Farzana Versey's Blog
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Jan.12.2012
She has not read the book, she does not care about people’s perceptions because they would not know, yet she sends out clarifications. I am disturbed by what she seems to have a problem with:
“I guess it's more interesting to imagine this conflicted situation here and a strong woman. But...
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Jan.11.2012
I don’t know whether wishing his penis bon voyage would have taken him places or not, but the guy is now doomed to be living off his ‘suitcase’. MSNBC’s The Body Odd reports:
The 21-year-old Iranian man found himself between a rock and a hard place after he got a tattoo in Persian script reading "...
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7 comments
Jan.06.2012
I want to walk right into the sunset
And feel its depleting heat
Clothe my skin a pale pink
And then enter flesh
Colours will mesh
The peeled sun within me
Changes
Lights up
My insides
And when I cry
Each drop of tear
Will have a rainbow in it
Can transformation
Get deeper than this
~FV...
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2 comments
Jan.04.2012
If a nation were a person, then how would she deal with freedom? The question of freedom has become exceedingly complex politically – although it always was philosophically – because even issues outside the realm of social and armed conflict have become politicised. Is political independence the...
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15 comments
Jan.01.2012
vapours risefrom frozen dreamscircling the airthey nestleon moist leavesslither along brancheswrap around the tree settle near roots liquid nowsoil swallows themlike seedsfrozen dreams will become trees with flowers of ice
~FV
- - -
Wishes for a many-splendoured New Year, and...
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Dec.29.2011
If you don’t wear stilettos and still get orgasms, then pat your back. You are the last hope of science. It’s funny that ‘science-ologists’ think such theories need to be debunked. The “year’s worst abuses against science” by celebrity offenders is the annual list that is part of the Sense About...
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4 comments
Dec.28.2011
Two suited guys at a candle-light dinner nibbling on each other’s flesh for a television show does not denote cannibalism. If placed in a larger landscape, it could be seen as a microcosmic interpretation of contemporary socio-political mores. The ‘noble savage’ transported into an...
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Dec.22.2011
Due to the untimely demise of one of my characters, I was in mourning and could therefore not submit the story on time.
This is a real note I sent years ago. A colleague had entered my name for a short story competition by the British Council. I was not terribly enthusiastic about such events...
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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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Dec.16.2011
That year I had banged my head against imaginary walls. It hurt more than real walls would, for when you imagine things they get magnified. The walls were made of stone, grey and cold and weathered. They knew pain.
It was end of December, when there was a nip in the air and I'd walk through the...
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9 comments
Dec.07.2011
I always suspected that Mona Lisa was a bit of a wild cat. Something to do with the Cheshire cat smile. Oh, I know, it has been analysed to death – from toothache to the pleasure of labour pains to muscle dystrophy to sucking on a lozenge. Okay, that’s not been explored yet. Anyhow, New York...
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19 comments
Dec.02.2011
If you have a creative bone in your body, then you can be reasonably certain you have no spine and your soul is made of mortar. I am stumped. All along I had been smiling graciously and occasionally with a degree of complacency whenever I was commended for that flash of insight, that turn of...
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10 comments
Nov.30.2011
They are not pets that can be domesticated with the clipping of claws and an offering of bone-shaped biscuits. If the British government thinks it can tame the Taliban with an incentive of a $150 monthly stipend, then it is not only fooling itself but also behaving in a characteristically cavalier...
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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.25.2011
To see the bare remains of a tree in the middle of the river when there is foliage in the background is a rather humbling experience. Shorn of its identity, its faith in where it belongs remains intact. Personally, in the melancholia I see immense composure…it comes from the water surrounding it....
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8 comments
She writes with anguish and pessimism, a journey into hearts of darkness with no light at the end of that distorted prism, mainly because as she astutely observes, “every few years Pakistan writes a new fiction” to keep the embers alive. ”
—India Today
About Farzana
To be categorised is near-death. It would be nice to say that one is a literary vagabond, but it just does not convey fully the sense of rootlessness and ruthlessness one strives for constantly.
Have written opinion pieces, feature articles and interviews for...
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Farzana’s Favorite Books
Every writer, besides the ones I have listed, who has had something to convey that leaves me with the taste of bitter chocolate...that I like.