Category: prose
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“How is your writing going?” she asked.
Everything that I look at is nature. Table, bookshelf, a wall, a person, a plastic bag too — not just trees, rivers, mountains etc. Anything that exists, is nature. Nothing is possible outside nature. However I have noticed that what quietly nourishes me when I look at it, is only what is conventionally considered nature…
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Listening can happen years later
A blank sheet of paper is not intimidating. It’s comforting. It is silence. That is, if you come to that blank page, not to achieve something, not to produce something, but simply to receive with gentle curiosity whatever that blank page may have to say to you. Then it holds you softly in it’s embrace…
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What This Painting Told Me
Just by chance, I happened to make a painting. Then it told me something… My friend and colleague Sukanya and I made an animation video out of what this painting told me. I hope you will see it. Click on this link or any of the stills below, from the animation.
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In The Dark Room
In this dark room, everything is ok. The world needs to hear and see success stories, but ultimately each person, in his / her dark room, must experience this ‘everything is ok’. It doesn’t make for much of a movie or a story, but *this is it*. Not emphatically, but simply because this really is…
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Children, Philosophy, Meaning, and Joy
We were children. I used to love the conversations we had exchanging thoughts and ideas, my brother and I. We were on the terrace, talking. I shared some thought of wonderment with my brother. A what-if kind of thought. He said, “It’s all just mental masturbation.” I interpreted his statement as, “It’s all pointless, undesirable…
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Fragile Code, Fragile Life
A few days back a feature in my software Geet Gatiroop stopped working. It prompted me to write this piece — Code can be so fragile. So many unknown factors. So many extraneous parties to connect to in so many different ways. Any of them may crack anytime. So many specifications to figure out. And…
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Never and Forever Well-Formed
I think I might never heal — physically, mentally. Of course healing entails being OK with that. Then, when you are OK with that, they say you get to directly experience (and be) the whole Universe. That’s what I’m interested in. Some people talk of worshipping. I’m so uninterested in worshipping. Yes, this I have…
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Water, and a home.
I’m really grateful that I have water to drink. Cool water to bathe in every day. Even during the COVID lockdown, one day I found myself feeling grateful that there is cool water in the tap to bathe with. Kolkata is going through a heat wave right. In that there is no electricity problem in…
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Observing The Logic In Our Emotions
I am a huge ball of emotions. A huge potent ball of emotions. I research myself. I research myself by observing my emotions. That is why I wrote once: एहसासों की लड़ी है यह ज़िन्दगी एक एक एहसास को सहेज कर, समेट कर, धीरे धीरे आगे बढ़ती हूँ। कमरा बिखरा रह जाता है। Emotions have…
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The Face We Show The World – Our Rising Sign
“It’s so nice of you… admirable…” a girl said to me in the bus in Iowa. “What?” I asked puzzled. “You go back to India after every semester to attend to your family, and then you come back each semester to study,” the girl said. I laughed and said, “No! Nothing like that. I’m not…