Indian Writing

by Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Eighteen short films - mostly duds, including Gurinder Chadha’s trite hijab romance; and A~ reminded me for the nth time, that he and Juliette Binoche share a birthday…

The ones that I liked:

- the first one, set in Montmartre, by Bruno Podalydès.

- Tom Tykwer’s segment about a blind boy and a young actress.

- Alexander Payne’s 14e Arrondissement, in hilariously accented French, about an American postwoman on a vacation in Paris.

- and I loved Steve Buscemi in the Coen Brothers’ Tuileries segment, with all those Mona Lisa smiles!

Saw it at Metro. Interesting stuff, looks so chilling in black and white, but it didn’t make you care for the lives of the people in it… which is kind of scary.

We waited at Rajdhani Snacks before the show. I had a kairee chaas, which was delicious, and A~ had a mango rossogolla. He thought it would be a rossogolla in mango-flavored syrup, but it was actually a standard white rossogolla cut in two and stuffed with bits of mango. Pretty good actually.