Summer Postcards
To a Crisp
When I returned to the kitchen less than a minute later, smoke was pouring from the toaster and Nikhil was gazing absentmindedly out the window. I swore loudly and yanked the power cord from the wall, causing Nikhil to jump in alarm. “Dude! Didn’t I tell you to watch the toast?!”
Wandering Through Leningrad
In the twentieth century alone, Petersburg has known the names St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, and St. Petersburg once again. Leningrad’s name change halfheartedly masks the Soviet past that is cemented in the collective memory of its citizens and the beautiful buildings and monuments of its cities. Surrounded by these vestiges, I delightedly walk, ruminate, and live in the same Russia in which my friends and relatives walked, ruminated, and lived, at the brink of the Oktyabrskaya Revolutsia (October Revolution), or in the heart of the Soviet Union, or on the edge of the socialist state’s collapse. I am simultaneously in modern, extravagant St. Petersburg and old, enigmatic Leningrad, shrouded in mystery.
This Charm Offensive
Sree gave me a look of panic. The speaker, a 20-something employee with a mop in hand, approached us and unnecessarily mopped the floor around our ankles. “You look very nice today,” he complimented Sree. “I like you in this room.”
Snapshots from the Biennale
The first Biennale was held in 1895, and this June art from seventy-plus countries flooded pavilions all over the city. Thirty permanent pavilions in the Giardini, one of Venice’s few large parks, are each allocated to a particular nation to showcase its art.
