Chandigarh Revisited!

On Friday I went off to Chandigarh for a quickie visit. I was a guest of the Ch'garh Sahitya Akademi with the lightest of light duties to perform: all I had to do was introduce three other writers at the afternoon STORY-TELLING SESSION. The writers were Prof Tej Nath Dhar, Prof Carolyn Kraus and Dr Jaideep Chadha and they each read from their work -- Prof Dhar read an extract from his book UNDER THE SHADOW OF MILITANCY, Prof Kraus read her short story GARGOYLE and Dr Chadha read his short story THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DOOMED.

The one day Lit-Fest was organized by Dr Manju Jaidka, Chair of the Akademi and a person with unlimited resources of energy. The LitFest marked the culmination of a three day "International Conference on Literature and Culture Post-1980" and there was a party atmosphere over at the Panjab* University campus, where the events were taking place. There's more information here. (*this is how it's spelt on their sign boards. I was surprised, the first time I saw it, but was assured that it wasn't a proofing error).

I had a very happy visit with my good friends JACQUIE and RANJIT SINGH and got back to Delhi after a bare two nights, on Sunday morning. As usual, I have no time to breathe or think, so I'll stop for the moment after uploading these two pix, taken at the Ch'garh Railway Station.

Madras,14-02-2010 My sister and niece pose for a picture just before the Event -- nope, NOT a wedding, though it looks like one! It was a family blessing, to celebrate the marriage which took place on the first of January this year. I'll post more pix to a SnapFish album later this week. It was a very pleasant occasion and much amusement was had by all.

Monuments-R-Us

FatehpurSikri


This is where I was yesterday, with my sister S, niece D and new nephew-in-law D -- in fact he's in the frame, in white, near the left. The photograph is a first for moi, something I took with my New!Improved! phone, a very superior creature given to me as a gift by my OTHER niece, M. I'm a little afraid of the phone and try not to use it in a rude or inappropriate manner and have so far not made the effort to scrape pictures out of its memory and into my computer's memory. And it doesn't like sending things by MMS (have I set up a profile? Noooo). But yesterday, on a whim, I tried sending myself an image via Gmail. Voila! This is the result.

When I say it's a first for me, I mean that this is the first image from my phone that I've managed to get out of it and into the wider world. Of course, it took a whole minute to upload to Gmail, so I am not likely to send more out anytime soon. *sigh* The worst thing about superior gadgets is the feeling that they're smirking quietly in their shiny little black skins, knowing that they're getting the better of their clunky human owners.