June 28
Just some news. This happened this week.
I had to apply by sending in a resume and one article. I sent this one that I had posted in this space just that day: Superb, for an unusually long time.
First column this Monday June 30, then every four weeks.
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One of the joys of the place I call home is the African tulip tree right outside our balcony. Scientifically, in case you're scratching your chin and wondering, that's Spathodea campanulata. At this time of the year, it is awash with those African tulips, bright red/orange beauties. From certain angles, they resemble bells, which accounts for the campanulata - Latin for "bell-shaped".
It's been a few days of constant brooding. Four different tragedies have each imprinted themselves on me. I can't stop turning them over and over in my mind, they leave me with questions I can't answer, emotions I struggle with.
Just over two weeks ago, we landed in Lisbon, right into the catastrophic electricity shutdown across Spain and Portugal. We had no idea as we landed, of course. Once diembarked, we got on a bus that wound its way towards the terminal building ... and then we were stuck for half an hour. Nobody had any idea what was happening. A few police cars raced past, busy-looking airport staff walked briskly past, but nobody said anything to our driver, let alone the dozens of us passengers.
Paladru is a village in southeastern France, not far from the Alps and the Italian border. It sits on the northern tip of the long and pretty Lac de Paladru, site of some pioneering underwater archaeological excavations. The findings are detailed in an elegant little museum, Musée archéologique du lac de Paladru (MALP), on the lakeshore. They show that people have settled in this area going back to the Neolithic era.
Some of you know that I've been in a short story writing course over the last couple of months. Intense, fabulous experience. Now over. The final submission is a 3000-word story. Here it is. I'd love to hear what you think. (This also means that I hope to return to more regular writing here. Hold me to it.)
In mid-March, I got email from a student at my alma mater, BITS Pilani (the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, in Pilani, Rajasthan). This is part of her message:
(Backstory: I'm taking a fiction writing course. A couple of weeks ago, one of our assignments was this: "Draft a short story that makes uses of ekphrasis. There is just one stipulation: there must be a moment of ‘stillness’ in your story." I had no idea what "ekphrasis" was before this course: "the use of detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device." So anyway, I used the work of art, above, that hangs on a wall in our house, and wrote what follows.)
Somewhere near Yermo, California, the top story in the Desert Dispatch that morning says, a woman was attacked by dogs and killed.
There's a fascinating website that, by default, shows our Earth "upside-down" from the view we're familiar with. That is, the South Pole is on top, though you can move the image as you wish.
For some months, we've been awoken each morning by the song of a funky little bird called a Fantail Flycatcher. The thing is, we can hear the little fellow(s), but we're never able to actually see him (them) as they sing.
As I write this, the danger from the fires in Los Angeles seems over and the world has moved on to other tragic disasters. You know: stampede at the Kumbh Mela. Air crash in Washington. Air crash in Philadelphia. Etc.
(Apologies for the break, I was travelling.)
And this is the second obit I wrote for Shirish Patel, based on my experience working, or "working", for him. (Originally on rediff, here.)
Shirish Patel, civil engineer, urban planner and renaissance man, died at 92, last Friday. He was a good friend and mentor to me. I wrote two obits for him. Here's the first. (Originally on Scroll here.)
On a Jaipur highway on Friday, a truck hit a tanker carrying gas. The resulting explosion killed several people. Only days before, a Navy speedboat crashed into a tourist ferry in Bombay's harbour. That killed several people too. Some days before that, the driver of one of Bombay's electric buses lost control and it ploughed at high speed into cars and pedestrians. That killed several people as well. Only months before, an enormous billboard in the suburb of Ghatkopar fell over during a spell of fierce wind. You guessed it, that killed several people too.
On the train, they chanted. If you have travelled on Mumbai's suburban trains, you know exactly what I'm talking about. This was one of the numerous "bhajan mandals": a group of men who board the train and start chanting devotional songs, or bhajans. Some thump on drums. Some use small finger cymbals. All chant.
For this dispatch, here's my review for Shaastra Magazine of "Breaking Rocks and Barriers". This is a memoir by the remarkable geologist and mountaineer Sudipta Sengupta. In 2022, I interviewed her for a long article I did on India's scientific endeavours in Antarctica - she was on one of the earliest Indian expeditions to that icy continent. I couldn't wait to read her memoir, and it was a treat. I couldn't get over how she writes about rocks almost as friends, using geological terms in a way that somehow just flows.
(Explanatory note: this article is about the recent Assembly election in my state, Maharashtra. Most of you probably know that the BJP and its allies, the incumbents, swept to a massive majority in the Assembly.)
Here's a possible dilemma for you to think through. It's time for your yearly eye checkup. So one evening, you drop by your friendly nearby optometrist. You're expecting her to sit you down as usual, get you to try reading the usual chart across the room that has letters getting steadily smaller on each row, offer you a card with bits of text in varying font sizes to read ... the usual.
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