I know there are, like, 12 rules for late night: a desk, a band. Will people take me seriously if I don't wear a tie?
Raised by an irresponsible mother during the Great Depression in the Jim Crow south, my father was on his own from the age of 13.
Mangalore, the coastal Indian town where I lived until I was almost 16, is now a booming city of malls and call-centres. But, in the 1980s, it was a provincial town in a socialist country.

