Given that The Rum Diary is on my mind, I couldn’t help but notice a couple of retro cameras that pop up in the movie. Johnny Depp’s character Paul Kemp slings this camera on his shoulder and uses it...
Over the weekend, I went on a movie marathon watching You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Fantastic Mr.Fox, Rango, and The Rum Diary. It was The Rum Diary to which I ke...
For featuring my post on Pan Am‘s retro cameras in the Pan Am microsite. It’s an incredible honour. Pan Am is a wonderful show that needs to go on. Thanks to the inexplicable ways of the ...
I have been thinking for a long time about doing something that would help me delve deeper into the ideas I love, bring some structure to the blog, and discipline me into blogging regularly. Ergo, Th...
The first time that I heard a Baul song was not in Bengal but in Madras. The songs stayed with me. I remember being surprised because it was quite feminist in tone about the rights of women in a farm...
Of late, I have noticed this proliferation of the suffix –ist added to a verb. I have seen it in popular ads of anti-ageing creams (regenerist), blog names (imaginationist), world music groups (the d...
Pan Am, the TV series based on the American airline has totally captured my interest. For starters, I couldn’t take my eyes off the beautiful cameras that are shown in the Pan Am TV series. Pan Am cu...
When I had just started blogging in December 2004 (oh yes, this blog goes way back), I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to say on a blog. And more importantly, how to say it. It was thro...
I trace my lineage to the beautiful city of Calcutta, which has been described among other things as “a city that makes decay seem like an art.”1 I don’t remember where I read that. But the words hav...
Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unposses...
I discovered Philip Ardagh in a nondescript bookshop in a traditional part of town known for its temples not books. I couldn’t get enough of his writing. His Eddie Dickens and Unlikely Exploits serie...
Click to view slideshow. There’s something elemental about an open air market. I mean a market where the merchants sometimes shout out their wares, where the sun shines benevolently, and people come ...
That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge What is this need for stories? What is this need to willingly suspend our disbelief? To ...
Accidental Fame Junkie’s (that’s me!) Lomo diary starts today. I will record my thoughts on anything and everything accompanied by pictures taken with the Diana Mini along with a sometime...
Sometime last year an idea caught me by the neck and didn’t let me go. It was surprisingly nothing to do with writing or books, though you could say it was peripherally connected. The idea was ...
Loads of wishes for Navratri and Durga puja! PS: More pics and an announcement are coming up.
This is not a book that screams for your attention but it gets it anyway. A compact pocket-sized book, it records one man’s close encounter with Satyajit Ray (also called Manikda). Nemai Ghosh is a f...
The Tiger’s Wife is not about the tiger’s wife. It’s about a story, a quest, history, and incidentally also a certain wild animal with stripes. Obreht juggles the different subplots deftly hint...
Note: This piece was also written for a column sometime early last year, which did not take off. As an event, the Holocaust is a literary well. And yet, it has not been looked into enough. So many o...
Note: This piece was written for a column sometime early last year, which did not take off. I cannot let it languish somewhere. So here it is. There is something vaguely disquieting about Kuzhali Man...
Note: I had this dream on the night of 26 July 2010. I was rummaging through an old notebook and came across it. I am at a writer’s retreat where authors from all over the world have come toget...
Note: Written for the Samsung Women’s International Film Festival 2011, Chennai. Director: Naghmeh Shirkhan Time: 104 min Country: Canada/Iran Genre: Feature The Neighbour is an unconventional ...
The red umbrella, originally uploaded by *Moushumi*. I was on yet another road trip to a neighboring state. En route, we stopped at a Cafe. There was a big red umbrella under which I took shelter fro...
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