24/06/2020 Day 92 The usual 20 km cycle ride in the morning happened. It has been setting a calm and easy pace to the days. Later in the day, I read a short piece by Bill Morris with a rather loud title - Please! Hold Off on That Novel Coronavirus Novel! He wrote about coronavirus … Continue reading Day 92: In defense of sameness
Category: Writing
Day 52: The sum
15/05/2020 Day 52 It has been hard to wrap my head around the news of an attack in Afghanistan. Three gunmen entered a hospital in Kabul and opened fire on women, infants, doctors and nurses. What kind of anger and rage can make men do this? Among the dead are sixteen women and an infant. … Continue reading Day 52: The sum
Day 43: A room full of authors
06/05/2020 Day 43 These days my room is crowded with authors. There is Shreelal Shukla sitting on the couch, Olga Tokarczuk on the chair, Paul Theroux pretending interested, few others overlooking my computer screen nodding in disdain . There are a few poets infiltrating with a collective laugh at the array of anthologies they see … Continue reading Day 43: A room full of authors
Day 39: On writing, workers & Arjun Sengupta
Day 39 For a fluff writer like me the only way learning happens is through iterations. I am in the seventh week of writing everyday. Writing, exercise and reading have filled up the hours of these lockdown days. There was boredom kicking in, on some days, even in doing these. I didn’t hit saturation, but … Continue reading Day 39: On writing, workers & Arjun Sengupta
Day 25: Searching for mot juste
18/04/2020 Day 25 I spent the evening reading digital copies of newspapers of the previous two days. I have access to NYT and FT. I look forward to their weekend supplements, which have a diversity of reviews and recommendations on books, podcasts, movies and travel. Covid-19 related news and pandemic reportage seems to have moved … Continue reading Day 25: Searching for mot juste
Hate Cleaning? I love it! – Scraping through in Oslo
The city is cold. This is not a statement on weather here. Even on weather’s count, cold season of cities in lower latitudes is Oslo’s summer. It manages to keep an attractive and highly refined façade of affluence and lifestyle that unfurls into layers of nuances only on repeat visits. Parts of the city that … Continue reading Hate Cleaning? I love it! – Scraping through in Oslo
The art of preface: Woman, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India
For two days a week that I spend working at a university, I spend a part of my time reading preface of books and digging archives. If a preface gets my attention and is compelling enough, the book gets read for sure. Jyoti Puri's Woman, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India (Routledge) is one such. The … Continue reading The art of preface: Woman, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India
To become young fools again
'We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies...' Pico Iyer writes in a reflective and philosophical piece on why we travel. His keen eye on how the experience changes the traveler and the place he travels to, is revealing in a way. In these years that I have re-read the piece, it … Continue reading To become young fools again
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi's book When Breath Becomes Air is an unsettling read which at the same time leaves the reader with a compelling sense of optimism. It is a stirring experience of knowing a man's mind from the frighteningly close distance of his own words, as he prepares himself to meet his end. It certainly doesn't seem … Continue reading When Breath Becomes Air
Reading Biographies
Reading biographies can be an unsettling feeling. Since school, I have read several biographies - first being Gandhi's My Experiments With Truth. It has become one of my favourite genre of reading for its deliverance and reflexivity that it comes along with. However, it has taken several years to understand the nature of discomfort, or … Continue reading Reading Biographies
