The year was 1969 or thereabouts. 50 years ago, India would still have been very young in her freedom and quite poor but the handcrafted aspect of her everyday was rich, a living, breathing continuum of history, full of colour and flavour. A tiny part of that piece of culture wound up in a country… Read More
Kitchen windows
Recently, I sat at a kitchen table of a woman I had never met before. My mother’s friend, let’s call her V, is her walking companion most mornings. They go shopping together and have an easy camaraderie which reminds me of the friendship of little girls. Now V aunty (since aunty is the necessary blanket… Read More
Relentlessly Me
Because we will not wait for the year to be good but catch it by its pigtails and swing away. 😛 If I had to have a word of the year, I would choose, relentless. It is an intense word with a negative connotation but the paradox is that the word springs from relent, which… Read More
My favourite Odisha handloom sarees
Originally posted on Pleats N Pallu:
I have a deep abiding love for Odisha handloom sarees and textiles, here is a list of a few weaves that I am extremely partial towards… Photos: Vincent Boyer (Say hi on instagram @vincetravelbook) Handloom textiles are the true definition of wearable art that reflect the social histories of their…
Forgotten summers
There’s still a summer from long ago in my forgotten lane. It finds a voice in the golawala’s bell that rings loud around noon, the proverbial pied piper’s music and children tumble out from buildings, helpless to the sweet-sour tastes of his golas. His bottles line one end of the cart, a tantalising world of… Read More
Mystic Heart
💚✡️💚 there’s a secret cave in the heart where body and soul meet 💚✡️💚 in that mystic space all is bliss unstricken unmanifest unborn 💚✡️💚
A night of songlight
An old saree picture and a scribble for a Saturday Shakin Stevens is crooning because I love you, it must be from the house with the boy. It’s the radio playing, nice. I should play the radio too. Unbreak my heart now and Toni Braxton sounds soulful and sensual all at once. I slip out… Read More
Instagram memories
I’ve had many blogs over many years, always zealously private until something started to loosen up. Perhaps it was a sense of growing older and figuring out all of us had the same loves and losses. We guard our secrets from friends and family but let them tumble in front of strangers. Some of my… Read More
forgotten words
I was hunting for some work notes in my old notebooks and found a few doodles by the youngling as well as some random scribbles. Now, the doodle involves her sister as well who may not take very kindly to her depiction so I’ll keep it off this space but the few lines I wrote… Read More
Tears
Towards the end of last year, I did a series of ruminations on the chapter titles of a book. While the book remained very forgetful, the headers provided a springboard for some meandering. One of the headers was ‘tears’, the kind we cry. It led to a spontaneous poem and here it is, pulled up… Read More