Disparagement humor is never funny.

Will they still help him make sense of his world?

On a recent cloudy afternoon, my Kolkata home erupted in loud cheers. “Goal!” my father cried, and then we all clapped, singing “Ocho is the best!” My 2.5-year-old had yet again kicked the ball with extreme skill and confidence. The 

My husband comes home and finds me and Ochoa eating mango slices from a plate in front of us. His face drops. “Why are you eating mangoes like this?” “Like how?” I ask. “As a whole fruit, cut … in 

There was a time when I lived in a galaxy of zero worries. I fit into the saying ‘happy go lucky’ like a tee and tell others, mostly my mother, to relax. The adults in my life tried to explain 

My husband started teaching our toddler how to clean up after himself. The minute a little tea or milk would fall on the table or floor, he would ask our son to bring a mop from the kitchen, wipe the 

I was upset for a third time that day. My 2-year-old had thrown an entire bowl of muri on the carpet, and I officially lost it. My old enemy, the short fuse, made a grand entry as I screamed at 

As the air begins to smell of autumn, I feel a slight blip in my blood pressure indicative of two things: the excitement of the festive season and dread of its special balancing act. For the past few years, I 

It was raining outside. I had a runny nose and was shivering and gargling on and off the entire day. My son was playing on the floor beside me, and my mother was humming a song to him while cutting 

As the yummy chingri’r malai curry melted in my mouth, I felt like the happiest woman on earth. The savoury prawns, fresh and deliciously cooked by my aunt, were heaped on my plate generously, and my whole life seemed sorted 

When I was a child, my father, a great swimmer, always chose beach holidays over other geographies. We went to Bombay and Goa to laze on the beaches by the Arabian Sea, or we splashed in the Indian Ocean while 

The bell rang yet again. My 18-month-old son had decided the day’s third session of play at the neighbour’s house would end after exactly five minutes. My neighbour, Shefali, laughed as I opened the door and let them in. “Runa, 

It was in college when I first realized I had OCD, that is, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Each day, I took a 3-hour, roundtrip journey on four public buses to reach college and return home. While I had always had a 

I was ready to be a mother long before I thought of having a child. I was five when the first pet arrived. My older sister had brought home a Lhasa Apso pup from an old neighbour. She sneaked the 

In one of those rare and precious minutes when I find myself alone and free to do something other than chase a naughty 1-year-old, I often opt for something quite futile: checking my social media accounts. With scrunched up eyes 

I seldom have good experiences on flights. I have always found myself stuck between obese people, people who snore, people who get up for the washroom too frequently and — worst of all — people with babies who aren’t exactly 

Five years back, I was on the phone with my fiancé, discussing a topic that seemingly had no solution. We were to get married in December, and I was to move to Ahmedabad, where my vegetarian in-laws stayed. What would 

Last year, we went to meet a cousin’s son for a reason that sounded very somber to me: The 8-year-old had fasted for five out of the eight days of a Jain holy festival called Paryushan. The boy, small for