Guest Blogger: Melvin Durai

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The economy is swirling down the tubes. We are fighting two wars with no end in site. The Indian American contestant on Top Chef is bound to be booted off any week now. In short, we are living in a pretty depressing world, even given the exiting events of today’s inauguration. We met in our North Dakota headquarters recently to see what we could do to roll back some of the doom and gloom and bring our readers a pittance of joy for the few moments they log on to SM. The answer presented itself in the form of Canada-based humorist and writer Melvin Durai:

Melvin Durai is an India-born, North America-based writer and humorist. His humor columns, acclaimed for being both funny and thought-provoking, have appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines in several countries. An award-winning feature writer, Melvin also distributes his weekly columns through an email list that reaches thousands of people in more than 90 countries, including a few countries Melvin is still trying to find on the map…

Melvin was born in the town of Tisaiyanvillai, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, India, and spent much of his childhood learning how to pronounce “Tisaiyanvillai”. (He still hasn’t quite got the hang of it.)

He grew up in Zambia, Central Africa, where he attended Kansenshi Primary and Secondary Schools in Ndola, and Kamwala Secondary School in Lusaka. Both his parents, Mrs. Hepzy Durai and the late I.V. Durai, were math teachers and, as a result, Melvin grew up hating math.

Melvin moved to the U.S. for college in 1982. He attended Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, where he double-majored in Accounting and Natural Science, giving him the unique ability to file tax returns for hamsters. Then he earned an MBA from York College of Pennsylvania, before following his heart and enrolling in the journalism program at Towson State University in Maryland. He loved it and did well enough to land a job at the Chambersburg, Pa., Public Opinion, the best and most widely read newspaper in the entire town of Chambersburg. (Motto: We’re better than that rag in Waynesboro.)… [Link]

Yes, we’ve added another nerd to the bunker corp. You can also check out his blog here. Please join me in welcoming Melvin to SM!

24 thoughts on “Guest Blogger: Melvin Durai”

  7. Welcome Melvin! From Penn State the warm welcome goes out to you. (right now the temps are -7C=20F)

  12. Welcome Melvin, I met him at a friend’s wedding in Ann Arbor and we discussed SM…pretty cool to see him write for SM

  22. 19 脗路 Ikram said

    Zainab — there is also no room for Humour on a “Welcome” thread.

    Oh, there’s plenty of room for humor. Where was it again?

    Anyway.

    Melvin, allow me to be the latest (and thus, Desi-est) to welcome you to the wild, wooly world of SM.

  23. Geographically Zambia is not in central Africa. Unless you are refering to British central Africa (Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe). All three are geographically in southern Africa.