Things I want to remember from the last few days:

That lucid lucent enormous moon, with that halo around. And how HUGE and red it looked past the dark of neem branch + leaves the next dawn.

That ice water/scathing shock of one’s first-ever Salinger.
A perfect day for bananafish. Read.

Could I reassemble a watch by myself? A simple, rustic old fashioned watch? Stunned. Yet I, my mind will question. Why will it not accept?

The curve of the beach from that vantage point, the peach and blue like crayon color on the horizon. Leaving footsteps in the wet sand. A runaway for ten minutes pre-meetings. The hiss of the wash and the sand-designs of crabs. The advancing high tide. The barking strays that turned happy once I inched closer.

Listening to CB even if for ten min. He speaks from the heart. Even if he mumbles a little. Still reading. A would have majorly run her red pencil across most pages.How impressive what M has done, dividing time so he can do what he wants to do, repaying a debt to life.

The random leaf patterns in that concrete path- smart idea.

Shubha Mudgal, a salaam.
Its the way her voice surges, conquers all three scales.
Fluid magic...
Nothing delicate or tinny about this.Robust, rich and soaring to the skies.
Ooncha balamji ka des...
These words have been echoing all day.
The manner in which the beat sounds.
Perhaps its the blend of passion and mysticism in the verse. That's what the reviews say.
Anyway, I don't understand any of that.
Something good came from that RIP Worldspace.
I took the dust covers off the music system.

songs:
http://www.dishant.com/album/shubha_mudgal_-_chaahat.html

reviews:

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040110/windows/audioscan.htm
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2003/12/18/stories/2003121800810300.htm

Yesterday we watched Aah. Raj Kapoor- Nargis. Vintage 1953.
Perhaps it was the b & w photography, that play of shadow and light with an ethereal Nargis.
Perhaps it was the music, melodious, lilting Shankar Jaikishan. And some of that background score, specially the shivranjani which made the leap to a full number in Mera Naam Joker two decades later.
The locations, with luxurious homes that look like homes. The beauty of the outdoors in b&w, light streaming past trees.
Perhaps it was the simplicity of the storyline.Linear and unlayered.
Perhaps because it reminds me of simpler values and times.

Added: I must not forget the vintage furniture, lovely retro cupboards and that settee with an inbuilt bookshelf- smart.

How completely vulnerable does friendship (or what goes for friendship) make one, jagged edges and fluffy side up, open to conjecture and examination.
Which is why when someone goes completely silent without any reason, I tremble and go for a toss.
To me, where I'm coming from, based on my history, it is a slight, a personal rejection.
I don't do rejections too well. I thrive on acceptance, assurance. Gimme my security blanket.
Crazy? You bet it is.
So it was marvelous to sit by your side, hear your story, the dribbles, fragments and pieces you chose to share.
While knowing all the time, very likely you'll clam up, pack and move once again, home as you know it.
It was worth the hour long walk looking for an auto, and worth that plea to the cabbie, and the late hour.
Life lesson for me-- take people as they are.
As is, where is.
I'll try. Irrespective of the jagged edges.

My biggest problem is that I write panoramic. MGM style, big scale.
I don’t do the close-up.
By the time I get to zoom in, the word count is done, khatam and its time to close shop.
And I write Indian. Which means I expect a reader to know backstories, cultural stuff like honor killings and the caste system.
I have a thick skin for “no’s” and getting thicker.
That, or write about the familiar, write for the firang reader-- which seems such a sell out.

On trees bereft and bare, new leaves unfurl.
Let them demolish one road-- I'll find another.
(Quite literally--my regular shortcut is lost to a construction project.)

All I wanted to say was thank you. For not considering the state of Gujarat to be the abode of witless lumpens with rubber spines and vacant sawdust brains.
For this basic courtesy and decency, as a proud Gujarati- thank you.

I am quite fed up of the spate of vicious attacks on the state. One nasty but obvious reason is the preponderance of people from other states in the media, paired with the less than perfect economic plight of their home states.

While 2002 was a tragedy and chaos of the worst order, which state in the country has been free of a law and order machinery breakdown? What happened cannot and should not be excused. And this stands true for several cringe-worthy events in the country.

High time the country as a whole get its act in order- stop picking on Gujarat, stop sneering every time the name of the state is taken.

Yesterday I read my first-ever Alice Munro short story.
I was dazed at the close.
She brings her reader to a place that is unsettling, strange and yet known, and leaves them there, letting them draw their own conclusions, so much said unsaid. Perhaps that is the best way, a quicksilver shorthand that the clued-in reader grasps, and for the rest it does not matter.
Amazing mastery of the craft.

Link added:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/12/27/1999_12_27_110_TNY_LIBRY_000019900