By: Varuska Patni As I got older, my concept of wellness and how I incorporate it into my lifestyle has evolved over the years. Simply put, I view wellness as the opportunity to remain healthy in various avenues of life (i.e. physical, emotional, spiritual, environmental, etc.). Since wellness encompasses so…

By: Vatsal Gandhi I spent the first 17 years of my life in South Mumbai, within a tightly knit, mostly Gujarati-Jain community. Although there are a lot of Jains spread out across the city and its suburbs, the Jain community in South Mumbai is a small group, well-to-do and fairly…

By: Aparna Sagaram As children of immigrants, many of us struggle to fully assimilate with both Indian culture and American cultures. This is called the bi-cultural identity crisis, and the effects this has on mental health can be very damaging. Many children of immigrants grow up afraid to embrace and…

By: Anvita Jain Imagine being fresh out of college, about to start the job of your dreams and move to a new city. In July 2016, I moved to Dallas to start my first job as a Business Analyst at Capital One. To say I was excited about this new…

By: Preeti Shah The astronauts have landed in Times Square. The milky way is freckled on the steel grey face of skyscrapers. A whole gaping city, its mouth full of space. Asteroids stream of jaywalkers, with their daily shuffle, jaded saturation of rhythm. Obsidian can be found sparkling in the grit and caulking of all the homeless corners. We see each other, our anti-gravity, our eye contact fluxing. Our kind words suck into the worm hole of subway tunnels. We see each other, and sometimes nothing; just the darkness of space.

By: Priyanka Shah One of my earliest memories of food was watching the compassion my mom put into its preparation. I remember her carefully separating cilantro leaves before chopping to check for any creatures who may have made the micro-forest of a bunch their home. She would pack a Jain…

By: Naman Shah If your experience is similar to mine, we’ve met Jains at all ends of the political spectrum — from far left, to far right, to plain apathy. Religion and politics are two domains where our values, and sometimes our emotions, can be expressed both collectively and through…

By: Saurin Shah I always viewed Jain laity as a lifelong dilemma: even though shravaks and shravikas are afforded concessions, anyone who attempts to follow Jain teachings will eventually have to confront the decision to persist in or desist from the karmic cycle. Anyone who remains in their worldly life…