A day before I turned thirty-four, I wrote here, 'Behind Door No. 33, there was a room with a view. When I opened the windows each afternoon, I recalled what Edith Wharton wrote: “Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.” Each time I opened the window, the world waited to say hello. Clouds … Continue reading On The Room with a View
I'm not afraid of death. I'm an old physicist -- I'm afraid of time. -- Dr. Brand, Interstellar Seven years ago, on this day, we let Calvin go. He was the first dog of my life. He was on a cold, steel table, surrounded by people, whom he fully hated and partially loved, and the … Continue reading The Arrow of Time
Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog? In Becky Chambers's first solarpunk, … Continue reading On Finding The Strength To Do Both
Early evening: the sky is unsually free of clouds. There is an impressive array of fixed and shooting stars. The sight brings tears to my eyes. My thoughts dwell on the latitude and the positioning of the firmament. I am so far from home that the constellations have come unhinged from their usual positions and … Continue reading Book Review: Cold Skin By Albert Sánchez Piñol, Translated By Cheryl Leah Morgan
A more fundamental reason why humans accepted cats in their homes is that cats taught humans to love them.- Feline Philosophy by John Gray We grieve in our own ways -- I am writing this blog, Amma is chopping vegetables while listening to a religious melody on YouTube, and Appa is lying on the divan … Continue reading Goodbye, The Guest Cat
Because survival is insufficient. It is not easy to say that. I don't know the context in which the line appeared in Star Trek: Voyager, episode 122, twenty-three years ago, but we can't use that expression now without sounding borderline insensitive, as the COVID-19 pandemic goes on, controlling the planet, coercing us to be grateful … Continue reading Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
In 2020, at the Chennai Book Fair, I heard something that was bewildering and powerful at the same time. After walking around the book stalls for a few hours, I stepped out, and I was relieved to find a coffee stall. I bought a cup of coffee, placed my backpack filled with books on the … Continue reading The Story of My Reading Life
We are vessels of desire. We are conditioned to believe that who we are, the vessel that we are, is enough to hold all the desire that bubbles inside us, that we can live out this cosmic blink of a life by bottling it all up, by even refusing to acknowledge the existence of desire, … Continue reading Book Review: The Earthspinner by Anuradha Roy
I have related this story so many times that the ink in my proverbial pen must have run dry by now. Even when the pen doesn't let any ink run into the letters, rendering them invisible, I can't stop writing this story; the impressions the letters leave are enough. In the last few years, September … Continue reading Of Hope And Other Angels
Why do I want to write? Why do I think I can write? What do I want to write? I went there to find answers; I was received by more questions. At the Creative Writing class, the facilitator gently observed that I should have discovered and embraced the answers by now. A decade ago, when … Continue reading Hello Writing, My Old Friend
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