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Why do I cut an onion?
Why do I write? This is a question I struggle with daily – why continue writing when there are so many good writers, so many exquisite books, why go on, why not delete everything and hold only a blank page in my hands? The problem with questions is that they are rarely just questions about…
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A short update
I apologize to long time readers of my blog that I haven’t been writing as much here – I had been busy with many things but I plan to start the everyday jottings soon. This is just to let everyone know that I now have a website (to streamline everything), where you can also read…
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“What Do You Care What Other People Think?”
Let’s begin even when we don’t want to begin. I had been busy working on the manuscript of my first novel, and while I am pleased to say (despite the daily dramas that occupy me more than you can imagine) I have finished it, it has already been refused by one agent. Yes, sure,…
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On Marriage and Love and Marriage
The following text was written during my time at Sangam House. There were four of us, and we decided to play a game of sorts – our administrator, Pascal, would give us a topic to write on and we’d have to finish the text in 30 minutes. The topic was marriage. I am posting it…
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The island of Koh Rong and 2017 : wrapping the year up.
On the first day of 2017, I was in Sihanoukville with my mother – it was also my birthday – and I suggested that we make a day trip to the island of Koh Rong. We took a tuk-tuk from our hotel and went to the port. Of course, everything was booked, but we finally…
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Love letter of a fool
Do not be foolish, the world constantly whispers in our inner ears. To believe in radical love, to think about what cannot be known, to close our eyes in the middle of a busy street and remember our true souls, to pause when one should walk, to not give up when one should, to trust…
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Of poisoned bones
I know a little boy back in France who spends each afternoon reading strange stories of bones, of bodies, of lives that some think have been left behind, some believe have dissolved forever into an uncertain sky, sometimes flickering unnoticeably into an invisible air. It was one afternoon that under the deep underwoods of olive…
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How to recognize a man in love
A man makes a cup of coffee, and goes online. The world is on the verge of collapse. Any day now, a nuclear war – the white cloud of extinction. Continents have turned into prisons. The city this man lives in will no longer exist in a few years, there will be an ocean where he…
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Love stands alone
In the old observatory in the walled city of a pink Jaipur, an 8 year old girl will find a torn page from a book that is thousands of year old. She will forget what is written on the page. She will forget that she even found the page. Twenty years later, while walking on…
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The biology of love
In Bengali marriage ritual, the bride is often handed a fish that is alive. The auspiciousness of the new marriage is gauged by how long the fish is held. The longer you can hold it, the better your marriage will be. Clarice Lispector wrote in The Passion According to G.H. “… did something truly alive…