Penguin India's INDIAN ESSENTIALS

PENGUIN INDIA recently published a collection of essays under the title INDIAN ESSENTIALS

I was one of twenty authors invited to write an essay for the book and the subject suggested to me was "commuting in India". I wrote my piece several years ago and was quite pleased with it, so I thought I'd post a couple of excerpts here as a teaser trailer. If you want to read the complete piece, you'll have to buy the book!


THE TRAVELLER

Right until the moment that I sat down to write my piece for this collection of essays, I had expected to make a patchwork quilt of some fifty years of train journeys, from early childhood to now. Then I opened a new file on my laptop and in that instant the gently bubbling spring of memories changed into a trickle of stale anecdotes about lost tickets, colourful fellow passengers and the time I threw up all the way from Madras to Bombay courtesy my mother's mutton sandwiches. I’ve told these stories dozens of times and though they’re reasonably entertaining when accompanied by cheese sandwiches and tepid coffee, they're not exactly marble-plaque material.

....

So I decided to fashion an amusement from scratch, using myself as fall-gal and the Indian Railways as my stage. I decided to go on an actual trip from Delhi to Madras, on the Rajdhani, but to treat it as if it were an amalgam of all my previous trips.

...

Naturally, then, my first priority was to create a disguise for myself. Stage magicians will tell you that the main part of a successful trick is misdirection - drawing attention away from the mechanics of the trick by doing something just outside the plane of intention. With this in mind, I did two things. The first was that I bought myself a set of clothes of the kind that I never normally wear: a salwar-kurta ‘suit’ made out of cheap shiny cloth, mud-brown in colour, with an all-over print of dull red flowers. On my feet I wore a pair of vomit-pink slippers, one size too small and I took care to paint my toe nails metallic sea green two weeks in advance of the journey, so that by the time I boarded the train my feet looked moth-eaten and diseased.

My second move was to shave my hair off.

My reason for taking this drastic step was simple: I didn't have the time or inclination to grow my hair out, yet a woman with short-cropped hair not only suggests that she makes regular trips to a hairdresser but also that she has the money and leisure to pay for such indulgences. By contrast, a shaven head, in India, instantly communicates a message of traditional values, self-sacrifice and most importantly, loss. A woman will not normally remove her hair except for sober reasons - the loss of a spouse, catastrophic illness, mental derangement, louse-infestation or in quest of a favour from the gods. Whatever the cause, nobody doubts the credentials of a tonsuree. The very nakedness suggests an exposure to the elements and an absolute lack of secrets that is pitiable and for that reason, disarming.

...

‘Excuse me?’ I said.

Both men looked up. They were mismatched in the way of famous comedy pairs, Laurel and Hardy or Tom and Jerry —something intrinsically funny about the differences between them. The tall, broad one said, ‘Yes?’ while the smaller, more delicate one just nodded, with his head cocked to one side.

My immediate impression was that they were both young, perhaps in their twenties. Travelling salesmen was my first guess regarding their careers, but they might just as well have been cousins going home for a clan gathering or graduate students taking a Puja break. They were dressed decently, but without any flair. In the dim light all I could see was that they were clean-shaven, wearing long-sleeved shirts, with their luggage stowed neatly under their seats. The big one’s hair rose up in a poll of black curls on top of his head while the smaller man’s hair was straight and slicked back, parted on one side: a large hearty rabbit and a small nervous mongoose.

‘I’m doing a survey,’ I said. ‘Is it all right if I ask a few questions?’

‘Sure, sure,’ said Rabbit, as he shifted his bulk aside very slightly, as if to make
space for me, except that there was plenty of space and therefore no real need for him to shift.

‘- usually, we are the ones asking the questions,’ said Mongoose, unexpectedly. ‘Never mind! We will give the answers this time.’ He said this with a straight face, neither smiling nor frowning. There was something melancholy in his sobriety.

We were all speaking in English, though theirs was more accented than mine.

I said, ‘Oh! Does that mean you’re … ?’

‘- media consultants,’ said Rabbit, turning the palm of his right hand up, as if this were a self-evident fact. Something in the way he performed this gesture made me want to giggle.

‘We do market surveys,’ said Mongoose, nodding morosely.

‘Really!’ I said, smiling too brightly. There are certain circumstances which cause me to laugh uncontrollably. I produce a loud, chuckling rattle - sub-machine-gun with a touch of hyena - that is difficult to turn off once it gets started. I grow breathless, my sides ache and my eyes stream with tears. The fits usually occur when there is an obvious trigger, such as a comedy film or the company of friends, but sometimes, as on this occasion, the hysteria rises inside me like a volcano of soap bubbles, for no clear reason at all. An image flashed before my eyes, of me with my shaven head and green-painted toe-nails falling off my seat howling with laughter, as the two media consultants looking on, puzzled and a little pained. I clamped my hand across my mouth, hoping they wouldn’t notice.

‘How about you?’ asked Mongoose. ‘You are in survey business also?’
Further images were flashing in my head: scenes from Peter Sellers’ movies, of Herbert Lom’s face starting to twitch as crazed cackles leak out of him. I feared something similar was about to happen to me. I began massaging my cheeks as if I was in pain.

‘Uhh,’ I stammered, ‘not really, no. I’m - I'm a journalist -’

‘You should let her ask the questions,’ said Rabbit to Mongoose, in a reproachful tone.

The smaller man turned towards me, his eyes trusting and morose. ‘Please, Ma’am, you go ahead and ask. We will tell you anything.’

I was very grateful for the relative darkness of their cubicle. Sucking in a deep breath, so that the giggles were pushed back down into my stomach, I said, ‘I’m doing a series of articles about reincarnation. Maybe the two of you have some interesting stories to tell me?’

There was a brief silence. Rabbit cleared his throat and shifted slightly in his seat. Looking straight ahead as if reciting a passage he had memorized, he said,

‘Well … speaking for myself alone, I can say I take six eggs once a day.’

‘Eggs?’ I asked, unsure of what I’d heard.

‘Hard boiled,’ he said, thinking that I’d wanted clarification.

Mongoose was shaking his head from side to side. ‘He refuses to listen. I have told him so many times, but still he eats them. He says it is a question of faith.’

‘Just a moment,’ I said. ‘Why are we talking about food?’

‘You asked about it, so I am telling,’ said Rabbit, turning his palm over once more.

‘It is true,’ said Mongoose. ‘We have been travelling together on field trips for three years. He takes six eggs every night before dinner -’

‘I’m sorry but … what do eggs have to do with reincarnation?’ I had gone to a stage beyond laughter now. There was a floating sensation in my head, as if my giggles had transferred themselves to my sinuses without pausing to be released along the way.

‘You can read it in the papers every day,’ sighed Rabbit, raising his eyes to the ceiling with a long-suffering expression. ‘Some people are dying, some people are getting attacks. Excess of eggs leads to catharsis of the hearteries - leading to incarnation. But I am still eating my six eggs a day because … because … it is my belief!’ He closed his eyes.

‘No one can help him,’ whispered Mongoose, ‘no one’. He seemed on the verge of tears.

I got to my feet, knowing that I would explode if I remained in their company a second longer.
‘Thank you!’ I managed, before I fled. ‘You’ve been very informative!’

Excellent Article

This morning I woke up unnaturally early, thinking: I need to use my blog in a more pro-active way. A blog is an extraordinary vehicle, if you stop and think about it, for putting private ideas and interior moments right out there where everyone/anyone can see them. But most of us use our blogs for hanging out our wet hankies and maybe passing around links that have done the tour of the universe half a dozen times already.

So anyway, when I got up and looked at e-mail the first thing I read was this article by Dr DAVID MICHAEL GREEN, Associate Professor of Political Science, Hofstra University and broad-spectrum commentator. He posts regularly to his web-site, THE REGRESSIVE ANTIDOTE and I'm subscribed to his automatic mail-out list.

It seemed like the ideal thing to post here on a day which began on a sober, I'm-not-doing-enough-with-my-life-note. Go click! It'll kick-start your day. Or what remains of your day. Or light up your evening. Or ... whatever.

On Self Censorship

Some of you may have visited this blog in the past couple of days and seen a link, which I have now removed, to a website called ... ummm ... well, obviously if I say what it is that'll be pretty much the same as posting a link to it. No-one asked me to remove it, but on reflection I decided it was kinder and safer to avoid displaying it here, even though the article (in the New Yorker) was/is fascinating and even though I will still visit the site now and then.

It's NOT a porn site, but then again, it's quite a bit like one, so I thought: nah. I think it's funny and very bizarre but then again, lots of people I know might find it (a) disgusting (b) child-unfriendly. I don't think I normally receive visits from Persons of the Youthful Persuasion, but then again, it's always possible that someone young strays here from TULIKA's website. So I decided to err on the side of being super cautious.

Hmmm. I feel the weight of every single gray hair on my head ...

May 14th

That was the view from the upstairs window in my friends' home in Vermont -- barely two weeks ago. It snowed two feet in one day. Two days later, emerald green meadows speckled with brilliant yellow dandelions were all that could be seen in every direction.

But that was 2 weeks ago, and since then I have been trotting about -- I had another night in Lebanon and a wonderful dinner, in terms of company, conversation and food -- returned to Boston the next day and spent two nights at my niece's new home in Randolph and then two nights at the Fairmont, the hotel my sister was staying in while attending a medical conference. I hadn't planned to be there for two days, but that's how it worked out, because the volcano began sputtering again and my flight was delayed by two hours. That meant I'd miss my connecting flight through Frankfurt, so I opted to take an earlier flight the next day.

Got back to Delhirium on Thursday morning.

Lebanon, NEW HAMPSHIRE

... is where I am as I write this quickie post. I've spent two days with a friend in her "pink palace" -- a rambling house with wonderful light, one husband, two cats and a one-year-old-today baby.

There's so much I could write about but time constraints force me to keep this to the teeniest minimum. I arrived in the US on Friday night, spent that night in Boston with D&D, my niece and new nephew-in-law, traveled the next day to Newport and spent one happy night and day there, before returning to Boston on Sunday. Monday morning I had a very good session at Tufts University, talking to drama students of Prof Sean Edgecombe about my play HARVEST. Monday night I was once more with D&D, and we had an extremely jovial dinner at JOE'S, a high-quality burger restaurant. Tuesday morning I left for Lebanon, NH, intending to spend one night but then got SNOWED IN -- Vermont got two feet of snow -- so I delayed departure and am very grateful for the big friendly home I'm in.

And now I'm going to end this bulletin with a typically bizarre story, encountered on Yahoo News. Enjoy!
YOGI SURVIVES WITHOUT FOOD & WATER

Feel Good Moment of a Lifetime?

Wow. That's all I can say to this astounding SURVIVAL STORY. The take-home message is: NEVER give up ... but also, if you must drown, do it in a very cold climate.

The Eerie Beauty of Iceland's Volcanic Eruption

The Eerie Beauty of Iceland's Volcanic Eruption

The title of this piece is what it was given by TIME Mag. I would've said "dramatic" rather than "eerie". Dramatic, eerie, whatever -- I remember thinking it would've been fantastic to have had cameras trained on the vent say an hour or so before the actual eruption. It would have been the ultimate in fire and ice -- glacier and lava! Yum. Now, if we could only organize a mountain-sized chunk of sugar alongside, we might have cooked up a natural Baked Alaska fit for a giant.

Sunitha Krishnan fights sex slavery | Video on TED.com

Sunitha Krishnan fights sex slavery | Video on TED.com

Down The Dark Alley

This is perhaps a cruel contrast to my last post -- so if it's been a difficult day so far, you may want to click past this one right away -- but it's also got an astonishing and profoundly touching clarity. We all know terrible things happen: sometimes they happen to us, and of course to the millions of people we read about in the press. Here's the Pulitzer Prize winning feature article (2010) that appeared in the Washington Post. About how some of those to whom the worst of the worst has happened deal with the rest of their lives. FATAL DISTRACTION: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? by Gene Weingarten

A HAPPY Story

Last night a friend dropped by for an after-dinner visit saying he just HAD to do something for a little dog he'd seen lying by the side of the road near his parents' home in Panchsheel. "I heard this low moaning from the side of the road and when I stopped and got down there she was. Poor thing!" A car must have run her over, because at least one her back legs was badly damaged. "It may have happened a day or two ago, because (the leg) was full of maggots and stinking ..."

He lives in Bombay so he couldn't take the poor creature in himself. His neighbour suggested calling the animal ambulance in the morning. But when he got to our house he was still wincing at the thought of leaving the animal alone and suffering all through the night.

"What about FRIENDICOES-SECA?" one of us said.

"Wow! Great idea -- why didn't I think of them right away?" When our friend lived in Delhi, he'd had two wonderful and much loved strays living with him. He had gone to the famous animal shelter under the Defence Colony Flyover whenever he needed help with his dogs.

"Uh-oh, don't have their number though," we said.

"NO problem," said our friend. "I'll just call Just Dial and find out --"

Literally one minute later, there was the number -- well, a list of them, actually -- for Friendicoes, sent by SMS, to our friend's phone. Another couple of minutes later, and after a couple of dud numbers, he got through to Friendicoes and explained the situation. "Do you want me to be there to identify the dog?" he asked, already holding his car keys in hand.

Keep in mind this was maybe 10.15 at night. The friendly voice at the other end said, "No, that's all right. Our night ambulance driver'll go over and collect the dog. All you have to do is tell him where to go. I'll give you his number ..."

Our friend called the number and described exactly where the animal was. Maybe fifteen minutes later he got a call from the driver, saying that he'd found the dog, had taken her in and all was well. We could hear the dog's pathetic whining even without holding the phone to our own ears.

Our friend and one of us decided this was really great. So they drove over to the shelter right away. By that time, the little dog had been registered, her wound dressed and she'd been given a sedative to ease her pain. Our friend had said on the phone that he thought it may be best to put her to sleep, but at the shelter they just smiled and nodded (I wasn't there, so I'm just reporting what I was told).

Today, when I went online to check their site, I realized that they've probably had loads of "hopeless cases" whom they resurrect and find happy homes for! Maybe this little one will be another such story. We made a donation right away, of course. But more than anything else, we came away from the experience feeling an unfamiliar sense of total gladness.

Everything was good: the fact that our friend gave in to his compassionate nature, the fact that Just Dial worked at once, the Friendicoes response and at the end of it all, one little creature saved from a lonely, painful death. Friendicoes was totally uncommercial: making the donation was absolutely voluntary. They go and collect the animal when they get a call; the rest is up to the conscience of the caller.

Yes -- yes -- I KNOW: it was just one dog, just one story.

Right.

But in this sad old world even one story is a miracle.

SAME & DIFFERENT

Here we go! A link to SAME & DIFFERENT, at Tulika's web-site, now on sale. I am waiting impatiently for my author copies for immediate give away -- the one big thrill of publishing boox is being able to give 'em away!

Oh -- and here's a link to a page at Tulika's Blog where I describe how I did the drawings.

April Fool's Day TRICK

It's the first of April and time for some magic. I have NO idea how this was done, but I'm guessing major manipulation of space-time and perhaps a pact with the Devil thrown in on the side. This AMAZING TRICK by Chinese Magician LIU QIAN was sent to me by none other than ... AA. Of course.

Error Messages

Further to the theme of Failure that I've been pursuing, here is a series of ERROR MESSAGES*. Do I need to mention that they were sent to me by the Incomparable Anvar Alikhan? I don't know who designed them and executed the graphics but I would send them a bouquet of roses, if I could.
(*Okay, if you've never seen one before, it means you are not human. Thank you for visiting this blog. I am sincerely honoured)

The Uses of Failure!

[This is a re-run of a piece I wrote years ago for my column in the Pioneer. It was later reproduced in Rediff-on-the-Net and entirely forgotten by me until, through a series of coincidences, I REDIFFcovered it on the net. So if you missed it the first time around 10 years ago, no worries! Here it is again]


If you were given "a piece of wire that is bent to a rectangular, triangular, or otherwise shaped hoop, the end parts of which wire piece form members or tongues lying side by side in contrary directions" -- what would you do with it?

Use it to bind sheets of paper together, I hope, because that is a description of one of the early versions of paper clip, the invention of a Norwegian called Johan Vaaler. This fragment of information is just one of countless revelations made in a fascinating book called The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski (author of a book about another supremely useful thing, The Pencil).

It is humbling to realise how much thought, effort and, yes, even passion lies behind all manner of objects which we take for granted in the blurred momentum of our urban lives. By describing the conception of such items as zip fasteners, cutlery and "Scotch" tape, Petroski pays homage to the astounding inventiveness and optimism of our species.

Take, for example, sticky tape. I am one of those people who cannot survive for long without at least four different types of tape close at hand: Narrow and clear for basic bonding; broad and opaque for packing parcels; Scotch magic tape for sneaky repairs like torn currency notes: and the absolutely indispensable double-sided tape for any job which requires one sheet of paper to be attached as neatly as possible to another without the mess of wet glue.

According to this book, gummed tape evolved out of the 1925 fashion, in the US, for cars painted in two colours. A young salesman called Richard Drew, who worked for the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing company -- which, at that time, specialised in waterproof sandpaper, heard auto shop workers complaining about the difficulty they had painting these two-tone cars.

Producing clean edges between two shades of paint required some part of the car's surface to be protected while the second colour was being sprayed on. But the adhesive used to fix the protective mask onto the car was often so strong that it took one coat of paint off with it when the mask was removed.

Drew set himself the challenge of producing a type of paper which would adhere to a surface temporarily. It took him two years to chance upon crinkly paper as the ideal medium. The brand name Scotch, belonging to the company we all know now as 3M, is supposed to have arisen because the tape was initially adhesive only along its edges. Users reportedly complained that due to the "Scotch" stinginess of its manufacturers, the tape wasn't sticking properly! This resulted in the tape being gummed across its whole surface.

Similarly, in 1978, Art Fry, a chemical engineer also working for 3M, felt the need to mark the pages in his hymnal with bookmarks which wouldn't fall out. What he needed was an adhesive strong enough to keep a small scrap of paper from falling out of a book, yet weak enough not to damage the page it was on. A fellow employee and researcher called Stephen Silver had accidentally discovered just such an adhesive. Because the company they worked for took a benevolent view of extracurricular inventiveness, Fry was able, in a year-and-a-half of experimenting, to come up with the now ubiquitous little bits of paper called Post-its.

"Form follows function" has been a designer's mantra for many decades now. But, in his book, Petroski contends, "The form of one thing followed from the failure of another thing to function as we would like. Whether it is the bookmarks which fail to stay in place or taped-on notes that fail to leave a once-nice surface clean and intact, their failure... is what leads to the true evolution of artifacts."

What an attractive and hopeful thought this is! I read it to mean that failure is one of the building blocks of success: that failure can be, and often is, the foundation on which strong and vibrant ideas are built. Those of us who fail are generally given little encouragement except to be whipped to perform better the next time around. The celebration of success hides a fear and an abhorrence of failure; and yet, in a sense, failure in the form of death is the ultimate fate of every mortal being. How much gentler and more powerfully inclusive it is, therefore, to recognise that every failure is an invitation to improvise, improve and innovate.

In one example after the other, Petroski demonstrates his point: The safety-pin which evolved out of the failure of straight pins to protect their users from getting pricked; the incredible variety of hardware items, each invented and patentable only because they filled a need which some other item failed to satisfy; the endless variety of cans and their corresponding openers. There is such a thing as creative discomfort, Petroski's book suggests, which is the ultimate fount of all creation.

Statistics

This appeared on the edit page of the Asian Age on Tuesday, 16th March (i.e., one day after International Women's Day), in an article written by the former governor of J&K and former Union Minister, Jagmohan:

"Domestic violence is also quite common. About 45 per cent of women are slapped. One case of cruelty by husband and relatives is reported every nine minutes. General crime against women, too, is widespread. There is one molestation case every 15 minutes, one rape every 29 minutes, one dowry death every 77 minutes, and one incident of sexual harassment every 53 minutes."

No wonder the sex ratio (quoted in this article) currently stands at 927 females for every 1000 males!

Someone's got it RIGHT ... maybe?

Just looking at the pictures, I feel the book must be great to own -- a beautifully stylized version of the RAMAYANA, by US-based cartoonist/artist Sanjay Patel. I just happened to notice a reference to the book (its full title: RAMAYANA: The Divine Loophole) at CNN GO Asia via TwitterBuddy Elu and instantly fell in love with the visuals. They remind me of the wonderful angular style and colour palette of American wildlife artist, (the late) CHARLEY HARPER -- but exciting and lively in their own unique way. I've never heard of the book, but am assuming that's just becoz I live with my head tucked under my arm.

Rethinking HAPPINESS

Here's a link to an article in the NEW YORKER -- it's worth reading, regardless of how happy/unhappy you are at the moment. A couple of years ago I read a book called HAPPINESS: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard which was interesting for several reasons but especially because (a) it suggested that the law of diminishing returns applies to happiness as it does with many other things and (b) this particular books ends with a discussion about chemical solutions to depression. I thought this second point was very odd but then again ... it's about happiness, right? And for many people a little chemical help is entirely crucial to maintaining the brightness of their smile -- please be sure to include white sugar in your definition of "chemical help"!

Anyway. The New Yorker article is an elaboration of the points raised in the book (i.e., if you read the article, you don't really need to read the book). On the one hand, I remember an Arab businessman friend whom we met more than 40 years ago, part of the oil-rich tide that spilled over into India, looking for new markets and business. He said that being rich certainly did not guarantee happiness but if you're going to be sad either way, then "... it's better to be rich and sad than poor and sad."

MEANWHILE! More videos. These two are from my recent trips to FATEHPUR SIKHRI and the TAJ MAHAL.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Well and here I am, back in Delhuxe.

Since posting the zebrae I have heard from Tulika books that they will NOT spank me for uploading bits of images from SAME & DIFFERENT, their next title by me. So ... here's another one. I may be unable to resist posting fragments from each of the pages in the days/weeks ahead! I normally lose interest in my work the moment it's delivered and out of my hands, but with picture books, I remain enthusiastic at least until I've seen the printed result.

Meanwhile, I must report I had a funny dream the other night -- all about ring-tailed lemurs!! Nothing much happened in my dream, except that there were a number of the cute little critturs leaping about, making their musical cries and blinking their enormous orange eyes. At the Goa Seminar (see the post just before this one ...) dreams and dream analysis were amongst the topics of discussion and we had a bonafide dream expert, MADHU TANDON, author of DREAMS & BEYOND (Penguin Books) to reveal a little bit about the unconscious mind and the tales it sometimes tells us.

Alas, I missed the dream analysis session at breakfast on the day I left Goa -- even though I no longer pay much attention to my own dreams. I used to, but over a period of time came to the conclusion that I am too prosaic and insensitive a person to have mystical experiences. I dream a great deal but nearly always in the ring-tailed lemur mode -- i.e., there's a great deal of detail and amusement, quite often with sound and light (and sometimes smell) effects, but rarely anything else. Whenever I've tried to write down dreams after waking up, the result is that I have more and more astonishing "adventures" and spend less and less time actually awake. Still. It would have been fun to have been at the session. I like talking about and hearing about the dream world, even though I find it difficult to believe that they (dreams) are anything more than a type of mental hobby for the brain, while it's recovering from its daytime activities.

AND ...

On a completely different note: while reading about gay rights and a recent ruling in the USA which makes it legal for gay couples to marry in yet another state (Maryland?) I got to wondering why people belonging to alternative-gender lifestyles don't frame a different contract altogether. I wrote to someone who is an activist in the gay rights movement, and asked if there were any moves in that direction and was told that there were, but not enough consensus to make the initiative stick.

It would be so cool, I think, if alt-sex groups cobbled together a type of contract that would actually appeal across the board to anyone who is sick of the inanities of the conventional marriage contract while at the same time recognizing the need for formal ties.


AND! A new feature, from a great site called ANIMOTO -- instant little animations! Using your own stuff. In this case, it's a collection of my drawings and 'toons.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

GOIN' GOAN

I'm currently in Bombay, enjoying the pleasant aftermath of three days in Goa at the very enjoyable seminar organized jointly by the Sahitya Akademi and Goa University on Fantasy, Science Fiction, and other Forms of the Marvellous in Indian Literature. These two photographs are all that I succeeded in capturing on account of having my camera with me but refusing to take out anywhere, with the result that I could only use my cellphone (All Hail Nokia E71!).

The seminar was only my second experience of an ac-lit seminar but based on these two experiences (the previous one being in Ch'garh ten days ago) I could easily become addicted! It was fun, it was interesting and I think we all came away feeling better and broader for it -- no puns intended. A partial* list participants is:
(* it's not exhaustive becoz this list is cut-and-pasted from the list of those staying at the Hotel NOVA GOA. I'm too lazy to look up the printed list to check to see who else was present at the seminar, if they weren't on this list)

1. Dr. A Krishna Murthy, Secretary Sahitya Akademi
2. Alok Bhalla, Jamia. Delhi, Advisor, Sahitya Akademi,
3. Gitanjali Chatterjee, Dy. Secretary, Sahitya Akademi
4. Arshia Sattar, Bangalore, Seminar Co-Ordinator,
5. Malashri Lal, Seminar Co-Ordinator, Delhi U,
6. Sahitya Akademi accounts/office staff
7. Ahana Lakshmi, translator, Chennai
8. Deepa Agarwal , writer, translator, Delhi
9. Kavita Sharma , writer, academic, Director, India International Centre
10. Madhu Tandan, writer, dream analyst, Delhi
11. Mahesh Sharma, historian, writer, Chandigarh
12. Manjula Padmanabhan, writer, artist Delhi
13. Namita Gokhale, writer, publisher, Delhi
14. Neerja Mattoo, writer, translator, Kashmir
15. Raju Natesh, writer, artist.
16. Reba Som, author, singer and translator, Director, ICCR Tagore Centre, Kolkata.
17. Sanjukta Dasgupta, writer, translator, academic, Calcutta Univ
18. Shilo Shiv Suleiman, Illustrator
19. Sukrita Paul Kumar, poet, academic, ILLL, Delhi Univ.
20. Sumanyu Satpathy, translator, academic, Head, Dept of English, Delhi Univ.
-- ah -- one person who I know was at the seminar, but wasn't on this list is
21. China Meiville, writer, UK, whom we borrowed from the British Council's Lit Sutra.

March Madness

Need a laugh? Go visit THIS SITE featuring howlers of the political rally kind.

But in other news ... I am still chasing my tail, trying desperately to get one lot of work completed in order to make space for the OTHER lot, which, coincidentally happens to be my primary work (i.e., writing, painting). Ahem. Well ... yep. I'm the sort of degenerate being who cannot even manage to play hooky in a competent fashion, because one way or another it's ALL WORK. *snarl*

I did manage to complete my picture-book-for-the-year, however and am feeling very pleased about it. It's called SAME & DIFFERENT and is another* book of picture puzzles. I am posting a TINY sample below -- and haven't asked my publisher TULIKA's permission yet, so if you return later today and discover that there's NO PICTURE it means I've been smacked on the head and sent to bed without supper. I delivered the artwork last week and the finished result should be out in print, I'm told, in maybe a week from now!! The speed at which books leap off the desk and into the world these days just takes my breath away. (*the first one was called I AM DIFFERENT, also from TULIKA)