Benzodiazepines, a class of tranquilizers and sleeping pills (such as Valium, Xanax, and Ambien--almost all chemicals ending with the suffix "zepam") are often mindlessly and irresponsibly prescribed by doctors. These doctors have been brainwashed about the merits of these drugs by unethical drug companies.The result: the drugs, being highly addictive, end up enslaving millions, in body and mind. Many, especially in Third World countries, have no idea what they are going in for.

"Works in Progress (2021)" is a smorgasbord of nine widely varying pieces: joyful, contemplative, humorous, serious (a public interest essay), personal essays, and dark stories, many of which are almost ready to publish independently, but will cost much more if purchased separately. The memory tax, family pride and ancestor snobbery placed in context (Letters to the Dead), our attitudes to beggars, stories about fatherhood, some tools that may come in handy when talking to writers (or else...

This novel is an Indian "Angela's Ashes," one in which the little Vijay Prabhu, connecting with Robin Hood, John F. Kennedy, and Western movies, has to make a slight readjustment to his dreams. Instead of becoming a Pope or a saint, he dreams of going to America, the land of milk, honey, and Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup and becoming a millionaire philanthropist.A complete novel in itself, "One Little Indian" is a reworking of the childhood, coming of age first half of The R...

This one of a kind, Kurt Vonnegut-moving and comic coming-of-age novel is set in a part of South India in which coconut trees, cobras, Catholic churches, and tiger dancers coexist with delicious fish and meat curries. Here, growing up, as an Indian boy with an American Dream set on fire by a dashingly handsome John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie, and by Readers Digest and Time magazine.. "The Revised Kama Sutra" is also an honest and uninhibited account of how hilariously difficult it was ...

Though the right to travel and to move is precious, tourism on such a mass, industrial scale as at present has never been seen. Airports, roads, and many an ancient monument or historic city have millions of tourists descending on them. Is mass tourism destroying the environment and causing damage to native peoples and negatively affecting their rights, their lifestyles, and cultures? What about already overcrowded and otherwise resource-stressed countries, where the natives do not have en...

In this story, a father who is strongly attached to his young children finds himself estranged from their mother and tricked into entering a trap, and his major concern, now, is his children. "What did the children see? What did the young, impressionable children that he so loved, and who loved their father, see?" This is a tale of love, sex, power, and of the Indian Matriarchy (which you probably have never heard of), but mainly of children and fathers, and modern fatherhood. To quote a f...

In this humorous and playful short book arguing against censorship of language and recounting his own evolution from repressed prude to libertarian, freewheeling slinger of juicy-Lucy words, the author suggests that sexual words, slang, and wordplay are "to be celebrated as joyous, vital, funny, juicy, the very essence of life. Man is a neutered animal without them; polite language is effete, artificial, and an unspoken admission of one's total and abject submission to the System."...

In the course of trying to get an "I love you" from his son, a father stumbles upon a theory of world peace: what if we were always ready to say sorry, when the words might heal, and make us realize our common humanity? What if our egos were not so dependent on our being right, but more so on being wrong—which proved our humanity beyond doubt (because robots can, theoretically, be right 100% of the time, or until their batteries run out. Amen.)Imagine this conversation between Bide...

A universal story of writers, publishers, editors and their comic, tragic, heartening, and sometimes uplifting world. A small town Indian boy sets out to be a successful novelist in America. After a period at Columbia University, he writes his novel and meets John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, three Nobel Prizewinners, Marilyn Monroe's husband Arthur Miller, and The World's Most Powerful Editor. And then, he screws up (or perhaps it's more complicated than that, perhaps he is simply unaware of th...

Richard Crasta, a Mangalore-bred, Bangalore-born Indian, decided at an early age that he would become a writer, and that his main focus would be to write for freedom and justice. He felt, at the time, that the United States of America was the best place to fulfill such a dream. This was his American Dream, and he wrote what he considered to be the boldest novel ever written by an Indian. But then, he realized that this freedom was not available to brown and black writers. He decided to tel...

Henry Miller meets Robin Williams and Philip Roth in this exuberant, madly excessive sexual rant from a young Indian man growing up in a repressive India and dreaming "of a f**kland that could never be." This was the basis for "The Revised Kama Sutra: A Novel," and is unlike anything seen until that time from an Indian writer.Around 5,000 words.

How a son's eyes were opened to his father's greatness, and how this son (now a father) realized what fatherhood does to a man. Variegated stories that dive deep into the emotions, experiences and exhilaration that defines fatherhood.A quote from a passionate letter in this short book: "In principle, I would want every father to be reunited with his sons: [It] would result in more happiness, more peace throughout the world, fewer enmities, less hatred, fewer violent acts, ...