He grew up in Mangalore, lived in the United States for twenty years, mostly in the New York metropolitan area, and now spends much of his time in Asia.

His works include the comic and frankly sexual coming of age novel, The Revised Kama Sutra (published in seven languages and ten countries to date), and fiction and nonfiction books such as Impressing the Whites: The New International Slavery; Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex; the semi-fictional What We All Need; and The Killing of an Author.

[1] His father John, son of Alex and Nathalia Crasta, originally hailed from Kinnigoli in South Canara district, about 20 miles from Mangalore.

[1] A collection of humorous, political, personal, and satirical essays titled Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex, appeared in India in 1997.

Five years later, he published two other books, What We All Need, entirely his own, and Fathers, Rebels and Dreamers, compiled with two of his Mangalorean friends Arunachalam Kumar, conservationist, and Ralph Nazareth, poet and professor.