My dogs are barking up a frenzy. I had let them outside from the back porch—the safe place similar to a den or kennel—where I enclose them when life in India gets too stimulating. Today, the political candidates are working their precincts well, with the huge speaker boxes tied to small vehicles run by two-stroke engines. They look more like little rickshaws with a pickup bed in...

The other day I asked God to fill me up with his wisdom. This isn’t an unusual request for God. Actually, I begged like a child. Things in my life had become funny—like something needed to change. I live an Indian existence, so differently from my family in America. My values are so God focused, that sometimes the only things that I can talk about when I Skype home are gardening...