some promises will not be kept some truths so easily swept under carpets thickly plush and warm there will be harm smiting would some days come permanent the damage done promises blithely broken gaping wounds turned away from the ache would be the real deal no balm will dare its edge steal perhaps that is one promise that will be kept i will not lie and tell you that you’ll be fine no matter what you will be torn there…
the heavy teakwood doors burst open. binota and gopaler ma looked up startled, a few bodis fell off the muslin cloth onto the mosaic floor and broke and scattered. she came running out, her pale pink jamdani saree billowing, the pallu flying behind her. she held the fine gauzy gold tinted cotton bunched up in her fists on either side, lifting her saree at least half a foot off the ground, her ankles clearly visible, almost her shin, as she…
i was looking at this shot above when i suddenly thought of perfection. it’s a simple iphone shot, a top angle view of some flowers floating in an urli. i was enjoying the play of colours, shapes, freshness… the word beauty was bound to drift into mind. my eyes strayed over the tiny red flowers, i don’t know their name, to the playful red powderpuffs, to the pink frangipanis, and as i reached and stared at the white jasmines, this…
when did the gurkhas come here? i went to the net to check. it’s an interesting story, starts back then with colonialism, goes on to how post india’s independence, the british army’s gurkha regiments stationed outside remained where they were, soon proving again how relevant they were in the current scenario as well and, of course, how brave. brave, it’s a word that always comes to mind when i think gurkha. it may be stereotyping an entire people belonging to…
“hume lagta hai, you need a hair cut, arnav ji!” khushi blurted out when asr suddenly looked up while fixing his tie and caught her staring at him. (i think… you need a hair cut, arnav ji!) it was seven in the morning, she was still half asleep in bed. she’d heard some noise and her eyes had opened for a moment. he’d walked into the room from the adjoining dressing room just then, in a charcoal waistcoat over a…
“it is really the will!” barun said the words emphatically, slapping the table in front. the tea cup rattled on the saucer. krishna threw an exasperated glance at him. “sometimes you don’t have a choice…” chacko murmured, a meditative calm in his tone. it seemed to get barun. “nonsense! you always do. free will… we all have it, i tell you!” he exclaimed, thrusting back into the lumpy brown cushion and settling in a bit more, getting comfortable. “shotu da,…
there are several tomato mahasha recipes on the net. they all sound pretty good. one of them particularly, since you stuff the tomatoes with raw rice and chicken and it just feels so complex and authentic. my mother in law would say once in a way as she went about getting the stuffing ready that the really good baghdadi jewish cooks never cooked what went into the mahasha beforehand. then she’d forget about all that and make it her way.…
today, thanks to a television soap i went looking for sara aakash, a movie made years ago, and found basu chatterjee, k k mahajan… and so many other things about the new wave of indian cinema, which started it seems somewhere in the late sixties. i was growing up, nearing ten, then into the teens those days. almost any movie that comes to mind during my continuing love affair with a serial these days, is from those days. sixties up…
that there could be a word for holud or haldi in english had never occurred to me. i was fourteen, not interested in cooking, and besides, why would people who didn’t use it in any of their cooking bother to find a word for the yellow powder or paste present in practically everything we make? we don’t have a word for parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. we don’t use those pretty sounding song-worthy herbs in our curries or ghontos or…
the hardest thing to catch really is a feeling. And yet, why must it be caught, why not just let it flow, go where it wants to. fly. shobhona strolled in the garden, the bed of roses was brimming with the light pink variety banker dadu had sent with chhorda. she wondered if like banker dadu, she should leave everything and go away to kalimpong. live up in the hills, among flowers and oranges and quiet slopes; and children with…