Tag: #everyday jottings
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Disappearances
I knew a woman who, when talking about a past relationship, would always say she disappeared from her fiancé’s life : I always wanted to but never asked what exactly she meant because I somehow knew exactly what she meant. My pure poisonous heart.
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A riddle
A few years ago, in Calcutta : my mother on her deathbed. I, inconsolable, pray and pray – to whom, I’m not sure – that let this only be a dream. A bad dream but a dream, please, just a dream. Then I woke up.
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The mummy mystery
The afternoon was spent at an old neglected cinema, near the walled city – one of the only two art-deco buildings in the city – where, the greatest magician of the world O.P. Sharma (junior) was to perform unmatched acts and tricks –they were strange two hours, filled with plastic flowers, glittering costumes, sexual…
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Indian Coffee House
There’s an old, somewhat dilapidated coffee house on Mirza Ismail Road : a favourite of unemployed scholars and foreigners spending a long time in the city : it’s no match for the famous coffee house of Calcutta, but its mutton dosa has no match anywhere else. I suddenly remembered Tipu Joshi today, a historian and…
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My father
My father is a poet, so is my mother. They studied together at university, and they’ve both had other jobs to support themselves : but they’re primarily writers. I like my father’s early and my mother’s later poetry. Growing up, it was somewhat of an embarrassment for me to acknowledge that they were writers, that…
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La double vie de Saudamini
I have a somewhat unusual name – it’s a Sanskrit word, the name is a little more common in the Bengal region, but here in the Hindi belt and virtually everywhere else, everyone has problems pronouncing my name, which means I have heard many variations since childhood: Sodamni being the most common, Soda-mini, two separate…
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These mornings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_bhV4T_9XM&nohtml5=False I woke up bored today – who could I meet – there’s the school friend, now married, who talks about her in-laws all the time and how she’s not allowed to step out of her house – she once laughed and told me about her sister-in-law (they all live together) who out of…
Beyond Six Rivers 