Sandip Roy's Dispatches from Kolkata

Series produced by KALW

Caption: Sandip at the Grand Hotel in Nainital.
Sandip at the Grand Hotel in Nainital. 

Award winning writer, radio host, NPR contributor and novelist Sandip Roy brings his wit and insight to these personal audio diaries from his new life in his old home, India.

After ten years of hosting New America Now, Sandip Roy brings you a little bit of the story of the new India every week – a letter home from his other home.

"A lot has been written about the changing India," says Roy, "but reporting about a changing India is one thing. Living in it and dealing with a country where newspapers are still being launched instead of folding, internet rumors spark mass exoduses, and cricketers advertise skin-whitening creams called Fair and Handsome, that is another thing altogether."


460 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
Caption: Sandip at the Grand Hotel in Nainital.
Manipur’s court records talk about a game back in the 1st century AD and what’s different about polo in Manipur is that this not just a game for po...

  • Added: Jan 08, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
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Manipur’s court records talk about a game back in the 1st century AD and what’s different about polo in Manipur is that this not just a game for po...

  • Added: Jan 17, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
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Iranian-American writer Firoozeh Dumas' commentaries about her hyphenated life have aired on NPR. But that was a different America. While Firoozeh ...

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio and WAMC Northeast Public Radio


  • Added: Feb 01, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
  • Purchases: 2
Caption: Bharati Mukherjee, Credit: Photo by Sandip Roy
Bharati Mukherjee is gone but she left the light on for many of us.

Bought by WAMC Northeast Public Radio


  • Added: Feb 06, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Kolkata Lit Fest promotional poster, Credit: Photo by Sandip Roy
When I was a little boy I once lost my parents in a busy market in Kolkata. I cannot begin to imagine what it means to be lost for 25 YEARS. Like S...

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio


  • Added: Feb 14, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
  • Purchases: 1
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There’s good, English, bad English and in a case by itself judicial English - perfect for pontification.

  • Added: Feb 21, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
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Perhaps an unwelcoming America is not such a bad thing for the rest of the world. It’s as if the American Dream itself is being outsourced back to ...

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio and PRX Remix


  • Added: Mar 06, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
  • Purchases: 2
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It must sting Hindu Americans that Aslan, an Iranian-American often called upon to speak out against stereotyping Islam, seems to be now playing a ...

  • Added: Mar 14, 2017
  • Length: 05:59
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Used as Indian Americans are to being heralded as the model minority, their feathers might be ruffled by the stories of harassment coming out of th...

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio


  • Added: Mar 22, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Endurance Amarawa, Ibgiya Malu Chukwuma and Precious Amalcima, Credit: Virendra Singh Gosain/Hindustani Times
There have been other mob attacks in India before thre Nigerians were beaten in a mall in Delhi on March 27. Each time the government promises stri...

  • Added: Apr 03, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
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There’s a new political force center stage in India these days. The cow. The cow has always been holy to millions of Hindus but it’s still a plac...

  • Added: Apr 11, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
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This mother’s Day I was thinking about a very particular mother. Not mine but a woman named Leila Seth. Leila Seth was the first woman to top th...

  • Added: May 17, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: The ensemble cast of Monsoon Wedding, Credit: Photo courtesy Kevin Berne/Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Monsoon Wedding by Mira Nair was an unlikely hit in 2001. A movie set in India but not a British Raj nostalgia film. Nor a Passage to spiritual Ind...

  • Added: May 25, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
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Alex Tizon recently wrote about his family’s slave, Lola. Some praise Alex TIzon for his courage in confronting a dark chapter in his family’s hist...

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio and WAMC Northeast Public Radio


  • Added: May 30, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
  • Purchases: 2
Caption: 12 year old Ananya Vinay, Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
The Scripps National Spelling Bee has a new winner. 12 year old Ananya Vinay. Another Indian American. That’s not news anymore. But Ananya Vinay’s ...

  • Added: Jun 06, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: Paul Beatty at the Kolkata Literary Meet , Credit: Kolkata Literary Meet
If the polls had been right and Hillary Clinton had won someone could have written a great American satire of an America where Donald Trump wins. B...

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio


  • Added: Jun 19, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Prime Minister Modi and Prsident Trump
A spate of lynchings in India has Sandip thinking that the U.S. and his home country are not so different.

  • Added: Jun 27, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: Not in My Name protest, Credit: Sandip Roy
On a rain-drenched monsoon evening recently a bit of old American history found new life on the streets of India.

  • Added: Jul 10, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
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India is one of the world’s biggest exporters of beef, even though much of India does not eat beef. New laws concerning animal welfare were seen a...

  • Added: Jul 18, 2017
  • Length: 06:00
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Chickens cannot fly. That’s according to Air India, India’s national airline. It has just announced that it’s going to stop serving non-vegetaria...

  • Added: Jul 25, 2017
  • Length: 06:00