The 13 things I did when I took an year long break from a 9-5 job. I am on the sixth month. I take pictures one day and write the next. I can read about ethnography one day and feminism the other. 2. I learn and learn more about the crisis of our times, the refugee crisis…
Of uncomfortable spaces
The one time I visited Yodakin, it was a fantastic night, a buildup to collective fantasies. About 300 odd square feet of space that was certainly low on elbowroom but so high on spark that I stayed on. It wasn’t my favorite topic. Under the banner of the Pleasure Project all sorts of things were being thrown around-what…
Aai
I have never forgotten my grandmothers smell, the smell of old age, of soft skin, her favorite sandalwood soap and a particular brand of talcum powder. On many afternoons I rushed back from school straight into her lap. My pony tails were loose, my shirt crumpled, and stains of an eventful day at class all too visible. I…
One single great love
There is only one. A single great love. A unique passion we can’t get over, the one that climbs up, treads its way through our dreams, stays there and plays and replays like a reel. It never lets go. For most people, overtime, it becomes a touchstone, a catalyst, a camphor, a smell, a beam of light, a stack…
Life, after life
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity. I read these words in a piece by Joan Didion, in fact I almost remember how the piece titled ‘After Life’ went. Those were the first words she had written…
Savage Memory
When one is young, life seems infinite. There’s always time to do things in the future, visit one’s grandparents, take your mother out for a movie, frame that beautiful sepia picture for a loved one-next time, later, soon. We file these things away, like tasks, in some deep recess of our mind. They stay there,…
Alone vs Loneliness
A few minutes spent in total solitude, as opposed to loneliness. If only we understood the difference.
Truth is Complicated
I think of myself as a journalist, at the same time I am aware of the women who came before us and fought our battles in circumstances, which may not really exist today. My first job, my first story In my first job at the Indian Express I sorted photographs and put them in different…
Remember, Remember, Remember
When people are dead graves aren’t the place to find them, they are in the wind, the grass, the air of the place. The most hideous crimes are committed daily. We condemn them and then file them away in some deep recess of the mind so that we aren’t plagued by the images, so that we…
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