Like a pony fettered to a carousel, I’ve been travelling miles after circular miles and yet not have moved a millimetre from the pole I am suspended. I am not in charge of this motion, nor do I control this…
The Bungalow by the Tracks
Five years after she fled to Delhi in an unreserved coach of Lucknow Mail on the eve of her proposed marriage, Miranda returned to the town where she had grown to be a woman from a blob in a womb.…
The Naked and the Mad
“You can think clearly only with your clothes on.” ~Margaret Atwood Somewhere down the evolutionary hill, or up the vertigo inducing precipice if you rather have that, we lost the ability of thinking clearly in our birthday panoply. The moments…
Unnameable Things
Hailing from a childhood both untainted and unenlightened by television, I have fond memories of the whole bunch of siblings huddled up in the box room that our parents had converted into a common study, which also served as a…
The Crusted Slice
Always on Dussehra, my sister who is a rung up in the family ladder would remember the older one who lived with us briefly. She was not too old when she fell ill on a winter night that thundered and…
The Palace of Illusions —A Review
‘Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have.’ ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni It has been raining stories set…
A Hunger Game of Books
I have taken a vow of abstinence from the book market, which since the advent of blogging has begun resembling a fish market where everyone is hollering to sell his dreams and nightmares alike. The social media is bursting at…
Reading The Forgotten Waltz
The Saturday is melting away like an ice lolly in afternoon. Swift bursts of rain have given a washed look to mould-ridden walls and rooftops. Even the mounds of garbage look clean. It is a noisy old suburban rail coach,…
A Scientist and a Philatelist
Indian Antarctic Expedition —Philatelist’s Guide : A Review ‘When I saw the first iceberg, draped in the evening sun and glittering like gold on the vast expanse of water, I decided I will definitely write a memoir of my journey…
The Ungolden Ball
As Argentine football hung by a tenuous gossamer, clinging to the last few blinks of life, he stooped over the ball before the free-kick, aware of the cosmic weight of the moment. ‘It’s now or it’s never,’ intoned the commentator,…
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Known
As I hover metaphysically over Estádio Nacional de Brasília, along with the cameras that keep criss-crossing and snooping in the field, my daughter asks me a question in the middle of the simmering knockout fixture between La Albiceleste and Les…
A Country Hanged
“The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation.” ~ Thomas Malthus I look at the sun and it is not the same. How does it look to those hanging in a tree, trampled and trudged, ploughed and…
One Grain Amongst the Storm 