While I pride myself on trying to be creative in all areas of my life, I have occasionally gone overboard, like the time I decided to bring to a party a salad that I constructed, on a huge rattan platter, to look like a miniature scale model of the G...
I started working professionally as soon as I could, doing weddings and things like that in high school, while everyone else was having keg parties. I just felt destined to do it and really committed and driven; it was something that just felt right ...
I've inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was so palpable all the time while I was growing up, the sense of what my parents had sacrificed in moving to the United States, and yet at the same time, building a life here and all tha...
Learn from nature. Stuff lives and stuff dies all the time, you know. Animals and birds and flowers. Trees come and go, and we come and go. That's it. So we should all seize life and make the most of what we have while we can.
Looking at the Batman pages is like revisiting my youth. My first seven years in New York were the first seven years of Batman itself. While my time on Batman was important and exciting and notable considering the characters that came out of it, it w...
'Lean on Pete' is the story of a boy and his horse, but it is never heart-warming - it ranges in tone from desperate to merely painful - and, while fascinating, it is never entertaining or redemptive. But if you want an unadorned portrait of American...
Throughout my life, I've always been really close with girls and made friends with girls. And I've always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn't find any of the girls in my high school attrac...
First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is...
There were many influences on me while growing up. In the late Seventies and early Eighties when I was growing up in Hyderabad, it was a bit more laid-back, and that gave you time to think about things differently without perhaps being caught up in t...
A ship's engine far away on the water expands the summer-night horizon. Both joy and sorrow swell in the dew's magnifying glass. Without really knowing, we divine; our life has a sister ship, following quietly another route. While the sun blazes behi...
Young children seem to be learning who to share this toy with and figure out how it works, while adolescents seem to be exploring some very deep and profound questions: 'How should this society work? How should relationships among people work?' The e...
I doubt the terrorists saw 9/11 as a teaching opportunity. And we're not really a culture geared to anything as humble as 'learning.' But I was disappointed in how quickly everyone wanted to get back to normal. It was as if we watched terrorism on TV...
I love working with the Farrelly brothers. I'm a big fan and feel very lucky to have gotten to work with them a few times. One thing that I learned while working with them is that you have to keep your cell phone off when filming scenes, or you owe t...
Recently, I was preparing to sing Springsteen's 'If I Should Fall Behind' for a wedding and was unable to get through it without tears. My wife handed me 'Love You Forever.' I read it. I cried. But that cry somehow cured me of crying while singing th...
When you do 'Before Sunset,' you know while it's a limited audience, there was a very small group of people that love 'Before Sunrise.' You feel a certain pressure to make sure that you uphold a level of quality that has been a bar. You set a bar and...
The Lord compensates the faithful for every loss. That which is taken away from those who love the Lord will be added unto them in his own way. While it may not come at the time we desire, the faithful will know that every tear today will eventually ...
If I could sum up 'Shadow's Claim' in six words: cage fights with hot alpha males. Seriously, though, while the fights are the backdrop for Trehan and Bettina's love story, the main emphasis is on how Trehan - a pitiless master assassin - wages the u...
I was with a friend of mine recently who was dying and while he was lying there with his family around his bed, I just knew that was it, that was the best you can hope for in life - to have your family and the people who love you around you at the en...
Don't ever talk yourself out from believing that you could turn your dream into a reality, while maintaining a regular job. Many have done it before, and you too could do it through hard work and dedication.
At every given moment in your life, you have the option to move backwards with fears and doubts or to keep pushing forward with faith and courage. But don't forget to consider the positive demands of your inner-self while choosing on which direction ...
I had a blog where I tried to be transparent while giving away nothing. I tweeted and Facebooked badly. As a writer, your 'voice' is your calling card, yet my voice was becoming indistinguishable from billions of other voices.
