A reading from his novel, A Blind Man’s Map of Mumbai,
by VIVEK TANDON

Date: 30 July 2009 (Thursday)
Time: 6.15 pm
Place: Theosophy Hall (3rd floor), 40 New Marine Lines
Churchgate, Mumbai 400 020

Vivek Tandon is a writer who has worked in several genres. He is the author of a book of poems, Climbing the Spiral, and has written a play that was selected for Royal Court Theatre London’s prestigious International Residency Programme. His comic verse will soon appear in a Sahitya Akademi book of children’s verse. Tandon, who works as a creative consultant in advertising in Mumbai, is also an actor whose appearances on the Mumbai stage, especially in The Seagull, Once Upon a Tiger, Insulting the Audience, Karna, and Aftermath, have been warmly appreciated. For more on this author, please look up www.vivektandon.com.

A Blind Man’s Map of Mumbai is a thriller for readers of all ages above 10. It is a Scholastic India ‘Book of the Month’. The recovery of a diamond-encrusted, Mughal-era gold box draws together a blind street musician, a young schoolboy and a young policeman. But what the box is reputed to have contained is even more valuable, and there are dark forces that will stop at nothing to recover it. Contemporary problems and secrets from the past surface, as the unlikely allies grapple with a mystery that gets more twisted and murky as the narrative progresses. A world-famous art dealer, his snooty daughter, an influential MLA and an astrologer join Tandon’s diverse cast of characters. “Hafiz’s description of the city through his senses makes for enjoyable reading,” notes Time Out Mumbai. Tom Alter, writer, actor and sports enthusiast, says: “Tandon’s book delights even as it entices… shimmering with the tide of the Bombay sea, and shivering with sudden and most unexpected suspense… the climax is sudden and fraught.” One of the novel’s central themes is Mumbai’s role as a sanctuary for vastly different individuals and communities.

*****

Also 6 August 2009 (Thursday)
PEN@Theosophy Hall
Chandrahas Choudhury, reading from his novel, Arzee the Dwarf
Theosophy Hall, 6.15 pm

This was the shortlist.

****

The 2009 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize has issued a call for nominations.

Last year’s winner was Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

• Entries may be in any genre: poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography, and narrative journalism), and drama.
• All authors from the subcontinent are eligible but their books must be published in India.
• The books must be in English or translated into English from an Indian language.
• Books that have been published elsewhere and have already won prizes are eligible, though less likely to win.
• Vanity press publications are ineligible.

A 3-member advisory board will shortlist 6 books published between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. This year, the board includes writers Anjum Hasan, Zac O’Yeah and poet Jeet Thayil. The shortlisted books will be sent to the 2009 panel of judges: novelist Rana Dasgupta, editor Mukund Padmanabhan and Professor Meenakshi Mukherji.

The winner will be announced in the second half of November and the prize presentation will take place in December 2009. The winner will receive a cash award of Rs One Lakh and a trophy.

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is a non-profit trust set up by the late writer/editor’s family to keep her memory alive. It wishes to reward first-time authors of all ages.

For further information, contact shaktibhattprize@gmail.com.

*****

The Inaugural Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize
Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize
2009

Call for Entries

Entries are invited from young poets in India writing in English for the inaugural

Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize.

The Prize was instituted by the Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English and is being administered jointly by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. The prize consisting of a cash award of Rs.10, 000 and a citation will be presented annually at a literary event in Hyderabad in the month of October. The entries will be judged by a distinguished jury of poets and literary personalities.

Entries are invited from all Indian citizens between 20-40 years old and writing poetry in English.

Entries must include:

1. Five (5) different poems written by the applicant;
2. Evidence of age
3. Complete contact information (including phone numbers and email addresses)

Note: Please do not put your name on the poems to be submitted to the jury members.

Entries must reach:

Dr. Aparna Rayaprol
Convener, Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize
c/o Study in India Program
University of Hyderabad
Hyderabad 500046
rayaproltrust@gmail.com

Deadline: September 1, 2009

The winner will be announced latest by the first week of October and arrangements for the travel and accommodation for the person chosen for the award will be made by the Trust and the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.

The Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust was started in the year 2000 to perpetuate the memory of the poet and also promote Indian writing in English. Srinivas Rayaprol (1925-1998), the son of the famous Telugu poet Rayaprolu Subba Rao, is considered one of the significant personalities of the early Indian English Poetry in India. His three major volumes of poetry are Bones and Distances, Married Love and Other Poems, and Selected Poems, all published by Writers’ Workshop in Calcutta.

Woke up in the morning to her voice. “Unniye, don’t go on sleeping covered up like that. It’s Monday.” She was calling the eldest son. She then moved to the kitchen, her white sari crumpled. Brought me a big glass of coffee. Then? What happened then? Did she say anything that should not be forgotten? However much he tried, he could not remember. “Don’t go on sleeping covered up like that. It’s Monday.” Only that line lingered. He chanted it to himself, as if it was a prayer. If he forgot it, the loss would be unbearable.

The whole thing here.

For D, reading is practically the same as singing. “Please, Amma, sing this book…”

Bedtime music is mostly Rahman or one of the Worldspace channels. M likes the Dill 6 soundtrack, especially the Genda Phool song.

On the New Yorker’s books blog, Ligaya Mishan has a post about bedtime reading here.

Satyan is now 86. He is based in Mysore, but was here for two days for the show opening.

Read this 2002 article by Theodore Bhaskaran about Satyan’s work over here.

And here is something Satyan wrote in 1950.

It was a simple formula: a flat twenty per cent off on any book in the shop, unless the book was already being sold at a special price. The formula has remained the bookshop’s fundamental principle for over six decades.

Whether you’re a shop regular or a one-time visitor, you never have to remember to insist on the discount or even to ask for it; the person making up the bill will simply include it at the end, neither reluctantly nor with a flourish as if he is doing you a favour, but most matter-of-factly, because it is not just part of the store’s business policy but part of its ethic. They will never try to get away with not giving you the discount.

Shanbhag began his bookshop in 1948, inside the premises of the old Strand Cinema in Colaba from where the shop got its name. He used to call it a “hole in the wall”, but in its location off Pherozeshah Mehta Road in the Fort area, the Strand Book Stall today has the space for several thousand books from all over the world, packed into shelves all the way to the top as well as on the mezzanine floor at the end of a narrow staircase, along with assorted delights from all over India - the latest issue of Biblio, a couple of new arrivals from the Seagull in Kolkata, several slim delights for children from the Chennai-based Tara Books - and, not least of all, several salespersons who arrange themselves unobtrusively alongside the shelves.

Unbelievably, there is even space for a few chairs in case you want to browse. And you’ll never have the salespersons hovering over your shoulder asking if they can help you. They know that if you’re looking for something in particular, you’ll ask them. The rest of the time, you’re left alone.

At any time during the day, one of the salespersons is always on the phone, taking orders for books from the thousands of regular customers: from The Joy of Sex (which must surely be one of their most popular orders) to the new memoir by Azar Nafisi, chances are they’ll already have it tucked away somewhere; if not, they can get it for you, and always at twenty per cent off. Strand regulars also know that the most interesting books are always the ones kept in small piles near the phone with slips of paper tucked into the pages: those are the books that people have specially ordered, and there are almost always some interesting finds there. If you want one of those very badly, then they might just decide to give you the only copy they have and quietly order another one for the other customer.

One of the highlights of every new year, along with the classical music Janfest at St.Xavier’s and later the Kala Ghoda Festival, is the Strand Book Sale. All roads lead to the festive atmosphere of Sunderbai Hall in the New Marine Lines for the two week duration of the display. Inside the great hall is a great hunger for books. Mumbai is not a demonstrative city, and it is careful about getting as much as it can for its money; but inside the Strand sale, you will find ordinary citizens thrilling in the extraordinary experience of walking through a vast hall full of books.

Mumbai is used to crowds, and this one leaves the book-buyers unfazed. Their hands will ache from holding the steel handles of the plastic shopping baskets, but they will move along with the mass of people, criss-crossing the hall like a temple crowd, loading their baskets with books. Moms and dads will alternately babysit their children in the play area outside while the other parent battles through the crowds inside to emerge with their arms laden down with Strand’s well-known plastic bags.

The Strand sale is an inducement to excess, an orgy of book-buying. Nothing seems too expensive, not even when it’s finally your turn in the billing queue and the billing assistant tots up your total in an untidy scrawl over two or three pages of their little white and blue billing books. Then you cross over to the payment counter to get your card swiped, the charge-slip is impaled at the top of a small mountain of charge-slips, and you get the brief, efficient flash of a smile from the normally impassive counter assistant who hands you your bags when you show them your copy of the bill stamped “Paid”.

Did you really buy so many books? Where on earth will you keep them? The questions fleetingly cross your mind. But once a book has gone into one of those orange, blue or red baskets, it will come out only to be paid for, packed into the Strand bags, and opened and read on the long train ride or drive home.

Er, the Tiananmen square protests?

…”An Atlas of Impossible Longing” by Anuradha Roy. It’s the story of three generations of a Bengali family in the first half of the twentieth century. There are some lovely things in the book, such as this excerpt.

I admired many things about the film, including the fact that it was made at all. It was uncompromising in what it set out to do.

One of the saddest moments: an elderly musician, Khan Saheb (Naseeruddin Shah) recollects the first time he saw the tomb of Wali Gujarati, and when for a few moments Khan Saheb, Panditji and a little mouse sat together in the hush of the tomb. The question that Khan Saheb seems to be asking is: when Wali’s tomb disappeared during the riots, how much else - graciousness, tolerance - vanished along with it?

Picture above: a young boy returns to the Shah Alam refugee camp after a fruitless search for his father.

Here is a short story by Asghar Wajahat, The Spirits of Shah Alam Camp.

Oh, this little film is such a delight.

Directed by scriptwriter extraordinaire Sooni Taraporevala, with her two lovely kids playing two of the main roles in the film along with Sohrab Ardeshir, Boman Irani, Imaad Shah, and all sorts of dear Bombay faces including Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, Cyrus Broacha, and Kunal Vijaykar.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book. It’s an Adam Dalgleish novel, 14th in the series (and likely to be the last, as Dalgleish occasionally reflects within the novel), and I’ve generally liked reading about this Jaguar-driving detective who is also a published poet. I enjoy reading P.D.James: especially the geography, the rich, detailed landscapes, the intricate descriptions of houses and living spaces (in this case, not only a sprawling Tudor manor in Dorset, but also a cottage on the manor estate, and a narrow London house, in the wonderfully-named Absolution Alley, which has one room on each floor, beginning with mullioned windows on the ground floor and opening out to the sky on the top floor).

Rhoda Gradwyn is an investigative journalist who checks in at an exclusive private clinic in a Dorset country manor for plastic surgery to remove a scar on her cheek. It’s no spoiler when I tell you that she is murdered soon after, because that information is provided to us in the first line of the novel. It looks like the work of an insider, and James provides a variety of suspects, endowing each of them with a detailed back story and, of course, a possible motive. These include the surgeon, George Chandler-Powell (but would he really murder his patient after putting in so much work on reconstructing her cheek?); his assistant Marcus Westhall who is just going off to Africa; Marcus’s sister Candace, who assists at the clinic office, and who was never really very happy with the idea of an investigative journalist coming to Cheverell Manor; and Flavia Holland, the attractive nurse in charge at the clinic. Then there is Helena Haverland, nee Cressett, whose family once owned the manor but who now works here as a general administrator; her old governess, Lettie Frensham, who assists with the bookkeeping at the clinic; Kimberley Bostock, the assistant cook and her very competent husband Dean, who dreams of opening their own restaurant; Sharon Bateman, the girl who helps with the cleaning and who is obsessed with the macabre story of a with-burning at the nearby Cheverell Stones; and Mox, the gardener. Oh, and there’s Robin Boyton, the Westhalls’ cousin and a close friend of Rhoda Gradwyn, who has come to stay in one of the estate cottages during Rhoda’s recovery.

A number of delectable red herrings are strewn along the way, including the fictional plot of another detective novel. The police procedural part of the novel is nicely done, beginning with the phone call that pulls Dalgleish out of his meeting with fiancee Emma Lavenham’s Oscar Wilde-spouting professor father. He is assisted by the intelligent and competent Kate Miskin (though there’s a crying scene that I wish James hadn’t thrust on her) and the very good-looking Benton-Smith.

While the main action is restricted to the manor, the estate and a nearby cottage that becomes the incident room for Dalgleish’s team, I also like the way in which James manages to bring into the novel a number of telling observations about class, race, same-sex relationships, urban violence, and contemporary life. Even characters who appear over just a page or two are vividly sketched: an intelligent priest, a dedicated educator, a bright and professional literary agent.

Quite an achievement for the 88-year old crime writer.

- the children’s delight at seeing the mountains for the first time. D, on seeing a pine tree in the cottage garden: “Very long tree… very nice!” And he loved collecting the pine cones, which he initially thought were a kind of pineapple. M, with his more limited vocabulary: “There! There! There!” pointing to the lake and the boats.
- the peace and calm. Kodaikanal is one of the quiet secrets of the south. Of our five days, we spent one day getting there and another getting back: it’s a two-hour flight to Coimbatore and then a four-hour drive to Kodai. The drive up from Coimbatore is flat and uneventful, except for a series of lazily turning windmills, until we cross Palani. After that, it’s about two gorgeous hours and 14 hairpin bends up the mountains, through some lovely tall green-brown forests.
- the weather, which was completely different on each day that we spent there: actually hot the first day, cool and cloudy the next, then wet and grey, and finally, on the day of our return drive down the hills, clouded with mist.
- the very child-friendly Carlton Hotel, our two adjoining cottages, the spacious grounds, the lovely lake view; the boating, and most importantly, the children’s play area;
- the quick and painless round of sightseeing (Coaker’s Walk, in bright sunshine; the 500-year old tree in the forest; the pine forest; the Suicide Point; the Pillar Rock; the Guna Caves; and, one misty afternoon, the Kurinji Andavar Kovil);
- the slow, winding drives to nearby villages, the superb views, the colours of the forest, the deep valley filling up with mist;
- the home-made chocolates (at Fays); the fried momos (at Tibetan Brothers); the cheese (from Cinnabar, at the Potter’s Shed); the filter coffee and idli-sambar (at the very down-to-earth Astoria, don’t be fooled by the posh-sounding name);
- the bright cheery stuffed toys and stuff, at Kopedeg (especially a large green toy parrot on a wooden perch) and Re’s (little toy animals in Kalamkari fabric);
- hand-knitted sweaters, lavishly embroidered sarees, and handmade jewellery at Corsocks. I even found a little something, embroidered all over with flowers, that was apparently meant to be a dinner roll holder. The saleswoman told me it’s a favourite among their visitors.

*****

As for the title of this post. I managed to catch up with some reading, and one of the books I read was “A Nice Quiet Holiday”, a debut mystery novel by Aditya Sudarshan. The narrator, Anant, is a young law clerk on a hill break with his boss and mentor, a Sessions Judge. But their holiday in the fictional town of Bhairavgarh, in Uttarakhand, is anything but nice or quiet: with a murder, much blood, a court scene, and the town simmering with resentment about an AIDS report published by an NGO. Not sure why the novel is being described as a literary thriller though. It’s a nice quick read at 224 pages. Well structured, with short crisp chapters, an intelligent narrator, and lots of house guests sitting about in a large house on the hillside. I look forward to reading about the Judge and his law clerk again.

Everyone should see this film.

The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the silence of snow.

He’d boarded the bus from Erzurum to Kars with only seconds to spare. He’d just come into the station on a bus from Istanbul—a snowy, stormy, two-day journey—and was rushing up and down the dirty wet corridors with his bag in tow, looking for his connection, when someone told him the bus for Kars was leaving immediately.

He’d managed to find it, an ancient Magirus, but the conductor had just shut the luggage compartment and, being “in a hurry,” refused to open it again. That’s why our traveler had taken his bag on board with him; the big dark-red Bally valise was now wedged between his legs. He was sitting next to the window and wearing a thick charcoal coat he’d bought at a Frankfurt Kaufhof five years earlier. We should note straightaway that this soft, downy beauty of a coat would cause him shame and disquiet during the days he was to spend in Kars, while also furnishing a sense of security.

As soon as the bus set off, our traveler glued his eyes to the window next to him; perhaps hoping to see something new, he peered into the wretched little shops and bakeries and broken-down coffeehouses that lined the streets of Erzurum’s outlying suburbs, and as he did it began to snow. It was heavier and thicker than the snow he’d seen between Istanbul and Erzurum. If he hadn’t been so tired, if he’d paid a bit more attention to the snowflakes swirling out of the sky like feathers, he might have realized that he was traveling straight into a blizzard; he might have seen at the start that he was setting out on a journey that would change his life forever and chosen to turn back.

But the thought didn’t even cross his mind. As evening fell, he lost himself in the light still lingering in the sky above; in the snowflakes whirling ever more wildly in the wind he saw nothing of the impending blizzard but rather a promise, a sign pointing the way back to the happiness and purity he had known, once, as a child. Our traveler had spent his years of happiness and childhood in Istanbul; he’d returned a week ago, for the first time in twelve years, to attend his mother’s funeral, and having stayed there four days he decided to take this trip to Kars. Years later, he would still recall the extraordinary beauty of the snow that night; the happiness it brought him was far greater than any he’d known in Istanbul. He was a poet and, as he himself had written—in an early poem still largely unknown to Turkish readers—it snows only once in our dreams.

Our movie-going has become more regular.

The first film we saw at the new PVR Phoenix was Margazhi Raagam, which had Bombay Jayashri and T.N.Krishna in concert. Pity there was just one other person in the hall.

We also saw Milk, Sean Penn’s best performance.

And The Changeling, quite a disappointment.

And Slumdog Millionaire, about which I have mixed feelings. I found the first half of the film very hard to watch.

Delhi 6, which could have been so good, but was… disastrous.

And the superb Dev D, ab out which I wrote here.

Please do allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them.

This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is “the System.” The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others — coldly, efficiently, systematically.

…Showalter offers more grist for the mill than a hundred volumes of theory. Why, for example, did Britain produce several women novelists of genius during the 19th century — Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Brontës, as well as accomplished lesser artists like Elizabeth Gaskell — while America did not? That question could (and sometimes does) lead to a lot of speculation on the national characters of the English-speaking peoples, but Showalter mentions an equally plausible, practical cause: “While English women novelists, even those as poor as the Brontës, had servants, American women were expected to clean, cook and sew; even in the South, white women in slaveholding families were trained in domestic arts.” Quite a few of the short biographical sketches she offers feature women complaining about being compelled by parents to learn to make pies or mend when they would rather write. In 1877, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps made the heroine of her novel, “The Story of Avis,” fume, “I hate to make my bed, and I hate, hate to sew chemises, and I hate, hate, hate to go cooking round the kitchen.”

I’m blogging from Khandala, so I’ll just provide two links:

Abodh has a lovely tribute.

Here is an article by Ranjit Hoskote in the Hindu, written at the time of Shanbhag’s Padma Shri award.

Here is a review.

At a dinner party that will forever be green in the memory of those who attended it, somebody was complaining not just about the epic badness of the novels of Robert Ludlum but also about the badness of their titles. (You know the sort of pretentiousness: The Bourne Supremacy, The Aquitaine Progression, The Ludlum Impersonation, and so forth.) Then it happily occurred to another guest to wonder aloud what a Shakespeare play might be called if named in the Ludlum manner. At which point Salman Rushdie perked up and started to sniff the air like a retriever. “O.K. then, Salman, what would Hamlet’s title be if submitted to the Ludlum treatment?” “The Elsinore Vacillation,” he replied—and I find I must stress this—in no more time than I have given you. Think it was a fluke? Macbeth? “The Dunsinane Reforestation.” To persist and to come up with The Rialto Sanction and The Kerchief Implication was the work of not too many more moments.

This is the way, when discussing Rushdie and his work, that I like to start. He is sublimely funny, and his humor is based on a relationship with language that is
more like a musical than a literary one. (I here admit to my own worst plagiarism: invited to write the introduction to Vanity Fair’s “Black & White Issue” some years ago, I took advantage of Salman’s presence in my house to ask him to riff on the two keywords for a bit. He free-associated about everything from photogravure to the Taj Mahal, without a prompt, for about 30 minutes, and my piece was essentially done.) And this is a man whose first language was Urdu!

Amitava Kumar on authenticity and the South Asian political novel:

Quite apart from this whole slew of stay-at-home writers, home being in most cases somewhere outside India, are the ones who, like Adiga, have taken the bus, or at least a hired taxi, to the hinterland. They might have traveled on a boat and risked being eaten by a Royal Bengal tiger. Or they might have walked in the tight, smelly alleys in the slums and, if they are enterprising, met a hired killer or two. This brings a different frisson to the body of Indian writing in English, which, given its roots in the middle class, has often been insular and dull. And these works seem direct responses to the numbing social violence in nearly every stratum of Indian society. But reportage is only an inoculation against the charge of inauthenticity. It hides larger untruths. Authenticity does matter, but only as it serves the novel’s more traditional literary demands: that the fault lines be drawn where the internal life and the larger world meet.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam on Adiga:

What of Balram Halwai? What does he sound like? Despite the odd namaste, daal, paan and ghat, his vocabulary is not sprinkled with North Indian vernacular terms. His sentences are mostly short and crudely constructed, apparently a reflection of the fact that we’re dealing with a member of the ‘subaltern’ classes. He doesn’t engage in Rushdian word-play. But he does use a series of expressions that simply don’t add up. He describes his office as a ‘hole in the wall’. He refers to ‘kissing some god’s arse’, an idiomatic expression that doesn’t exist in any North Indian language. ‘Half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas’ and the Chinese prime minister is advised never to ‘let that blasphemous idea into your yellow skull’. On another matter, he sneers: ‘They’re so yesterday.’ A clever little phrase appears: ‘A statutory warning – as they say on cigarette packs – before we begin.’ Dogs are referred to as ‘mutts’. Yet whose vocabulary and whose expressions are these?

Oh, these bureaucrats! Amit Chaudhuri responds to reviews of two of his works:

Ancient wisdom proclaims that it’s better not to respond to reviews. This might need to be considered afresh in a context such as Calcutta and, for that matter, India, where non-response is both endemic and a strategy for survival. How can you encourage debate and a multiplicity of opinion if the terse bureaucratic put-down becomes an acceptable ingredient in life, where you gratefully accept the rap on the knuckles and move on? Argument dries up in the public domain; gossip abounds in the private sphere; opinion itself becomes subsumed under a special language — to do with the demarcation of territories, loyalties — with which all who are attuned to the realm of bureaucracy, and its mode of exercising power, will be familiar.

This evening D, climbing on top of a wooden chest and trying to get onto the window above it, wails: “Can’t climb!”

A and I look up from our books and chorus: “What did Oba Mama say?”

“CAN!” says D promptly.
He tries again, putting one leg on top of the window sill - and this time he succeeds.

A Few Words on the Soul

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza’s children – more than 50 per cent of the population – benefit anyone?

Sara Roy in the LRB. (via Amitava Kumar)

At the end of a ghastly year, what a special pleasure to see these talented actors together in this old favourite. We saw it at the Sophia Bhabha Hall. It’s a comforting play, with its sense of family, friendship and loyalty as it spans some 35 years of the nation’s history; and though the actors are themselves older and grayer than when they started out performing this production, we are grateful that it is still around.