On my walk this morning I was startled by a flurry, a swish of water droplets and OMG a shimmering blue-green Kingfisher… I stood dazzled, and then it flew off...The palash and sita-ashoka are in bloom, have never seen a palash bower before—beautiful.

TAW’s tree walk y'day took me to the BPT Gardens, Colaba at the crack of dawn, well 7.30 AM, which is early enough. What a glorious exorbitant treasure this place is. Money plant leaves as long as my arm climbing trees that reach skywards. Excellent cacti, and diverse Euphorbiacea, which I learnt is quasi- cacti, only the spines and flowers are arranged differently. The nicest was the Nux Vomica and the Desert Rose, both too pretty for the dangers they present, and I shall do good justice to them, in a story, I mean. Only in this city can it happen, strangers bonding over cacti and trees, learning about their histories and families, and all this knowledge given away for free. On the way back I learned what a mega block on the WR means.

And today you’ve have been forty-one, and like every year I’d have said old hag, and you’d have poked and said you old hag, and you first--you first we’d have shrilled till we laughed our guts out…HB, any which space you’re in, and what else is there to say about life except it goes on, and I toasted the day with pizza.

BAJ

Delighted to announce publication of a story, Waiting for July, in the latest issue of Birmingham Arts Journal.
I'd subbed this over a year ago, and had no idea of the acceptance, so this was a super duper surprise!

http://www.birminghamartsjournal.com/pdf/baj9-4.pdf

Not so bad, I must confess.

I vacillated, cried, fretted over shifting cities in 1997.

Did the two city commute till my brain fried over and I gave in, for a “trial period”.

It has been 15 years since.

I still do the two city commute. Sometimes.

Yesterday I made a list of things I began to do after moving to the big city.

Yes, it’s a long list. Yes, I was surprised. Oh my, I never!

This city taught me to live any place on earth. And call it home.

just in:An abstract sunset in crayons, many hued and horizon to horizon

Scrambled images and lines from the last week, lines that it seems imperative to hold on to, to wear on my skin; a train proudly rushing past an empty platform, battle weary at midnight; live orchestra at a wedding and the once propah Mrs Patels settling the floor alight, bollywood style; listening to the elder’s somber halting words about being brown in 1959’s UK, racism, desperation and a curmudgeonly knight.

Yesterday I made a list. A recycling list. Of words to spruce up, add a bit of weight and color and atmosphere and perhaps an insouciant toss of curls, and send out. And in the translation I’m working on, I may have bit off more than I can chew. Maybe. But it gets me out of bed every 6 AM, wonders be.

The newspaper forecast has been unusually perceptive this once; Peter Vidal at his acerbic best, nudging, prodding, sandpaper to my skin lest I grow comfortable, lest I readjust as I’m prone to, shaping the contours of my belief to whatever boulder/ impediment/ attitude it must now put up with, snipping away at my soul, adjusting, always giving up, fragmenting. So-- bleary-eyed I read the snippet every morning and get my daily dose of  a scold, and every morning I replace frayed and pale pieces of the self from the day before. And so life goes on.