Laundry Work Deadlines Emails Personal deadlines I want to bake cinnamon rolls The cat has brought a squirrel in Is the squirrel alive But then I kind of don’t like squirrels they’re just rats with better PR so yeah thanks cat Chores Finances Oh dear December was a heavy spending month I really have to […]
Ps: If you’re having trouble reading the text, click on the image for a clearer view.Filed under: india, irony, letters, Notes from Delhi, Postcards Tagged: Delhi, India, postcards
To you, On Saturday night, I found myself supermarket-hopping looking for Bombay onions and hand sanitizer. The Bombay onion hunt preceded the COVID-19 panic (CoL in Colombo has been inching up. We also had a veggie shortage a few weeks ago which drove the prices higher). Our neighbourhood supermarket was back to relative normalcy this […]
A man (Gihan, he tells me his name later) catches sight of me surveying a stencil of a smiling child sandwiched between a photocopy shop and a dilapidated building on Dawson Street, and signals from across the road: “There’s more over here”. Cheerfully appointing himself as my guide and with a number of wide eyed, […]
I realized it was time to retire the notebook when the back cover came apart a month or two ago. It had followed me wherever I went and the wear and tear that age brings was visible on its shabby pages. I started maintaining it while I was in school. It was something that I had started on a ...
The first time I went out for coffee alone I was horribly uncomfortable. I felt awkward, conspicuous and acutely aware of the groups of people congregated at the coffee shop. I skulked over to the nearest table, took out my book and started reading. I tried to flag down a waiter repeatedly, but failed spectacularly. Then to top things ...
Every now and then I see traces of familiar faces on strangers. Yesterday I saw my grandmother’s nose. The other day I saw a lady who could have passed off as a friend’s mother – the same thin eyebrows, the hands and even her gait were all remarkably similar. Once, on the metro I came across a man who ...
I wish I could tell you that I regularly revisit Proust. I wish I could tell you that I peruse Swann’s Way frequently and that I get reacquainted with Tolstoy, Joyce and Kafka every now and then. I really do. The truth is while I try and read as much as I possibly can and my book case is brimming ...
I like art. I also like watching people look at art. I think one of the best things about it is the humanistic element. It’s fascinating watching people’s reactions to pieces of art. Once I stopped hyperventilating about being in the same space as an original Dali and Picasso, I walked around the India Art Fair. I watched as people ...
When I pick up a book, one of the first things I instinctively do is glance at the dedication. I blame CS Lewis for this. I picked up ‘The lion, the witch and the wardrobe’ as a kid and remember being bowled over by his dedication to his granddaughter. Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of having a ...
(Written a few months ago, posting now. Fervently hoping this has lost its relevance.) * New Delhi, June 2013. To you, I’m not sure when it happened but Running in the Family has become one of my favourite books. I’d read it years ago and I stumbled across a battered copy at a Sunday book […]
July 2013, Delhi To you, It’s finally happened. I’ve put down roots. They’re hesitant, frail tendrils with a propensity to wither at the slightest provocation but they’ve been planted. After nodding my way through conversations with potential landlords/ladies and looking at one dubious room after another, I’d wearily head back home, climb up to the […]
Heavily pencilled-schedule in hand and books in backpack, I walk past the lines of people waiting to greet his Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and navigate past the formidable bodyguards (a new addition to this year’s festival). The Dalai Lama, wagging his finger informs the packed front lawns that money fails to bring inner peace […]
To you, 1) This is going to be a list letter. Brevity and organization are the key words for the day. 2) It seems as though I’ve spent a chunk of my life, waiting. Huddled in a threewheeler, watching rain form rivulets and drip slowly down the taurpalin; waiting on hold, a pop song […]
I hang up my phone in amusement. My ride was still at home, in a half-sleep stupor but awake enough to brush away my insistence to take a cab. I didn’t mind hanging around for a while. The arrival section of the airport is a lovely place to people watch and I’m usually in such […]
One of my most treasured possessions is a copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. While growing up, Andersen’s stories unnerved me. Very few of them had positive closure and at times highly ambiguous (Ugly Duckling, anyone?) and for a little girl who liked utopian, apple-pie endings where everyone lived happily ever after, Andersen’s stories […]
The thing with three-wheelers in Delhi is that once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. With green and yellow exteriors and plain interiors and sometimes a picture of their respective deity/religious leader or Salman Khan wedged between the frame of the three-wheeler and the tarpaulin, there’s very little distinguish one three wheeler from the […]
I was reading Jenny Zhang where she references Tracy Emin and then I remembered my ambivalence about Emin’s work, specifically her neons (even though I’d walk to St. Pancras station just to gaze at her installation), and then I got to thinking about Bruce Nauman’s neons and then I remembered that I […]
