December 2011
9 posts
“I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and...”
– Neil Gaiman
Here’s wishing all of you a great new year. Be safe. Have fun. Do good work.
Tintin
The hospital bed is a very dank one. No one has told me that recovering from a serious and life threatening urinary tract infection was going to involve me peeing almost uncontrollably. I am irritated beyond normal. Hungry. Thirsty.
1986.
My father swings into the tiny room and hands me a brown cover proudly stamped with “Shankar Book Bureau, Malleshwaram”. I ask him what it...
“When we die, these are the stories still on our lips. The stories we’ll only...”
– Chuck Palahniuk
Maybellene →
A poignant take by Luke Dittrich in Esquire on Chuck Berry, his life, his career and the things taken away from him:
Here’s what happened to Chuck Berry after his ideas changed everything: He became famous, yes. He became a famous black man, touring around Mississippi and Alabama and Texas in the 1950s, playing concerts to theaters full of screaming white teenage girls. Is it any surprise...
“For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo...”
– Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero
“Don’t be afraid. The darkness you’re in is no greater than the darkness inside...”
– Jose Saramago (via L’ Yeux Verts)
I lost a friend today. A teacher too. He perhaps has had as much influence on me as my father. He’s taught me as many things on life, about life as much as my father.
He once told me that the greatest of teachers are story-tellers at heart. I refused to believe him for long, but now I do. He also told me that the best teachers are those that turn their students into teachers for the rest of...
Film
Father and I are at the edge of platform number 1 at Pachora station. It is just a little beyond noon and the sun is a December gold and warm. The signal turns green. The Gitanjali will soon come roaring down the track.
Father takes out the Zenit, winds the film, calibrates the light and notches down a exposure.
“Here, put the strap around your neck and hold the camera with a straight...