Tripping

It's been a hectic last ten days (or ... whatever. I've lost track of whenever it was I began this cycle of junketing ... no, hang on: it was the 13th of this month. Strange. Feels like at least one year ago last week) -- I left for Bombay on Friday 13th morning, spent the weekend there, left for Madras Monday 16th morning, spent four days there, arrived back in Delhirium Friday 20th evening, and then on the morning of the 21st, E, E's friend J and I left for a hillstation called Chail, in the Himalayan foot hills, (7000 Km up) spent 3 days there, returned to Delhicose on 24th evening and tomorrow, 26th morning, I'm off to the UK for five days, followed by the US for six weeks! And I won't even begin to get into what I'll be doing while I'm away ... or anyway, NOT TONIGHT, Josephine.

There's much of interest to report upon from my trip, but I'll confine myself to just two items: in Bombay, at my friends Jayant and Gulan Kripalani's home, I listened to a reading of monologues written by me, in rehearsal for a performance later in November, at the annual Prithvi Festival. Three of the monos were from HIDDEN FIRES (look to the column on the right of this page, there'll be a link to the SEAGULL website where you can read more about the book) but one was new, written specifically for Jayant, called THE WISH. It was a very good rehearsal, and I can only hope the performance will match it -- you can find out more about the festival at the Prithvi site (too sleepy to dig up the link right now. Maybe later somewhen. Maybe after I've finished packing for tomorrow's flight).

The other item concerns the successful sale of my picture book "I AM DIFFERENT!" by the well-known children's book publisher, Tulika, based in Madras to the German publishing giant, Fischer Verlaag (I hope I've spelt that correctly coz I'm not going to look it up just yet. Maybe after packing). For the first time in recorded history, I feel I actually made a bit of money on a book and that too, of illustrations. It's a picture-cum-puzzle item, concept and illustrations by me. Value-added touch? It's in 16 languages (16 pages, 16 languages). Kind of fun. I worked on it for most of January, in collage and 3D paint. The result looks very different to my usual stuff -- sort of chunky and knobbly. It was fun to produce -- and I'm hoping it'll be fun when it's out in the world too.

And now ... I REALLY MUST PACK!