My Story

Born in the lowland Scottish town of Falkirk to a Parsi (Indian Zoroastrian) father and a Scottish mother, I was taken to Karachi as a babe in arms—an early beginning of a lifetime of globetrotting, during which I have lived in five countries and learned to speak four languages fluently.

I studied English at Jesus College, Cambridge and went on to write a PhD on eighteenth-century periodical writers, which I later expanded into a book called Anxious Employment (Routledge UP, 2005). After more than a decade teaching English Literature at universities in the UK, Germany and the US, I moved to Buenos Aires to pursue a longstanding passion: Argentine tango. I studied and taught tango for more than ten years and became known in the dance world for my outspoken blog, Tango Addiction, and later for a two-volume book on tango culture: Our Tango World (Milonga Press, 2018). I also worked as a professional translator from German, French and Spanish.

In 2017, I moved to India, where I spent almost two years exploring my Parsi heritage in Bombay. During that time, I became friends with editor Helen Pluckrose and began to first write articles for and then copyedit her publication, Areo Magazine. Helen and I also launched a joint podcast, Two for Tea, in July 2018, which I later hosted solo. (The podcast ran until October 2023; episodes are still available online.) In 2020, I returned to the UK and, in May, took over as editor-in-chief of Areo. I ran the magazine until October 2023. I am currently preparing an anthology of essays on free speech by Areo writers (Pitchstone, forthcoming 2024).

My main current work is as an associate editor and podcast host at Quillette. I am also an associate editor at the publication Queer Majority, and a sponsored writer at Substack, where I publish regularly under the rubric The Second Swim. My writing has appeared in a wide range of publications, including The Times, The Washington Examiner, The Indian Quarterly and Uncommon Ground Media.

I am an enthusiastic dancer, an occasional poet, an incorrigible doglover, a dedicated yogi, an execrable chess player and a superfan of the 90s sci fi series, Babylon 5. Above all, I love my sister, my close friends and my partner.