musings | musings
Feb.26.2012
“Oh, don’t worry,” my friends say about someone I have yet to meet, “he’s very laid-back.”
Little do they know that that is when I start worrying.
Describe somebody as “laid-back” and I have an inner reaction of tension, irritability and apprehension. I would far rather be told that...
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Feb.20.2012
My memoirs in précis are with him. In six hours that we spent together, mainly discussing the city, writing, films, human beings, food, morsels fell off my lips, giving him a taste of my life.
Who was he? Was? He is. Just a phone call away. A traveller. Carrying a parcel for me from many many...
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Feb.19.2012
There are favours for which you are sincerely grateful. Favours which come as rain upon the desert, or a hot salt bath when all your muscles are aching. Then there are favours which are a pain in the far South of your backbone.
You’re no IT expert and, after struggling...
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Feb.16.2012
This is now a regular occurrence.
I am at the supermarket, queuing to pay. A member of staff rushes towards me. His tone is cheerful, as though he has a special treat in store for me. "Would you like to use the self-service till?"
I answer, "Do I get a discount?"
His benevolence...
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Jan.20.2012
I had spent the 24 hours prior to today thinking it was Friday. What is strange about it? What does one do on Fridays that one does not on Thursdays? I do not know. But I feel as though Time has cheated me. It took away one day. It has given me a day that will by default repeat itself. FridayFriday...
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Jan.17.2012
I cannot swim. I cannot even drown. There is wood in me from the tree of life. It keeps me afloat. I ingest the tears of the ocean. I can listen to it even as my ears get blocked. Shut out the sounds. There must not be so much moaning. Water flows, they say. I still do not know where. It crashes...
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Jan.02.2012
I often read two books at a time: one on my kindle, one in hard copy—their different tones competing for space in my head. I almost always work on more than one freelance project in a given week, and really, most of the time, I’m gnawing on multiple pieces of my own fiction. To be...
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Dec.19.2011
Václav Havel was with me, sitting across on a flowery print upholstered sofa in the verandah of a tony club in Mumbai. He lit a cigarette. Was smoking allowed? I do not know. I cannot remember. It was mid-1995. The staff was on strike and the British nobleman who had founded this club was a large...
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Nov.29.2011
No strings to pull. It is a puppet made of wood, limbs designed for robotic movement. You pull a stick and make it walk or raise its hands. Unlike string puppets that hop and skip, or palm puppets that are stuck to the owners, the wooden puppet has no desire to tell a story.
The other day, I...
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Nov.11.2011
11.11.11. It adds up to six. Six flanked by two sixes is the devil’s number. I have never called. Will he answer? Or, she? I like numbers. I walk with numbers on my palms. My fingers are numbers, and so are my toes. I can count my eyelashes, especially when they are wet with unrealised dreams, and...
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