#bipan-stories

#bipan-stories

In 1959, the woman who brought me into this world bundled me in a basket and placed me in a Hong Kong stairwell near Sai Yeung Choi Street, a bustling region of the British colony. I was 4 days old. A passerby called the police, who transported me to St. Christopher's Home, the largest non-government-run orphanage on the island.

Fia Backström describes her experience of West Virginia as akin to being called by aliens, framing the region in a way that echoes a long history of it being seen as strange and backward.

Bryan Dobson stated, 'After nearly four decades at RTÉ, I found retirement to be a new chapter, filled with family time and personal projects.'

Naima dives deep into life goals with a fierce passion, yet she often finds herself buffeted by currents. Sixteen years ago, she had moved to the country for love, only to be mistreated by her Swiss husband. Since her diploma was not recognised in Switzerland, she went from managing a team of 48 to being wholly dependent on her partner.

Two or three weeks ago, I would've thought that Iran might be free by the time I was 90, and I could die there. I had this vision of me walking through the airport with a cane. Now, at age 48, I can see myself making a trip back to Iran within the next year, and potentially living there permanently within the next five.

Daniyal Mueenuddin joins Deborah Treisman to discuss 'Two Pilgrims,' by Peter Taylor, which was published in The New Yorker in 1963.

It's my mom's favorite country, and the house we share is full of treasures from her travels there, from peacock fans and silk scarves, to jewelry boxes carved from mango wood. I grew up in the UK, hearing spellbinding tales of painted elephants and mirrored palaces, and India soon occupied a special place in my imagination. Having got to 42 without making it to the promised land, this summer my chances of going there felt slimmer than ever.

The Stasi, the secret police, were legendary for their data files. Their work was based on instilling fear, and they induced stunningly amazing numbers of East Germans into informing on their neighbors. Something along the lines of 1 in 6 East Germans were informants, whether out of fear or out of approval of what the East German government was doing.

The jais are taking our children away,

The snow day email arrives before dawn, glowing softly on my phone. Even after all these years, that early morning message still feels like a small miracle a quiet signal that the city has agreed to pause. As a child, it felt like winning a secret lottery. As an adult and a school principal, the feeling hasn't left me.

But rather than walk away from his creative calling, Driven said he pivoted - teaching himself videography and landing his first paid job through a Craigslist post filming Caribbean DJ, and DJ Mad Out. "That opportunity introduced him to New York's Caribbean music scene, where he went on to work with artists such as Shaggy, Ding Dong and Kranium," she said. "Those early experiences sharpened Hillmedo's eye for authenticity, capturing Caribbean culture not as spectacle, but as lived reality," she added.

Letting our dogs lick the dishes before we put them in the dishwasher!

Walking through Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imaginationat the Museum of Modern Art, I noticed that the exhibition didn't have definite sections or texts, and the wall labels abstained from naming the nationalities of the photographers. It was an invigorating experience to be in a show that eschews geographic boundaries set up by Western nations, as well as rejects a cause-and-effect narrative that centers Western colonialism as a framework for understanding African aesthetic production.

Inspired by the book "10,000 Memories," the exhibition was developed in collaboration with The 1947 Partition Archive, a Berkeley-based nonprofit. Debuting in Los Altos before traveling statewide and beyond, the exhibition features firsthand accounts, photographs and multimedia storytelling from those who experienced Partition or whose family lived through the creation of India and Pakistan during World War II, when millions were displaced amid widespread violence.

Sounding amused, publisher Pramod Kapoor recalls the reaction of the Indian cricketing legend Bishen Singh Bedi when he learned Kapoor was printing 3,000 copies of his autobiography. Only 3,000? he protested. I fill stadiums with 50-60,000 people coming to see me play and you think that's all my book is going to sell? Kapoor, the founder of Roli Books, explains that Bedi's legions of admirers were unlikely to translate into book buyers. That was in 2021.