RAJI WRITES

Short Takes on a classical music house concert, two plays (Hamnet and Anthropology), and delicious Mexican food. Music Concert, classical Indian music by Madhuvanti Bhide My friend Lata Patil is a tireless champion of women's empowerment and leadership, and I met her years ago through the non-profit Indians for Collective Action when she served on their board. In honor of her late husband Hanumant Patil who was an Indian classical music aficionado, Lata hosted a house concert

Short Takes on a play, Bouquets to Art at the SF fine arts museums, the Kochi Biennale, food and drink, and Frankenstein the movie. Theater All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Berkeley Repertory Theatre Arthur Miller’s All My Sons is a play about ethics and moral responsibility in post-World War II America. Director David Medizabai reimagined this reckoning of the American Dream, from a lens of race, ethnicity and class, and Puerto Rican immigration to the United States. Jimmy Smit

Short Takes on two plays, a few Oscar-nominated movies, and an irresistible cake! Theater A Streetcar Named Desire (by Tennessee Williams) I watched a bare bones production (by design) of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire at ACT-SF’s Toni Rembe theater. I had last watched Streetcar as an opera, commissioned by the San Francisco Opera. My friend Sunita, her mother Lulu and I managed to snag $10 tickets, standing room only at the

More Short Takes: on a literary journal, a film, a Berkeley Coffee Shop, and two novels translated from Malayalam. Weaver’s Literary Review (Volume 1, Number 2, 2025) Volume 1 Number 2 of Weaver’s Literary Review, “A Home for Writings by South Asian Americans and Others”, is beautiful and powerful, with poems, essays, translations, short stories and a review. I have read a few pieces so far, and am looking forward to reading the rest. I am honored to have in it my story Drea

Introducing Short Takes There are so many things I want to write to you all about, and I never seem to have time. So, I decided I would start “Short Takes” to tell you, in 500 words or less, about a book, a show, a movie, or something else that moves me. So here we go! Film: One Hundred Years of Solitude. A beloved book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez , made into an impressive Netflix series . I was transported into the world of Macondo and seven generations of the family of J