Dark of Heartness tiptoed into the Heart of Darkness.
Ammu shook her and told her to Stoppit and she Stoppited.
Sitting between the two professors, I enjoyed their contradictory advice. I sat there smiling, thinking of the first message I received from John Berger. It was a beautiful handwritten letter, from a writer who had been my hero for years: ‘Your fiction and nonfiction – they walk you around the world like your two legs.’ That settled it for me.
White-walled once. Red-roofed. But painted in weather-colors now. With brushes dipped in nature’s palette. Mossgreen. Earth-brown. Crumbleblack.
I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there’s lots to write about.
Om bhur bhuvah svaha Tat savitur varenyam Bhargo devasya dhimahi Dhiyo yo nah pracodayat O God, thou art the giver of life, Remover of pain and sorrow, Bestower of happiness, O Creator of the Universe, May we receive thy supreme sin-destroying light, May thou guide our intellect in the right direction.
But for now, it even has a Gandhian approach to sabotage; before a police vehicle is burnt for example, it is stripped down and every part is cannibalized. The steering wheel is straightened out and made into a bharmaar barrel, the rexine upholstery stripped and used for ammunition pouches, the battery for solar charging. Should I write a play I wonder- Gandhi Get Your Gun. Or will I be lynched?
Do you make all your life’s big decisions based on mobile phone videos?
Rahel drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts towards an unoccupied chair in an airport lounge.
Foreigners only see what they want to see. Earlier it was snake charmers and sadhus, now it is the superpower things, the Bazaar Raj.
The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the pretence, and start hiring theatre directors instead of journalists.
By the time they got back, the lights were all out and everybody was asleep. Everybody, that is, except for Guih Kyom the dung beetle. He was wide awake and on duty, lying on his back with his legs in the air to save the world in case the heavens fell.
And so, in these ways, in order to please Zainab, Anjum began to rewrite a simpler, happier life for herself. The rewriting in turn began to make Anjum a simpler, happier person.
We need an updated insurance plan against our won basic natures.
How history negotiates its terms and collects its dues from those who break its laws.
They were State-of-the-Art machines. They could flatten history and stack it up like building material.
Is this Democracy or Demon Crazy?
In the last photograph of her, the bullet wound looked like a cheerful summer rose arranged just above her left ear. A few petals had fallen on her kaffan, the white shroud she was wrapped in before she was laid to rest.
She kept her doors and windows locked, unless she was using them.
Why should propaganda be the exclusive preserve of the Western media? Just because they do it better?