Tag: #everyday jottings
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The Hour of the Star / Clarice Lispector
At the end of The Hour of the Star, Macabéa goes to a fortune-teller, who tells her about her horrible life – Macabéa hadn’t realized it earlier – and how equally horrible her present is. But she predicts a complete turnaround for her the minute she steps out of that building, she was going to […]
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Amrita / Imroz
Amrita Pritam, the famous Punjabi poet, used to have a recurrent dream for twenty years. A man stood painting by a window with his back on her. She could never see his face. In these twenty years, many things happened in her life. She got married, had two children, fell madly in love with Sahir […]
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The story of an unknown man and a cup of tea
My grandfather was an unknown classical musician. He had run away from a comfortable home to pursue what he wanted. Which, of course, meant that he never had enough – or, any – money throughout his life. It was a particularly bad time for my grandparents, when one morning they realized they had absolutely no […]
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Dasgupta / Menon
One relationship that has continued to intrigue me over the years is the one that was shared by Prabuddha Dasgupta and Lakshmi Menon. Dasgupta, one of the most important fashion photographers from India, fell in love with Menon, a young model 25 years his junior. They eventually moved in together in a small apartment in […]
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The Matisse chapel
There’s a small chapel in Vence, in the south of France, for the Dominican sisters, called Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence. It was designed by Matisse, a staunch atheist, in honour of the young nurse who had taken great care of him after his cancer surgery. Last night, as in a dream, I kept thinking […]
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Sex and the City
So, I’ve watched all seasons of Sex and the City. It was a particularly boring summer, and I really wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Now it’s nothing great, but even so, if one looks for it, if one is attentive enough, there are moments of poetry, of epiphany, of revelation in […]
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Disparate thoughts on life
I remember watching an interview of Vashti Bunyan where the interviewer asks her if she ever felt the need to marry her partner of twenty years – they were separated by then, hence the question perhaps – and she said, so beautifully, so naturally that it was not nice to bind someone to you. Tarkovsky, […]
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on professors
In my university, there was a particularly handsome and brilliant professor, in his late forties (we guessed : but he was probably older) – there was not a girl on campus who did not have a crush on him – and stories circulated about him : he was married to a renowned dancer for […]
Beyond Six Rivers 