can He also Ride a Porcupine?
Two weeks ago (yes…) I visited my son’s class. I read to them from my current work in progress, a novel soon to be presented IHO Mohan’s eighth birthday. Before I finished the hands were up and all the mouths were saying ‘Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!’ They had plans for my principal foil, a character named…
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48 Stars for Memorial Day
Thousands of bikers will roar into DC this weekend, rolling thunder to commemorate the service and sacrifice of those who, for one reason and another, participated in the aggression we call the Vietnam War. Little notice will herald the sacrifice of those whose land was destroyed by that aggression, whose lives irrevocably changed—but anti-war thoughts…
