Dear readers, the original title of this post was ‘Confusticated and Bebothered’. But I became jittery at the last minute, even though no detractors were skinned alive in the process of pilfering it from Dictionary.com’s daily offering, who in turn have skimmed the phrase from the redoubtable J. R. R. Tolkien. At any rate, it […]
May 13, 2017
A Holus-bolus Odyssey
The page remained unblemished across the night, waiting for letters. But then why sniffle a haiku When one can weep a sea? The peepal tree has a new, green sheath. It shimmers and quivers in the barely felt breeze. Everywhere around it is nothing but baked dust, caked fields, and brittle blades of what once […]
April 22, 2017
Hangmen of April
Come April and I am awash with phone calls from friends and colleagues about how they fared in the annual performance appraisals. Certain lesions of the past rendered unmentionable on this blog due to reasons of propriety, have bestowed the robe of Agony Aunt upon me. I have come to consider the minor hurts and […]
April 9, 2017
The Vegetable Rice Chef
Himesh is fussy about the order in which ingredients should be put into vegetable rice. Butter, followed by equal amount of mustard oil, cumin seeds, chopped chillies and onions, crushed ginger and garlic, minced mint and coriander leaves, a handful of shelled peas and diced tomatoes, soaked rice and the jazz. It is a weekly […]
March 20, 2017
The Ark of Nostalgia
“I’m your phantom dance partner. I’m your shadow. I’m not anything more.” ~Haruki Murakami As if working for a bank weren’t traumatic enough, I am working for a subsidiary bank undergoing absorption in its parent. It is highly hypocritical of someone like me to feel mushy, I who for a frenzied bunch of years wanted the […]
March 1, 2017
The Battle of Outer-Loo
It happened when I was eight or nine. What refreshed the memory this past month was the hurried confession of a rookie Australian batsman to his captain, as he scrambled for the loo, “When you need to go to the toilet, you need to go to the toilet.” They can’t come simpler than that, the […]
February 19, 2017
Thus Spake My Father
As I look back at the life of my departed father, I realise how he had been a part of the transitional era that stood with a foot in the mysteries of the yore and the other into the increasingly scientific modernity. During his childhood, he had huddled with his siblings and grandparents around dimly […]
February 10, 2017
A Passing Shower —A Review
My student life ended abruptly, or shall I say, comic-apocalyptically, with the postmodernist classic by Joseph Heller, Catch-22. It happened when I wrote a chapter for my doctoral thesis that would soon be abandoned, on the anti-war anti-novel with an anti-hero gripped by existential absurdism. What I posited in the chapter was Joseph Heller had […]
February 7, 2017
The Springtime Wind —A Translation
Basanti Hawa, or the ‘Springtime Wind’, was the first Hindi poem I fell in love with, early in my childhood. It is written by Kedarnath Agarwal, a much-awarded doyen of Hindi Literature. The poem captures the freshness, fullness and the very essence of the springtime wind with a rare joy and breathlessness, rendering it nearly […]
February 1, 2017
Train to Nada Land
Dear friend and patrons, by the time you read this post, I’d be rocking away to my old hometown in a still older train panting over the ancient tracks laid down by the British looking to save the Indians from the Indians. If you are the type given to bouts of anxiety over cruelty to […]
January 21, 2017
Why Did the Chicken Write a Blog?
ARNAB GOSWAMI: Can you tell this, on this channel, right in front of all of us: why can’t the chicken write a blog? The nation wants to know. RAHUL GANDHI: The chicken has written the biggest blog since Independence and is now running away from debate. If it allows me to post a comment, there […]
January 16, 2017
The Cleaver of Oblivion
The Milky Way is dying, or is dead, by the lever of oblivion; A billion suns will be shattered by the cleaver of oblivion. I remember not the love songs lost or the updraughts of passion; Drowned in sea of disdain, I am a believer of oblivion. She will reap a million vows of my […]
Copyright © 2007 – 2017 U. S. Pandey
Contents of this Blog cannot be copied, stored or reproduced without written consent.Winner of ‘Literature & Personal – Short Stories’ IBA 2013
Sun on the Dewdrops
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heatherdawnfineart: Well I am so sad to discover the news of Cynthia&#...
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dishwaryamil: Beautiful translation ...
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umashankar
@uspandey
June 25, 2017
6 Comments