you charged out and grabbed someone and covered their face, head, neck, whatever you could get hold of, in bright, powdery, bursting out of you fist, flying abeer. the coloured powder was vermilion red or marigold orange or wild mean yellow or deadly green, there was this deep cobaltish blue too. and a deeper purple. how can i forget the chutney pink. the point was to put that colour on someone first before they did the same to you. of…
sorry but i find the international women’s day one of the most patronising notions ever. read up a bit on its genesis, saw why women back in the early 1900s way before we had the right to vote and, of course, when women were working hard and not being paid as much as men (still the case in many/most places) thought of the idea… and i fully empathise. but in the form it exists today, set in place by institutions…
this morning, a friend who had tracked me down after years, thanks to writersbrew (that thought makes me so happy i listened to a young girl and started writing here), sent me a lovely little video on whatsapp. it was an edited version of the one here. do take a look, bound to touch you. video credit uploader i saw the short video and grinned. so many memories, delightful tastes traipsing in my head, making me hungry. i have always…
this one might have been called, “how to ruin a perfect morning by insisting on seeing what one should have turned a blind eye to”, or “what do you mean the doormat won’t budge?”, or “who needs a gym when you have a doormat?” the options are many but they all come down to one thing: a doormat. one with its heels firmly dug in, into the marble at that. this would not be a good moment to remind myself…
it’s a beautiful song. her voice is mellow and smooth and has a reach in it. it calls without being maudlin. i don’t understand a word of it, but this morning i heard it in a loop. a story of love, of the sycamore and the rose and na na nay. a young and lovely turkish actress called fahriye evcen sings the song. i get the feeling, it’s an old lyric, a love song that’s close to the heart. there…
oh no, do i have the word “old” in the title? that’s it. no one is going to read this. anyway, let me carry on. no idea how the years passed by, i noticed though, they have a way of doing so without any effort whatsoever (something to learn in that, i’m sure, especially for my knees), and suddenly i was on the other side of the story. i was no longer the one rolling my eyes and throwing fits…
when i see flowers i think of you purse your lips and perhaps you smile there is no distance beyond the hour the hour that comes unmindful of season and time this flower whose name i do not know yet it sits right by my sitting room’s window and amid its cloak of silken unbending leaves bursts forth in colour of hue intense and pure there is no uncertainty in its lines no murmur of may i or if…
i was sitting in front of my computer, working and completely absorbed, when it came out of nowhere and spooked me. i suddenly had to make fish kochuri. i don’t know how to make these delicious pastries with fish stuffed in it. this was a fiend though that was hellbent on scaring me into submission. think the only time i’ve had fish kochuri or maachher kochuri, as we call it in bengali, was almost ten years ago. maybe more. it…
my heart broke today when i opened world clock on my iphone after the latest 10 point whatever ios update. i was staring at a black panel instead of the lovely soft white one with clock faces on it, which i could change to numbers at a touch, if i so desired. now a grim black with reverse type and though the font is the same, uff the aggression of it in reverse. like an idiot, i pressed all sorts…
that year my father was the happiest man in all of assam, i’m quite sure. he had bought himself an ambassador mark II, a black one, and had driven it all the way from calcutta to duliajan in upper assam. somewhere near guwahati, the gear had seemed a bit unreasonable, but that hadn’t bothered him. a brand new black ambassador with upholstery in grey and red and that feeling of latest technology releases a sort of joy that a little…