Ridges of muscle on his stomach rose under his skin like divisions on a slab of chocolate. He held her close by the light of an oil lamp, and he shone as though he had been polished with a high-wax body polish.
And we, my dears, everything we are and ever will be are just a twinkle in her eye,.
So on the days that the radio played Ammu’s songs, people avoided her, made little loops around her, because everybody agreed that it was best to just Let Her Be.
She wasn’t beautiful in the way Bombay Silk was, but she was sexier, more intriguing, handsome in the way some women can be.
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.