Category: Uncategorized
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travelling (ii)
Taxi Driver, Paris: You from India? Yes. Oh, I couldn’t live there. Very dangerous. Have you been there? No, no. I go only to Nice and Italy. Oh, okay. So many people from China and India. France is filled with them. And Muslims. Everywhere you go you get halal food. Because they don’t want to…
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travelling (i)
My Europe trip started with a visa application to the France consulate in Kolkata. Four of us were travelling — two from London– and I was the only one called for an interview. 24 years old, female, single, unemployed – I understood. (I went because everything was already paid for.) I was granted a visa…
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Jaipur note I.
Three paintings of three gods on an indigo wall. Three paintings on an indigo wall. An indigo wall. The barber next to it and his mirror: another man. Few steps away: a tea stall. A woman in a red saree is making tea while two men in white shirts wait just when an autowalla steps…
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Tainted Margins IV
Jaipur: home, childhood and all other things. Last week, in my city, they asked me what my surname was. One of us, they must have thought. They told us that May 16th will make everything better. Cleaner. That they don’t sell houses to others. That they will sell the house to us. You are like…
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Meer/Alok Dhanwa
Meer pe baatein karo to ve baatein bhi utni hi acchi lagti hain jitne Meer Aur tumhara vo kehna sab deewangi ki saadgi mein dil-dil karna duhraana dil ke baare mein zor dekar kehna apne dil ke baare mein ki janaab yeh wahi dil hai jo Meer ki gali se ho aaya hai मीर…
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Camus, life, death etc.
Reading Camus’s notebooks and I suddenly feel terror. I came here from there. Yes, yes. I am sure of it. Too personal, S. Don’t read his notebooks. Too personal. Line to Maria Cesares regarding his return to Paris (five days before his death): Let’s say [Tuesday] in principle, taking into account surprises on the…
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Red.
Miguel Rio Branco: Saul Leiter: Manto: At six in the morning, the man selling frozen ice sticks from a pushcart next to the petrol pump is stabbed to death. His body lay on the road until seven, while water from the melting ice keeps falling on the dead body in steady driblets. At quarter past…
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2013. Some notes to myself.
2014. 24 years. 2013. 23 years. 2013. Jaipur. Calcutta. London. Bristol. Bath. Calcutta. Gauhati. Calcutta. Jaipur. Calcutta. London. Cardiff. Calcutta. Jaipur. Calcutta. Patna. Calcutta. 2013. E-mails. Poetry. Emails. Papers. Not enough photography. 2013. A distant death. 5 years since my grandmother’s death. 2013. Nothing. Not even almost. 2014. 24 years is not long enough to…
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Paris/Calcutta.
Today, I found a piece of chewed gum on the railing. Last tango. Last tango. Cities, like fates, resemble each other. The mural of Moulin Rouge in Moulin Rouge, Park Street. It looks so much like Calcutta, I thought. And then I remembered Calvino: “Every time I describe a city I am saying something…
Beyond Six Rivers 