Raj Mankad

1 month ago | houstonchronicle.com | Raj Mankad

As someone raised as a Hindu, I’ve watched with interest as a bill requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom is making its way through the Texas Legislature. The state Senate passed the bill in March and last week, it received the go-ahead from the public education committee in the House. Even if Texas lawmakers manage to get their bill to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, federal courts will probably find it unconstitutional and block it from going into effect.

1 month ago | houstonchronicle.com | Raj Mankad

Houston’s best-ever screen portrayal is arguably the Netflix series “Mo,” which stars Houston comedian Mo Amer, who plays a fictionalized version of himself. Amer’s family is from the West Bank, Palestine, and he grew up in Kuwait before the family fled the first Gulf War and settled in Alief. Amer spoke with Raj Mankad, the Chronicle’s interim opinion editor, after the release of the second and final season of “Mo.” This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

1 month ago | houstonchronicle.com | Raj Mankad

My daughter would come home each day drained of her spirit. Dulled by worksheets and her kindergarten teacher’s color-coded disciplinary system. After three or four days of spring break, however, she started “imagining” again. That’s what we called the little dance she did while concocting wondrous stories. She’d shake her hands and murmur to herself, lost to other worlds, but when she returned to us it was with a brightness I can only describe as divine.

1 month ago | houstonchronicle.com | Raj Mankad

On its first day of operation in the Heights, Metro's Community Connector shuttle arrived at my home with a whoosh, like a whisper of wind through falling spring blossoms. Somehow boxy and curvy at the same time, the vehicle is what you'd expect if a five-passenger shuttle bus and an electric golf cart had a cartoon baby. It was adorable. Was this the future I've long awaited as a transit rider, the iPhone moment for Houston's flip-phone transit system? Maybe.

2 months ago | houstonchronicle.com | Raj Mankad

I'm embarrassed whenever I experience pleasure over someone else's pain. But sometimes I just can't help it. Germans, of course, have a word for the phenomenon: schadenfreude. And that's exactly what I felt watching as the press interviewed Duke University's wunderkind37-year-old basketball coach, Jon Scheyer, and his top players, Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel, after they lost to the University of Houston Cougars in the final minutes of their Final Four matchup.