I’ve written for publications including The Times (UK), The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, The Australian, The Monthly, The New Daily, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Art + Australia, Condé Nast Traveller, The Drum Online (ABC), ABC Online, SBS Online and more around Australia and overseas.
Here’s a selection of some of my recent work. Just click on the links under the titles to read more…
Sailing Through Indonesia’s Komodo National Park
Condé Nast Traveler USA, July 2023 (also Condé Nast Traveller UK cover November 2023 and Condé Nast Traveller India cover March 2024)
HERE BE DRAGONS.
So warned medieval maps of the dangers in the exotic reaches of the fabled Spice Islands. Then in 1910, on the remote island of Komodo, a Dutch East Indies officer discovered a creature that seemed to be just as terrifying: up to three metres long and weighing up to 135 kilograms, with fearsome talons, chain-mail scales and serrated teeth dripping in venom, devouring deer, boar and even humans — and rumoured to breathe fire.
Shantaram – the Black white man’s burden
The Conversation, 6 October 2022
There are only two things you’re likely to encounter in India as much as Delhi belly: ubiquitous copies of Gregory David Roberts’ best-selling 2003 novel Shantaram in hostel lobbies and Swiss bakeries and, as noted in the book, constantly “being stared at with the […] almost accusatory censure of those who’ve convinced themselves they’ve found the one true path”.
This was The Conversation‘s most-read story of 2022 with over 278,000 global views, and licenced to over 20 international outlets.
Sunil Badami’s uncle, the Sceptic, worked miracles for enraptured audiences. But he carried a secret grief
ABC RN, 17 August 2023
I didn’t grow up with fairytales, but the stories his Indian mother told him – not just of Hindu gods and heroes, but of her colourful family back home. Most colourful of all, my uncle, India’s best-known sceptic, who devoted his life to disproving fraudulent gurus’ “miracles” by eating fire, bending forks, levitating and more.
But at the heart of the Sceptic’s magic was a tragic disappearing act.
When I pulled back the curtain of family secrets, he discovered love and jealousy, sex and death, shattered vows and broken faith – and a mystery whose unspeakable shadow has loomed over four generations.
Film star Chetan Kumar Ahimsa faces deportation from India for political activism
ABC RN, 13 May 2023
Many Indians dream of going to an Ivy League college and eventually achieving US citizenship.
American-born actor and activist Chetan Kumar Ahimsa did the opposite, moving to the South Indian state of Karnataka in 2005 after graduating from Yale University with a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to research class, caste and gender in traditional South Indian folk theatre.
But now, he may end up being deported from his parents’ homeland, where he’s spent most of his adult life.
Why I always cry at weddings
Good weekend, 5 may 2023
And at a family do in India, I had ample opportunity.
I always cry at weddings. I cried at my own 18 years ago, and have cried at every one since. I remember how overwhelmed I was – not only by the myriad preparations and inevitable tensions beforehand, but by how powerful the love was that wrapped around my new wife and me. It was something I hadn’t planned on.
Of course, my South Indian mother had been planning since forever. When we saw the 2001 film Monsoon Wedding, she gripped my arm and vowed, “Your wedding will be just like this, but with much better catering.” And it was! When we married at our local bowlo in eastern Sydney’s Clovelly, on the water, we served lamingtons with samosas, our Hindu vows spoken in English.
Kamahl: ‘I hope to have one last curtain call’
The Australian, 10 November 2021
I interviewed Australian music legend Kamahl on the eve of his 87th birthday in a wide ranging series of interviews for Diversity Arts Australia’s Colour Cycle podcast and Pacesetters Archive, celebrating the achievements of CALD performers and artists. It was the first time he’d sung in his mother tongue in over 60 years.
