In A Strange Turn of Events: I’m In A Power List
I’m in the Femina list of India’s 35 most influential women under 35. PS: And in this TimeOut list
Billet-doux to Sohrab, Sumati and you
If you are a freelance writer, photographer, editor, cartoonist, designer, translator, juggler…. 1. Don’t work for free. Ever. Not even the first time. 2. Do not listen to Falana publishers in Delhi, when they tell you that they love your work but they are just not in a position to pay you for the wonderful...
Melissa Banks
I am re-reading Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing. Its a sweet, funny, sad book. Perfect for a quiet day. Meanwhile Melissa Banks is making funny noises in the Guardian at the new study Why Humans Have Sex. Apparently there are 237 reasons!
Little Corporeal
A few years ago Bent and I were sitting on the footpath somewhere on MG Road in the late evening when he went into an phase of unusually energetic movement. He jumped up and started waving at a lithe boy shimmering past in faintly luminous trousers. P came over and was introduced. I had heard...
Rapid recovery to grouchiness
Idiotic illness is now going away. And I have booked tickets to go back to Delhi where I am going to watch the body and people around me viciously for lapses in civilisation and logic. I do not appreciate the nonsense of the last fortnight. At least now I can read tonnes and make small...
But you must read
Despite high degree of brokeness I have been enjoying a wonderful run of goodbook karma. First, Snegum was in town and she lent me No Onions, Nor Garlic by Srividya Natarajan. A lot of people have been turning up their noses at this book and saying things like “I couldn’t finish it.” To them I...
Happy feetnotes
I am editing papers for an academic journal whose authors read the style-sheet during Opposites Week. I have edited every single word in every single footnote in a paper with 100-odd footnotes. I have now spotted two books which trace the history of footnotes. One of them is sub-titled ‘The Devil’s Details.’ I am taking...
Two stories
I have finished reading two books today by two very different sort of writers but both have given me …if one must use the food-for-thought idiom…they would be dal, I think. I am trying very hard to stay on track and write the novel this year. And suddenly language is leaving me and not even...
Sacred Cows And Other Edibles
Nikki Giovanni‘s collection of essays. I hate to be rude but swalpa editing, swalpa tightening would have made it a far better book. I like rambling personal essays but sometimes she just rambles clean off the page into an alternate dimension. Giovanni is funny in the way that some women have about them. I am...
Ditz-lit
My favouritest romance writer Jennifer Crusie has written a book about my current favourite TV show the Gilmore Girls. Though the book is not it out yet can it be more joyous and chick-like? Crusie writes tremendously romantic and funny novels. I shall not gush about the Gilmore girls though I have a tiny inclination...
Ingratiating request in a bottle
I should be reading Shakespeare but as usual my good intentions have been coshed and bundled into the nearest Godrej. On the good side I have written a less than bleaargh poem and finally read an Inspector Ghote mystery. I am rather shocked at how good HRF Keating is because he supposedly wrote ten Ghote...
