"The Limbo" -- Essay Published in Troubadour 21

The Migrant City, my writing project supported by an Associate Fellowship from Sarai-CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) is a collection of essays and poetry.

Most recently, the essay "The Limbo" is published on TROUBADOUR 21...

Under the series titled DILLIGAF (I know, I know!), it is set in Delhi -- the city of djinns and jagged edges ...!

Here's a teaser:

"The Ferris wheel sways up and down in a maverick fashion. Faces bob and bait me. Men in kurtas, humid tees and even unwashed shirt collars. Women a multitude of colourful heads – pink, red, ochre – covered with sari pallavs or transparent salwar-kameez veils. Kids walk between adult knees. Flower petals fall down crushed in fervent hands and the invisible vermillion powder in the hot air suffocates me. The auto sputters, barely moves.

“I need a smoke,” says my driver. “But someone might be offended.”

I contemplate walking down but remember what happened once. Devotees pushing; someone’s hand in my pocket quickly scrounging for material items; another hand even on my butt, pressing and persuasive. But all this should be Maya. Or magic. You can’t see who does it and how."

Read it in full HERE.

Image from the Internet: Vehicles on Delhi road.

PARISCOPE -- a 2-part 'city' essay in Troubadour 21

My 2-part essay PARISCOPE is published in "Troubadour 21". Click on the post title or on "PARISCOPE" to read.

Here's a sneak peek:

"PART I: SIDEWALKING
The Notre Dame looks proudly clean in the summer sun of 2006. The rose window stares at us with a Da Vinci Code wink.
We have just finished learning how to make a baguette inside one of the tents that dot the precincts. This is the Notre Dame fair, unleashing midway on and has kids and adults yelling at each other in French. Of course, this is Paris. A
two-toned pavement, the city elongates and vagabonds with our bohemian tastes.
My partner counts the concrete blocks, I mentally color those that seem plain.
An hour ago, while I rolled the dough, the baguette-master (that’s what I name
him) urged me to fist the plump white elastic form hard, even harder. His
rambunctious “Allez-y” had already allayed my fear that I would remain
forever uneducated in bread-making skills, especially, of this kind."

and from

"PART II: EMPARKED
I tell her goodbye at the turn of Canon de la Nation. Folks still eat there at 11.30 p.m. Mint tea pours to tingles and trickles. Granny’s golden-white hair and the pup’s coat match, tells the light.

“Say ‘bye’, come on, say it Kiki! Give her your bises!”

The whiskered one doesn’t, instead she whimpers. It is too late for her on the road, so what we remain night walkers. It is another night that has crescented over the road."

As far as writing is concerned, the essays came up rather fast but they had been cooking inside my head for a very long time. I have written a few "Delhi" and "Upstate" essays under my proposed CITY series. "Paris" was a pretty logical punctuation in that bunch. So far, two parts. More might be added later, we'll see.



Images from my Paris album: Notre Dame cathedral fair; SIDA rally at Bastille; at Cafe Kleber in Bir Hakeim