This Thanksgiving weekend, me and Punam invited some friends over to our home for a festive Thanksgiving meal. They brought over some deliciously creamy mac and cheese and an apple pie; Punam made some indulgently buttery, garlic and scallion mash potatoes and molasses cookies; and I made the one thing I can cook well, involtini di melanzane (eggplant)—which unfortunately ended up being a bit too seedy. It was a great meal with great, and sometimes quite heated, conversation that lasted through the night while both of our families’ dogs—Baloo and Makani—slept peacefully under the dining table at our feet or snuggled between the cushions on the couch. It was a…

Over the last few years, every time Diwali season rolls around, I’ve begun to notice that my baseline feeling of disconnectedness from the original sources of meaning in my life grows by orders of magnitude. Today, on Dhanteras—the first day of the five-day festival of Diwali—that yearly growth begun once again. When I woke up this morning, I received two message on WhatsApp. One was a forwarded image sent to me by my mom that said “Happy Dhanteras,” and another one was a voice recorded message from my dada, my maternal grandfather, from India. The message my dada sent was really well thought out and beautifully composed—they always are—but I…