parotechnics

Am going here http://lakshadweep.nic.in/ So tags on return Anita!

I have worked very hard the last few days. Been reading scripts submitted for a workshop - several of them and it's mind numbing in so many ways... I've earned me a drink. But I want a special one. A deserved one not a functional put the water in the vodka and the vodka in the girl one. So, here it is: a Dirty Pink Girl Recipe: Take 2-3 large strawberries and take off their shendis Make sure you've washed your hands before - no need to take the name literally Squeeze the strawberries, letting the juice run past your fingers, then mash the a little more between your fingers Drop them into glass Add vodka to taste, or need Top it up with water or soda Add ice Piyo Meri Jaan It tastes perfect and clean. Just the flavour of strawberries but no sweetness. Almost virtuous. And try not to see the resha resha of the strawberries as flaking doll's hair. Think of sea anemones instead.

My house is smelling like America. People always talk about the smell of foreign that used to burst out of people's suitcases when they returned from abroad. But when you finally go to foreign you have your own idea of how it smells I think. The first time I smelled what I think of as the smell of America (to be correct the USA) was about ten years ago, in Crossword, when there was only one Crossword, next to Mahalkshmi temple. I had just started teaching at Sophia college and the occasional honorarium of (then ) Rs.450 seemed good for pleasure only, not the business of daily groceries. So I'd usually go to Crossword and buy a book, take a cab to the station instead of a bus after. And then one day standing like an upside down L in Indian fiction, then a modest shelf or two, I smelled the smell of good coffee, mixed with warm baking mixed with the heady smell of new books. I experienced severe disorientation. This was a smell that I smelled when I went to Louie's in Baltimo...

For some days I think that I would like to put all my new pictures here - not pictures taken from roaming the world but pictures taken from sitting still, of birds seen on the tree outside my window - a red eyed male koel, a strange striped bird that was here for two days, a light blue chickadee. But I am spending some time trying to slow down life to the pace inside which I will know quite precisely but ductlessly what I am thinking, where I will not have to stop in the middle of things and hold my breath and let my eyes glaze over to grab the vanishing hem of a thought that got tired of waiting. While I try to figure that out I've been reading poetry and some have the rhythm I am looking for so, here. Out of Danger Heart be kind and sign the release As the trees their loss approve. Learn as leaves must learn to fall Out of danger, out of love. What belongs to frost and thaw Sullen winter will not harm. What belongs to wind and rain Is out of danger from the storm. Jealous passion...

Stuck in a single truck jam in a narrow lane, I spy, on the back of that truck, this: "See, but love-ly" Wunderbar, no?

On the last night of being in Allahabad we go looking for a place to drink - three women. This turns out to be quite tough. N rings up P who says, Hotel Ashish (or some boys name like that) has a bar. I've seen it - it's fairly tall - although I am rooting for Yatrik, which is old and looks a bit like Claridges. We get in, it's fairly three starish, so we're hopeful. We sit down - but no, no booze. We ask them where. We feel our voices are too loud. He says Grand Continental. Par vaise khana yahan zyaada accha hai. We look down and say, er, we've eaten, we just want a drink. At Grand, the restaurant has none, but the bar does - it's called Patiala Peg, so we know we're covered. Inside, there is an ominous takht, indicating mellow music to come, and the musty smell of unease. We order our drinks. The man on the table next to us is young,drinking with a certain jauntiness, but jauntier than that is his ringtone, the angle of his head when he answers it. His ja...