My uncle Devraj — yes, that’s his actual name, and yes, we’re getting to why that matters — has spent the last eleven years building our family tree on one of those genealogy sites. Every few months he calls, always at dinnertime, always with the same opening line: “I found one you won’t believe.” Last …
At a wedding in Bengaluru two years ago, Radhika found herself at a table with five other mothers, all comparing notes on their children’s names the way people usually compare notes on schools or paediatricians. There was a Bengali mother whose son had two entirely different names — one on his birth certificate, one that …
Sanskrit Baby Girl Names Of all the decisions new parents make, naming a baby carries a weight the others don’t — it’s the one choice your daughter will carry, explain, and grow into for the rest of her life. For many Indian families, Sanskrit is where that search naturally begins. As one of the world’s …
We were in the used-book section of a tiny shop two blocks from the hospital, thirty-six weeks pregnant, arguing quietly over a paperback of Greek mythology someone had left behind on the poetry shelf. My husband wanted something “that sounds like it belongs to someone important.” I wanted something that would still feel right when …
