Black coffee and Glenlivet, Fine cotton and leather, Warm blankets, new tablet, Soft skin, new hearth, Old bombs, old refugee tents, New dictators, old ways, Old terrors, new tech, Old borders, new guns, Cold hearts, warm blood, Cold streets, warm hearts. All at the same time.
December 26, 2011
Let me begin with a parallel. Ms. Rowling wrote 7 Harry Potter books. Their popularity made her one of the richest people in the UK. But that’s the aside. The real story is how she made a mockery of every pundit predicting that the age for children and adults consuming printed books and literature is… [Read more…]
December 17, 2011
I had always read of how History was full of Laments. The most powerful stories of mythology have been laments. Of Cities, Kings, Peoples, and Prophets. We middle class Indian boys are never brought up to dream of being one with such things except through the most ancient of ways: that of storytelling – reading… [Read more…]
November 17, 2011
In this country, it is so easy to idealise the past and our agrarian roots. I grew up with this rhetoric, being a Bengali. Of the greatness of Tagore, of the days of the Bengali freedom struggle, of the days when the bhadralok learned English and became a barrister, but also wore the dhuti, ate… [Read more…]
October 16, 2011
A Benz looks great only on rainy nights Neon signs are not dead…in fact they make the only real landmarks No-one notices the cemeteries. It’s like they don’t exist It smells all the time, except when you are home. Even then it smells, but differently We need sanctuaries, but instead we build walls. And the… [Read more…]
September 11, 2011
There are few things that smell as peaceful as an infant. It is not about the baby powder. It is this particular ‘milky’ smell that fills an entire baby’s room. Or at least the babies I’ve been around. Something about smells isn’t there? The important ones fill you up, no matter how faint. And you… [Read more…]
August 24, 2011
I was about to write, but read instead. And I think you should too. Neel, you made my evening. http://skywithoutclouds.blogspot.com/2011/08/turn.html
July 12, 2011
It took me a long time to get over what I call the “Post-Diablo Condition”. I define this as the condition where you have played Diablo from Level 1 to Level 13 and more, at least 4 times, broken 2 mice, increased your near-sightedness by at least a degree, and had nightmares about Baal and… [Read more…]
July 1, 2011
Maybe all of go through this at some point in their life. Except that I used to pride myself in not being one of these people. I thought that if I listened and read enough, without changing my actual physical co-ordinates, it would mean I was still taking journeys. Well, maybe when I was younger,… [Read more…]
June 6, 2011
Moving house and sleeping on the floor takes me right back to the young nights, when I would plug in a cassette tape or CD and lie on the floor; my heart beating fast, waiting for New Music to flood my life and mind forever. I would have the same tape for weeks. Until I… [Read more…]
January 7, 2012
0