Saifi Hospital located at Maharshi Karve Marg in Mumbai is a grand, regal and handsome building, outstanding amidst her neighbors that show age, torment and scars from Mumbai’s infamous monsoons. Built by the Bohri community of India, the hospital, unlike Leelavati in Bandra or Kokilaben in Andheri where the stiff upper lips of Mumbai’s recouparate, […]

I am near to finishing a nine-mile run about a month ago when, with about one mile to go, when I slow down considerably for the mandatory cooling off stretch, I realize something is amiss. At about this time in the run, the good feeling hormones in my system get released and I cherish the […]

‘Hair,’ my marhoom friend Shafiq Allaina, who was blessed with thick, almost unmanageable mane of wiry hair once disclosed at a Banyani saloon in Tanga, Tanzania, ‘is everything. Without hair, a person is inadequate, almost like a man without manhood.’ The Hindu barber, with a pate as shiny as a simmering desert wasteland, nodded his […]

I seem to have kicked up a Minnesota style blizzard regarding my latest Blog – Baby Sultana’s Eyes. Some people, mostly ‘family members’ imply, no, accuse me of fabricating a fairy tale, ha! Some say I used ‘unpalatable’ words like prostitute and brothel while others opine my description of (possible) Sultana’s beauty excessively vivid. A […]

In Dubai recently, at Emirates Mall, browsing for nothing in particular, I notice an Arab family of five, with a nervous maid (Indian, Sri Lankan?) in tow at a department store. Why? The scent. And racket. The whiff of exotic oud coming from this group is overwhelming, but peculiarly, alluring as well, so I linger […]

Continued… I encourage her to leave the brothel, but she is scared of Khaala and the consequences; Zulaikha might have her face disfigured by acid by Khaala’s goons. I accompany her to a local but foreign affiliated and funded NGO for battered women who refuse help initially, but quickly change their minds when I assert […]