Usha Alexander is the author of the novels The Legend of Virinara and Only the Eyes Are Mine. She once worked for many years at Apple in the San Francisco Bay Area. For a while she lived in Vanuatu, a Pacific Island nation, where she taught high school science as a US Peace Corps volunteer. And many years before that, she lived for awhile in Germany. She retains an abiding interest in science, anthropology, and history. Usha grew up in Pocatello, Idaho, a remote little town in the Rocky Mountain region of the USA. Though currently residing near Delhi, she carries her home within her self. Visit her website for more.
Recent Posts from Author
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Discovering Virinara
(This essay appears in its entirely in The Punch Magazine, under the title, On Writing: Discovering Virinara.)
I don’t think I’ve ever had an idea for a story simply fall into my head. Other writers seem to get Ideas —or so one hears — but not me. My historical novel, The Legend of Virinara, did not begin with an idea. No plot point struck me in the shower. No character strode forward, fully formed from the mists of My Imagination, declaring their inner life and intentions, grabbing me by the hand to lead me along a journey through their world. No, nothing like that. Now that the finished book sits before me, in fact it’s difficult to look back and remember with any clarity how it was at the beginning, how the first words fell upon the page, barren and loose as blown leaves. But I’m quite sure that before I began, it wasn’t my intention to write a story about a forsaken princess who falls in love with an enemy warrior. Nor of a young king caught up in a battle for succession to the throne. The pieces of the story emerged slowly over time, shaped by my reading and life experiences and the milieu in which I was living, especially about a decade ago. I was traveling around India, visiting its most ancient ruins and reading up on its history, immersed in the multiplicities of its pasts. Fragments of disparate stories and images stuck in my head. In the National Museum in Delhi, I saw a 2nd century stela depicting a woman drunk among her friends.
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Storytelling as Life and Art
[This essay was originally published on the Penguin India blog.]
![Legend of Virinara- FB Ad-2[5]](https://i0.wp.com/blog.shunya.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/6a00d8341dd33453ef022ad3a1437e200b.jpg?ssl=1 "Legend of Virinara- FB Ad-2[5]")
‘It was only some twenty years ago that I finally returned here to my ancestral lands, called back by the need to remember, to gather up the fragments, to reconstruct the cracked vessel of my life and pour from it my own story. I don’t know if any good will come from this exercise, whether there’s any wisdom to be had from it, but I feel compelled to put down my tale. Who knows why one feels this human urge to preserve and perpetuate ourselves, our visions and desires? Who knows why this need for art, this brazen denial of death and emptiness?’ ~ Shanti, The Legend of Virinara, page 5Like Shanti, the primary narrator of The Legend of Virinara, most of us have moments when we reflect upon our own lives. We reckon with our choices, good or bad, to understand how we became the person we are today. We look for a coherent thread of cause and effect, of consistency in our own personality, of personal growth running through the events in our memories like beads. Perhaps we need to understand our own drives or desires—or explain to others why we’ve done what we’ve done. We might wonder what it all means—the sum of our life, thus far—or whether we can draw any lessons from it to teach others, to do better ourselves, or to build our sense of connection with others.
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Usha Alexander on The Legend of Virinara
I recently sat down with Richa Burman, my editor at Penguin India, to discuss my new novel, The Legend of Virinara. We discussed the setting, themes, and characters in the book, as well as a bit about my own life. Watch the video, below [30 minutes].
For those who would rather read, I’ve transcribed our conversation. However, it’s not a verbatim transcript; I’ve taken the liberty of editing the conversation slightly, so it’s easier to read, and adding a bit more depth.
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The Legend of Virinara
Friends, I’m pleased to announce my new novel, The Legend of Virinara. Published by Penguin India, the book is now available in pukka bookstores and e-bookstores across India, and worldwide as a Kindle ebook. The printed book should become available internationally in a few weeks. I hope you’ll give it a look and spread the word. Here’s the back jacket blurb:
The Legend of Virinara by Usha AlexanderA lone woman travels fearlessly into the jungle to confront the enemy. She holds the fate of an entire world in her hands.
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A Tribute to Dr. Nirmala Kesaree (1930–2016)
Dr. Nirmala Kesaree, Aug 2006 My aunt, Dr. Nirmala Kesaree, passed away on the morning of January 8, 2016. Much respected and beloved by those who knew her, she was an iconic personality and a pillar of the community in Davanagere, Karnataka, where she resided for the past 50 years. Aunt Nimmi was one of the first doctors to practice as a pediatric specialist in India. She had studied and worked in the US and in England, but returned to India in the late 1960s with a dream of founding a charitable hospital for children. At first, she treated children for free at a clinic she set up in her own home. And eventually, after much saving, strategizing, and struggle, she opened the Bapuji Child Health Institute to serve the poor of Davangere in 1993, where she served as Director until the time of her death. In addition to this—and among many other accomplishments—Aunt Nimmi spearheaded vaccination drives that benefited hundreds of villages and tens of thousands of children in her area in the 1970s. She is also the developer of Davanagere Mix, a nutritional supplement that predates others of its kind used today by the WHO.
In 2005, Aunt Nimmi was awarded the Kannada Rajyothsava Award for her many contributions to the welfare of local women and children. She was an inspiration to me and I miss her. She is survived by two sisters (including my mother), one brother, and perhaps hundreds of medical students who credit her for, among other things, bringing evidence-based medicine and higher standards to the region where she practiced.
My mother, Dr. Malati Kesaree, with the assistance of Aunt Nimmi’s dear friend, Premalatha G.R., wrote and published a tribute to my aunt. In January 2018, it was released as a printed book in Jagaluru, Karnataka, by Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Dr. Shivamurthy Shivacharya Mahaswamiji of the Sirigere Math. The full text with images is available here for download (PDF):
Category: Biography -
Leaving Idaho
Friends, I’m pleased to announce Leaving Idaho, a short story set in my hometown of Pocatello, Idaho, now available on Amazon as an ebook or a (very slim) print book.When Craig Olsen returns to Idaho to say goodbye to his dying uncle, who raised him, he comes face to face with matters he can no longer evade. Among these is the mystery of the young hitchhiker who disappeared nearby, more than three decades ago. Through half-memories, his sister’s reminiscences, and banter with old friends from school, Craig is forced to confront the shadows of his past, including what he must accept and what he must disown about the people he loves.
I left Idaho at the age of 19. And though the story is pure fiction (not my life story), it might provide a window into my complex relationship to the place, about which some of you have asked me over the years.
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When Fascists Are Not Evil
Last November, nearly 63 million Americans, about 27 percent of all eligible voters, turned out to vote for Donald Trump. While not even a majority of those who voted, it’s still a staggering number and a sizable fraction of the population that cannot be ignored. It’s distressing to think that 63 million Americans actively chose this racist, sexist, narcissistic, wannabe dictator. It’s agonizing to accept that so many believed that he was the best, most qualified, most reliable person among the possible choices, the most trustworthy for steering the American Ship of State.How is this possible? Who could support this con man? Who could condone his lies and obscenities? Who would trust him with the safety and security of the world today and for generations to come? Who are these people and why would they do such a thing?
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
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5 Things You Can Do About Air Pollution
In Delhi these days, pollution-talk fills the air almost as thickly as the pollution itself. By now we all get that it’s bad for our health—especially for our young and elderly—but we might feel helpless against it. After all, the problem seems too big, and as individuals we can do little to modernize car engines, clean up road and construction dust, or decommission coal-fired power plants. So what can we do to help reduce the problem and protect our families?The problem feels complicated and overwhelming partly because it’s a problem of the commons—of the common air that we all must breathe. And yet, it’s difficult to pin down the responsibility: Who creates the pollution? Whom can we ask to stop it? Why isn’t the government doing enough?
Here’s the thing: We know that most pollution is created by any and all kinds of burning—whether that’s the combustion in our car engines, the flames that bake our tandoori naan or “wood-fired” pizza, the smoldering dead leaves in our gardens, or dozens of other things. What this really means is that a good part of the pollution is ultimately caused by the actions of individuals—that is, by us. But it also means that every one of us can take steps to help reduce it.
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Resisting Autocracy
A venal and debauched crew of clowns is about to take the steering wheel of the most powerful government on earth. This is a calamity of epic proportions. Do not minimize it. Do not attempt to normalize it. And for godssake stop spewing platitudes about bridging the divide and working together to move forward. The new regime has no intention of moving forward.Stop fretting about understanding the people “on the other side.” It’s not about “sides.” There are 3 types of people who voted for Trump: 1) actual racist, misogynist, xenophobic hate-mongers, including white, Christo-fascists; 2) ordinary, garden variety rubes and naifs, who fell for his self-serving lies and demagoguery, who have little understanding of the world and/or are miserable judges of character; and 3) people who studiously practice intellectual and/or emotional dishonesty to protect and rationalize their narrow, immediate interests. Trying to understand their tortured logic will be a waste of your mindshare.
Instead, read Autocracy: Rules for Survival, by Masha Gessen in the NYRB. And resist (obviously, non-violently).
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Glimpses of Zambia
In this 18-minute travel documentary, I present some of what we saw and learned during our wonderful 12-day trip to Zambia in November 2015. We visited the beautiful South Luangwa National Park, Lusaka, Livingstone, Victoria Falls, and Mukuni village.
For more photos, notes, and other information, check out the Zambia page on shunya.net.
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Glimpses of Malawi
In this travel documentary (17 mins), I present some of what we saw and learned during our wonderful 8-days in Malawi in October 2015. We visited two areas on Lake Malawi’s shores (Cape Maclear, Nkhata Bay), the beautiful Liwonde National Park, and the capital city, Lilongwe.
For more photos, notes, and other information, check out the Malawi page on shunya.net.
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Glimpses of Mozambique
Here is an 18-minute travel documentary I made based on some of what we saw and learned during our wonderful 15-day trip to Mozambique in October 2015. For more photos and travel notes, check out the Mozambique page on shunya.net.
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Skepticism as an Equal Opportunity Sport
Knowledge never progresses unencumbered by ordinary human politics. Clubbiness, careerism, prejudice, personality clashes, bigotry, corruption, charm, and other human factors affect the advancement and dissemination of all knowledge, even in the hallowed academies of the West. While the scientific disciplines may have the best inbuilt methodologies for self-correction, still their practice isn’t immune to these impairments of judgment and objectivity.In his recent Guardian article, The Sugar Conspiracy, Ian Leslie reminds us of how important individual personalities or even the fashionability of ideas can dominate, pervert, or slow the progress of entire fields of science. He writes,
In a 2015 paper titled Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?, a team of scholars at the National Bureau of Economic Research sought an empirical basis for a remark made by the physicist Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
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A Journey to Mozambique
(Click on thumbnails below for pictures, slideshows, and notes from Usha and Namit on their journey to Mozambique, Sep/Oct 2015.)
We began our journey in Mozambique on the southeastern coast of Africa. It’s a huge, sparsely populated country of 25 million people, with the greatest density being spread out along its 1,500 miles of stunning, tropical coastline. The south, which includes the capital of Maputo, is the region of greatest development, economic activity, and settlement. With large populations of both Christians and Muslims, Mozambique is famous for the long amity between these communities. Portuguese is the lingua franca among a host of native languages.
Mozambique holds the distinction of having had the longest experience of European colonialism on the African continent, beginning hardly a decade after the first European ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. Here the Portuguese stumbled upon the bustling world of Indian Ocean trade, which had already been plying for centuries. Determined to dominate it, they conquered one of its robust island trading ports and built a permanent settlement by 1507. The island, called Mozambique after its reigning sultan, Ali Musa Mbiki, would become the first capital of colonial Portuguese East Africa, which grew from there. For over 450 years, Portugal administered its colony with overtly racist policies and little concern for its development.
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Fillmore & Castle: Political Ascendency and the Mirrored Ceiling
by Rajeev Alexander, cross-posted from Praxis Ghost
The seventh of January is the birthday in 1800 of Millard Fillmore, who in 1850 became the thirteenth President of the United States of America. Fillmore ascended to the Presidency upon the untimely death1 of President Zachary Taylor, the erstwhile Major General “Old Rough and Ready.”A Whig and an anti-slavery moderate, Fillmore nonetheless signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act2 which lost him the party’s nomination when he pursued a second term3 and led to the disintegration of the Whig Party altogether4. Fillmore is often ranked among the ten worst American Presidents, batting at roughly the Mendoza Line5, just above George W Bush.
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The Watchman’s Tale
Why Harper Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, is more profound and important than her first
Even before its publication, Go Set a Watchman had become controversial, acquiring a whiff of conspiracy, inauthenticity, and foul play. It seemed unbelievable that Harper Lee would publish again after more than half a century of quiescence—and that too a novel written long ago and thematically near to her first and only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Published in 1960, Mockingbird has become an American classic and standard reading in every American high school. It is revered for its poignant telling of a thoughtful and courageous white man who does his best to hold up the candle of racial justice in the Jim Crow South. How could anything new live up to that? Why would Lee imperil her own legacy? -
Black Venus: The Saartjie Baartman Story
Saartjie (or Sarah) Baartman isn’t a name that many will recognize, outside of her native South Africa. But her story seems to embody so much about historical (and modern) contradictions of race and gender, violence, fantasy, exploitation, and prejudice, that she’s become an icon for many, such as the founders of the Saartjie Baartman Center for Women and Children in South Africa.Baartman was a young Khoisan woman who traveled to England in 1810, when she was 20 years old, to become a performer. In England, she quickly became famous as the “Hottentot Venus,” the main attraction of a popular Piccadilly freak show exhibit, in which she presented herself as a wild savage tamed by her keeper. Dressed in a revealing bodysuit and beaded ornaments, she swaggered and growled for the audience, and turned to let them closely examine her famously prominent buttocks. Between performances, she lived comfortably, dressing as a European woman and going freely about town. She also fell to heavy drinking and her health declined. After a few years of this in England, she was sent to France, where her exploitation deepened, including her presentation as a biological specimen studied by leading scientists eager to promote their theory of white racial superiority. In France, she died of one or more undetermined infections at the age of 25.
The fact that the cause of her death remains uncertain is curious, given that after her death her remains were carefully examined, measured, and preserved in pieces. Of particular interest to these men of science who dissected her were her genitalia, which were separated and kept in a jar that was displayed in France’s National Museum until the late 20th century. In 2002, after calls from the South African government, her remains were finally repatriated and buried, surrounded by a great swell of national feeling and homage paid in speeches, song, and dance.
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Dispatches from India 2: On Hiring Domestic Help in India
(Usha Alexander’s periodic musings on her life in India. She moved there in mid-2013. Read Dispatches from India 1: First Impressions.)
Shoreefa‘All you get here are these Bangla maids. They’re so lazy! To get them to work you have to shout at them and shout at them,’ lamented a neighbor. I had casually asked her, two days after our arrival in Gurgaon, if she knew anyone looking for work as a cook or house cleaner. Her voice tensed as she spoke, and her forehead crumpled with the pain of a woman in search of commiseration.
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Changing Diglossias in India
In any multi-lingual country, questions of language will inevitably be political. This is certainly true in India, where local languages, Hindi, and English continue to shift in relative status and as markers of identity and social class.
I came across this interesting BBC radio program on the complex social dynamics around languages in India. It’s an episode of a series called Word of Mouth that aired in April, 2013. What I enjoyed about the program wasn’t so much that it yielded shocking new insights, but that the producer includes the voices of several mid-range media-wallas, and this helps make vivid the multi-poles and multilayers of the current linguistic reality.
More than a billion people, twenty two scheduled languages, and dozens more mother tongues: In the second of two programmes, Chris Ledgard explores the complex and passionate politics of language in India. In Delhi and Jaipur, we visit schools, business and newspaper offices to ask – how do the languages you speak, read and write in India influence your life? Click here to listen to the story.
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More From the Annals of Animal Intelligence
…. [Head keeper Jerry] Stones finally managed to catch Fu Manchu in the act. First, the young ape climbed down some air-vent louvers into a dry moat. Then, taking hold of the bottom of the furnace door, he used brute force to pull it back just far enough to slide a wire into the gap, slip a latch and pop the door open. The next day, Stones noticed something shiny sticking out of Fu’s mouth. It was the wire lock pick, bent to fit between his lip and gum and stowed there between escapes.Apparently, Orangutans are the escape artists of the animal world. This particular incident happened back in 1968, but scientists at the time weren’t paying attention, as they were busy with their apes struggling with language and performing tasks in their labs.
However, Eugene Lynden, author of several books on animal intelligence, found it more than interesting. Lynden’s 1999 article on animal intelligence is remarkable for the way that it’s astutely anecdotal. Lynden had realized what “now seems obvious: if animals can think, they will probably do their best thinking when it serves their purposes, not when some scientist asks them to”, and he then began to speak to a broad range of people who work intimately with animals: zookeepers, veterinarians, trainers, and yes, researchers. He says,
