parotechnics

In Rome, people live inside buildings which in India would be systematically degraded by the ASI or MMRDA otherwise, in the name of heritage perservation. But like in India, they drive around merrily on scooters (of course wearing helmets always) and like to watch TV (I surmise). > Rome was clearly not built in a day so dense is it with layers and layers of history and living, with casually strewn shrines and ruins. It's very hard to be much more than a tourist for perhaps many visits, or perhaps a special type of visit - like if you went to work there for a month or something -no matter how much you dawdle, try not to be completist, try to be insouciant, spending more time eating gelatto than taking photo, you can only slide over the surface of a city thick with detail, the whole place a palimpsest of futures being built over pasts. On the other hand for the ancient parts- it's better than any guide book if you've read your Asterix comics well! THE CLOISTER OF THE BENED

When I was in school we had to write this essay - the one place I'd love to visit. I wrote an essay on Italy which was a place of kitsch images - you could make a Matrix sim card ad with those images. As I grew older I was lucky to make friends from other places, among them Francesca, an honest to goodness Italian. I learnt that pineapple is ananas in Italian too. And everything I'd learn about Italy made me want to go there even more even as my stereotypes softened, deepened. So finally this summer I did. My friends Maria and David had rented a villa in small village near the town called Todi and they very kindly invited me to stay. The villa had its own swimming pool, there were fruit trees scattered around, I slept, read murder mysteries, swam and played with the kids. And ate of course. Innumerable, exquisite meals. THE VERANDAH WHERE WE ATE THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW Often we'd do day trips - to little towns nearby.It was like a very spread out Chandni Chowk, a town per c

“It’s almost un-American at this point to say you don’t want children, especially from an image perspective,” said Ms. Min, who spoke to The Observer the day her magazine broke the news of Jennifer Lopez’s pregnancy. “It’s almost like saying you’re a communist.” And not just in America either. I remember when I was in college we had a catch all solution to any question the teachers asked - why was X thing happening in the Rennaisance? Up would go our hands - the rise of the middle classes. And the teacher would go, oh those middle classes, they've been rising forever, they just keep rising. And so they do. Nowadays I find that if I say anything on above subject (Maternal Fascism) I have to ammend by saying, "Hey, some of my best friends have kids and I love them. All I'm saying is...."

See - my mtnl broadband saga was a sort of interruptus in the coitus of blogging from which I never recovered. Since it's all so dependent on the photographs, I've been writing a loooooong post about Italy with all pictures, one line a week I guess. Also - please note to the right of us - I am just a nice girl with a big backlog. I am being true to myself therefore and spitting at all those who sniggeringly think it's big backside instead of big backlog. But now that this huge number of two people are demanding I write,I am feeling important. Italy post will and must be completed and will appear before I leave. Thank god I forgot to take my camera to Kathmandu otherwise my backlog would have gotten worse.