“Having had two children, and perfectly aware of how they came about, it’s not romantic or affectionate smooching that perplexes, but the formal, impersonal, performative variety, practised with relative strangers…” Please click on pic to read the whole article.
Completing twenty years in Britain led to some introspection on borders, nationalities and the ties that bind us to different places, which I poured into my monthly column for top Asian newspapers Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle last month. Please click on the picture to read more. The photos are of me when I first arrived in the UK twenty years ago (on the left) and now (on the right).
it is a haunted world we live in right now. Our deserted public spaces are peopled by wraiths, not just of those who have tragically died in the pandemic, but all of us who have retreated from the world, living a shadow of the lives we once did.
The homes of those who live alone or in unhappy domestic situations are echoing wells of loneliness, and maybe even fear. Even in happy homes, the ghosts of extended family and visiting friends can still be seen flitting around corners.
In their passing on from our lives, though not from this world, they have taken on an otherworldly sheen. Our home in Sherwood forest, where the past incessantly rubs shoulders with the present, is now infested with them.
At least, that was the (im)possibility we were forced to consider when, as the summer progressed and lockdown laid root, our nights suddenly filled with voices…
(Please click on pic for rest of story)
As the coronavirus spreads across the planet, indiscriminately passing from person to person as viruses do, killing hundreds of thousands without heed to nationality as pandemics must, a strange pattern has emerged. A pattern of pernickety culling unknown to contagion…
(Please click on pic to read rest of Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle column. Cartoon from the net)
I will get my hands in the soil and nose in flour, my fingers inky with new writing and missives to the elderly, and my eyes set firmly on the beautiful four who are my world (click on pic for rest of my column in Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle)
A college in Kutch too was painting the town red. Not with satin hearts and red velvet cupcakes, but with blood…(click on pic for the rest of the second instalment of my column in the Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle)
You wouldn’t think this innocuous cereal could sound offensive till it is shouted in your face…(please click on picture for this “hilarious but disturbing” piece, as described by a reader)
