Design sense....do you have it?

“This city has a legacy of textile production, so there’s immense variety of fabrics in the local market, plus there’s a history of both industrial and craft production, karigari. Craftspeople here understand what it means to make export-quality products, and time-based commitments; the city and the craftspeople here are already geared towards that,” he says. Varman is part of a small-sized Ahmedabad-based fashion brigade that includes Shyamal and Bhumika Shodhan and Anuradha Vakil. One of Varman’s essential crafts-partnerships is with 56-year-old Sitaben. An expert at traditional bead embroidery, she learned the craft when she was 16; these two found each other at a crafts bazaar held at NID. When Varman and I visited Sitaben’s home in a traditional Gujarati pol (traditional housing cluster), she chided him for looking so thin, telling him “Tu khaata nahin hain.”

They talked as equals, and she spoke with confidence about her work.

Access to good craftspeople with varied expertise is as crucial to architecture. Soenke Hoof is Doshi’s grandson-in-law and a partner at Vastu Shilpa, which Doshi set up in 1955. Hoof’s entire career has been spent in Ahmedabad since moving from Germany 12 years ago. I asked him if he thought the relationship between designer and artisan is different here. “I’ve only practised in Ahmedabad, though I have worked on projects in other places. Here, I find a craftsman is eager to do a good job because he takes pride in that. In many other cities, that eagerness is missing.” Another designer confided, “Unlike in many other places, a Gujarati craftsman will never take your design and give to another designer.”

(Because I have always been mad about design.)

Read it all here

The changing face of urban India

Look around you.

(That is, with an mindful eye, an eye that "remembers".) 

Chances are -- immaterial of which Indian city you live in -- you would have seen a lot of greenery disappear in the last couple of years, and a lot of open spaces too.

Across most cities, this happens only around the suburbs, mostly because the city proper is already choc-a-bloc "developed".

But, among many...it is also happening in once-relatively-more-living (and saner) areas. As the cost of land (available for buildings / real estate) goes up...keeping it unpaved becomes an impossibility. An economically unviable proposition, if you will.

Most of this so called development is supposed to lead to "wealth creation." After all, for many people a house (or a flat) or any other property is nothing but an investment...something that will appreciate, something that will make them wealthier in the years to come.

And yes, all this "development" is supposed to be inevitable and an indicator of India's status as a "developing" nation.

But is it?

Can our already cluttered, close-to-asphyxiation polluted, highly overpopulated cities survive if we do away with whatever little soul that remains in them -- in the form of green and open spaces?

And, is it the right way to "develop", the right way to aspire to catch up to international standards of living, to give our citizens a quality of life at par with the US or UK?

(Especially considering the fact that...urbanization is not something that can be rolled back.)

Lets take the case of the UK, how much of greenspace does it have? How much of it is built on?

"
The urban landscape accounts for 10.6% of England, 1.9% of Scotland, 3.6% of Northern Ireland and 4.1% of Wales. Put another way, that means almost 93% of the UK is not urban. But even that isn't the end of the story because urban is not the same as built on.

In urban England, for example, the researchers found that just over half the land (54%) in our towns and cities is greenspace - parks, allotments, sports pitches and so on.

Furthermore, domestic gardens account for another 18% of urban land use; rivers, canals, lakes and reservoirs an additional 6.6%.

Their conclusion?

In England, "78.6% of urban areas is designated as natural rather than built". Since urban only covers a tenth of the country, this means that the proportion of England's landscape which is built on is…

… 2.27%.

Yes. According to the most detailed analysis ever conducted, almost 98% of England is, in their word, natural.

Elsewhere in the UK, the figure rises to more than 99%. It is clear that only a small fraction of Britain has been concreted over."

I wonder how much of India is built over. And how much of it can still be called greenspace.

But...oh wait.

We are a "developing" country. Ha!

Read more here


            

Hello world!

Hello there blog, so I am back.

After a bit over a year.

I know its a real long break to take...but what to do, the photography of birds (and their showcasing on Stray Birds ) is exhausting, to say the least.

That apart, my life isn't exactly "settled" or anything...and definitely not into a "writerly routine".

Anyway, for whatever good it be, I am back here, and hopefully for the good.

   

तुम्हारे आँखों की दरमियाँ

इतनी सी है ख्वाइश बस,
जा सकूँ मैं वापीस फिर जहाँ,
तुम ही थे -- साँस और सुकून
तुम ही थे ज़हां

तुम्हारे आँखों की दरमियाँ

Confessions

At the end,
the realization dawns;
everything is but imaginary.

It doesn't matter,
that, your love was in vain;
it doesn't, that

You didn't learn,
to hate. That, to strain
your ears to hear

What is never there
is your own lifelong dirge.
The only real thing,

A defeat you live.

Inflammable

Then, as is the wont,
of dismembered wood, voicing their lament
of embers, to sightless skies
the limbs of trees die;

Again, sparks rise
in a Braille curse
and staying mute, the skies
stoic as the Gods, say nothing.

I could have put a hand
in there, with my palms shoveled
the live coals;
we have done

Labour of a kind,
before, writing


P.S. -- This is not incomplete.

New Year, 2015

I am still throwing up sputum,
as the hours add up to the days
and nights of cough-counting s h e e p

It has been almost a week now.
Or, is it more?
There is nothing new

About this sickly sweet taste
we are old friends.
Maybe it came when it did,

(Sometime around when,
the world switched off;
for its annual binge of gifting and partying,)

To tell me,
there is nothing new
for 2015 to throw up for me.

Empty epiphanies

Suddenly, as if it were a giant bird eye temporarily gauzed by a nictating membrane, the sun's searching ardour dims and the light turns soft, still retaining the yellow warmth that shows the grass all around me as a precious wilderness -- of subdued golden hues, the stems heavy with ripening seeds, nodding to each other or tangled together with a nonchalance that only grass growing wild can know -- of tones and shadows that belong in a painting, like scapes born from soft brush strokes.

I am large, I have multitudes.

I have walked something like 3-4 kilometres (over the dusty roads of my colony and then, Cross-country across as-of-now empty plots) to get to where the grass starts, and then maybe another...circumventing clumps of Lantana, walking doglegs around thorn trees, muscling my way through -- with the lens held high over my head -- where a barely seen trail is overgrown with wild basil and other brush, shoulder high, like a stockade.

My footfalls aren't as light as I would like them to be. Juvenile baya weaver birds out on feeding sorties gather together and watch me pass; prinias and zitting cisticolas clamber up to vantage points and keep me in sight, repeatedly darting glances at me and as repeatedly looking away; a long-tailed shrike imagines I am some bird of prey out to steal its kill and gobbles down a fat grasshopper with unseemly haste; grey francolins burst into flight, in a heart-stopping explosion of wings, one after the other.

But then, I have been here before, and because the grey francolins keep outsmarting me, I can say I have known these defeats before...

I walk some more through grass that's a mid-thigh high, skirting a patch of nettles, all that is there -- this year when the rains failed -- of a seasonal puddle where I have seen munias feed in many, very hundreds.

I am here for the Booted Eagle. And I know (in the way a Birdman knows), I am on time; but no bird takes off into the skies out of the broken treeline in front of me, even as I wait -- shifting my weight from leg to leg, in turns standing tiptoe and rocking back on the balls of my feet to relax the muscles there -- what seems like an eternity or an hour.

As oft before, my thoughts stray and I wonder again, if this is the pinnacle of my existence, that I can be footloose and fancy free to indulge in the pursuit of birds; or my nadir in monetary and career (aren't they the same thing?) terms -- that I, an articulate, educated and experienced professional while my way away thus, in a lonely wait, for a bird that doesn't come.

Then, peripheral to the gaze of my mind,out of the side of my right eye, I see movement.

Its the grass, I see. Its moving. A breeze has sprung and even as I watch, in wave after wave, the whole meadow dances in unison as if each stem and blade of grass has picked up some tune that stays unheard by me.

That's all the answer I will ever get from a meadow of wild grass -- I chuckle to myself; as I turn around, to walk some more kilometres, and search for some more birds.

In Time

Where do the days go?
Do they know the anguish,
the incompleteness of being.
Can they slow, as another year ends?

Then I see, how can it be
or does it matter, really
for some of us will lie and find love,
some will succeed to gather wealth

And some will be spent, searching
for newer ways and measures
to tell of simpler struggles
of the in-drawn hiss, the muted scream

At yet another night's
touch of tincture iodine
on a self raw with
the sutures of loneliness.

September 2012

As the days dry out, 

birdless, I remember the sight 

of your closed eyes,

your repose as you slept,

a dream I dared not wake.

Now I curse my cowardice

and the past, now distant beyond a bird's flight. 

Two years away, the wells of your eyes 

are depths I can't sound 

with my deaf gaze.

I should have

awakened you, after I had awakened to

the poems fluttering under your eyelids.

As the days dry out,

birdless, I regret

Your love, your lies, fool me...

and the skin crawl of your memory 

still writing poems such as these

Vinayaka Chavithi, 2014

As I type this, sitting in the penthouse (rather -- my bare, uncluttered, minimalist writing shack) on the terrace, the sun is peeking out and shining in a haze through the clouds.

The terrace itself is still wet with the last of the rain that has fallen, mostly in a steady trickle, sometimes in a din...for almost a day now -- starting as it did yesterday evening when Naana and I got Vinayaka home, along with the fruits, flowers and other offerings that he relishes.

All in all, thanks to the clouds and the rain, it has been a perfect Ganeshotsav at home for me.

What with the overcast skies almost the exactly same colour as the three lines on my brow (and arms) it seemed as if the heavens were also wearing Tripundra, the mark of Shiva -- in obeisance to his son, Guru Ganesha.  

To fit the sanctity of the occasion, I wore a Panchi and Tripundra and as Amma recited the Mantras that I couldn't hear, I could still concentrate on the Puja apart from a thought occasionally straying away -- like an unfettered bird; where would I have been today if I was in Delhi?

Would I have managed to make it to the Garhwal Himalayas (or Bharatpur) over the weekend? Or someplace closer by -- like Basai or Yamuna Biodiversity Park?

After all, technically (at least for all those who are securely and gainfully employed) this is yet another long weekend.

But then, I realize that I am not in Delhi any more.

My thoughts stray again...is it equally cloudy (and raining) at Vizag now? If I was there at Vizag now -- probably on Thotlakonda or Pavuralakonda, would the light conditions have permitted me to shoot landscapes worthy of catching Ansel Adams eye?

But then, I realize that I am not at Vizag either, that the trip I was to set out on was canceled...

As some poet said, the best laid plans of men and mice (and, the best intentions too) sometimes come to just nought...

Maybe such is life, maybe I am destined to be home and circumabulate the Buffalo Wallow (the Great Cormorants are now in breeding plumage, and the Pied Kingfishers are pairing up, looking for sites to build nests; there are also a flock of Streaked Weavers now more or less established in the reeds that flank the wallow).

Whatever Guru Ganesha wishes. Om Ganeshaya Namaha.

P.S. -- Blame it on the intense pleasure of being at home on Vinayaka Chavithi or the magical atmosphere today -- I did something that I have rarely done after my growing up (in Orissa) years. Left my pens at Guru Ganesha's feet for his blessings. And yes, seeing how I rarely write with them any more, seeing how a lens that is as long as a baby elephant's trunk is now my stock "tool of trade", I naturally asked him to bless it too.

Om Namaha Shivaya :-)            

An old woman begging in a train

Her footwear were oversize 
for her old and shrunken feet.

Her Sari looked like its silk;
her hair was a confusion 

Of odds and ends, with the dull sheen
of old silver. Also enough black

Drawn back in a decrepit bun
a little above her nape. Almost like

Another eye. In the crook
of one scrawny, twig-thin hand

She carried a faded yellow cloth bag.
What's in there? A blanket?

Two more Saris? Her remaining years?
Into the wizened palm of the other hand

I pressed down some money,
after touching it to my eyes.

Those eyes are wet now
As I cry this poem on

The tragedy that is
an old woman begging in a train.

Defeat

Four years, or are they five,
or even some more? My own
mirror of time, they make 

Gummed and then red-backed
with the dried crimson bleed of
two ears and the disquiet 

Of all the words they never hear.
There are so many riddles
I see in my face. Gathering,

The crow's feet around my eyes
seem to ask -- does loneliness age?
And how can I be both,

That silent, stolen, upraised glance
into changeless skies of lies,
(when no one's watching,)

That ritual cursing of an empty grimace;
the bird-like gaze, from up above
in my bumbling defeats,

Seeing grace?

Hey you, you are not Intense any more...

Well, I am not Intense any more it seems.

(Not that this is very recent either, I mean one month will pass soon.)

This wasn't exactly a verdict of course, nothing on e-mails, nothing that could be tracked back otherwise also, but you can't be a fugitive when you are someone who doesn't have phone skills, can you? Besides, you cannot be a fugitive when you are Intense, can you?  

Dunno what exactly happened; I mean what exactly was new (apart from a 5 day week -- Oh Golly! -- and an epidemic of  we-know-it-all-marketing-branding-business development-social media-eff all because we know Excel / Google types); last time around I was told, all I do is put a semicolon here, a colon there, a comma wherever; this time some Grand Panjadrum who is arguably everything you can imagine (and cannot) under the marketing / analyst (shit!) relations / PR / advertising / whatever-else-you-want-to-think-of  set me up even better (or should I say, worse?).

Usually, when you are forty (plus?) and recruited directly by management, you probably count for more; maybe a generous severance allowance, if not...at least a decent notice period.

Ha ha.

Anyway, I am not Intense any more.

In a way it is good, I don't feel like a fugitive (me?, the very idea!) and I don't glare at myself in the mirror in the morning when I shave either.

That summer is on me is also fine; my ears have been no better or worse for more than a summer now, anyway.

You want to know about my eyes?

Ha ha.

The lens is very VERY visible.
      

Another Rider Mania, another ride...

Last time around Rider Mania was in Shillong. While I had any amount of leaves (read that as "not employed anywhere") and the urge to take a road trip was stronger than ever, I couldn't make it.

Why?

Let's not get into that :-)

This time around, luck was a lot favourable (so to say) and I registered much in advance and thereafter also managed to get leave etc, etc.

So, come the 16th of January, I was on the road again (without any preparations whatsoever, on a borrowed, spanking new, Classic Chrome 500) and surprisingly enough had a pack of Bullets riding along too.

The agenda was simple. Get intimate with the road again, rediscover it for the pure thrill of motorcycling, connect with the basics of biking again. Naturally then, I chose my painful motorcycling boots (if not for which I would have lost a toe or more when I had fallen and broken my collar bone en-route Kolkatta for another Rider Mania) over my birding shoes (and lenses and cameras).

The agenda was also to rough it out (I had carried along my tent -- I did not need to pitch it because a fellow rider -- who also snores -- invited me to join him in his tent) and have fun in "life is a beach" terms.

Must say I managed to do all that and more.

And though I do regret on not being able to photograph a Marsh Harrier, any number of Common Kestrels and countless Black Shouldered Kites and White-breasted Kingfishers; I don't regret not having to lug the heavy backpack with me, for all of approximately 800 kms each way.

More importantly, I do regret not being able to do justice to the landscapes on offer with my puny camera phone, but then at one level motorcycling is all about framing and freezing those vistas in your being -- with no camera involved!

Yes, it was  good ride. I had company both ways; tucked into some amazing food all over the ride, connected with a lot of biker buddies and made quite a few new friends too.

But the icing on the cake was the fact that I started my birthday with a 200 kms odd trip (from the place where we had called it a night, at a seedy lodge somewhere after Pidiguralle on the absolutely hypnotic SH-2) to reach home for have the privilege of touching  my parents' feet.

That this ride was through inchoate early morning fog, under a drowsily weak winter sun added to the magical quality of the whole experience. Having the Classic Chrome 500 to stride and the challenge of maintaining a fast clip (while weaving in through the occasional truck traffic) gifted it a very special edge.

So you could say I gifted myself a grand present for my birthday. Because, as someone known to me said -- If you don't celebrate your own birthday, who will?

Most importantly, now I have the contextual depth to compare two different birthday rides. On the ride to Rider Mania, Kolkatta, I was riding all through my birthday and intent on getting the ride over and "partying". That's when (though I was not speeding) I fell and broke my collar bone. As such I spent the night of my birthday in a decrepit Kolkatta hospital, wracked with pain and surrounded by ghoulish looking, post middle-age, matronly ayah type nurses firing Bengali phrases at me.

This time, I was more sensible and had 4 hours of sleep behind me and the mental focus -- "I will not fall, come whatever." As it turned out, I neither partied (came to work right from the ride in fact and got a nice talking to, as well) nor wore any new clothes, nor cut a cake (that way, someone has to celebrate our birthdays, no?) and spent most of the evening in a sleep-deprived vigil waiting for some biker friends to come and shack up at my place. But heck, I did manage to enjoy a "Beer and Biryani" before the night was over. And, I slept under my own roof, without any painkillers in me :-)

I am not comparing, but its nice to survive all of life's vicissitudes, if only to celebrate small joys like a birthday ride.

Om Namaha Shivaya (oh yes, I prayed a lot on the ride!)             

In praise of the little man :-)

The little man celebrated his birthday on the 20th of this month. Sadly though, I wasn't there to see him play host to his "best friends" from the apartment building where he lives and from his class at school. Nor was I there to feel his special "smack", oh-so-wet kisses.  

Because I was on the road, getting back home from a motorcyclists event at Mahabalipuram.

I will be catching up with the little man and making up for missing his birthday. And if I know him, he wouldn't sulk or throw a tantrum about the fact that I wasn't there. Still, missing his birthday does rankle me a lot!

****

What exactly is the little man to me?

Well, he is a lot of things most children are -- lovable, petulant, demanding and so on...

And also, in a very peculiar way, an yardstick of how bad my ears are :-)

Some 4 years ago, on a train trip with my family to Tirumala, while we were in the upper berths and indulging in horseplay in the rattling and clackety clack din...the little man tried his level best -- for something like two / three minutes to tell me that he was sleepy and wanted to sleep. Then, being the smart fellow he is, he just mimed it.

Around that time and much before the train journey, most of my motorcycling and wandering in the open spaces around my place were also driven by the need to satisfy his walkabout nature.

It wouldn't be much of a revelation then -- if I own up to the fact that I discovered the buffalo wallow purely due to the little man's interest in going to "waters", since he liked throwing pebbles into the deeps.

(It was on one such trip that I saw a lot of birds at the wallow -- black winged stilts to be exact -- and got around to getting more "reach" to photograph them; so the credit for my being a birdman goes to him too!)

It wouldn't also be much of a revelation then that I miss spending time with him and chafe at the bindings of an idiotic adult world that ensures that little men (and women) are so burdened by school and outside-of-school tuition that they have no time to play, monkey around and generally be just children.

(Also, its not that he wasn't coming to my place enough. Rather he would be mostly disinterested in anything as real as a walk or a motorcycle ride. Then again, at the very mention of the quarry or the buffalo wallow, my mother would become murderous as she did not want her grandson to be exposed to "bad air" and "germs", etc. Lastly, there were always various other virtual attractions -- the desktop and the laptop(s) and his tablet and my cellphone and of course the TV...)

But then, if you wait enough, everything in life turns full circle, does it not?

So, one fine afternoon around a week ago (the day before Sankranti, in fact), when as usual with my hearing aids not doing much, I invited the little man for birding, he surprised me by agreeing. And then, when my mother turned protested, the little man quelled her objections adroitly (I did not hear what was being said, I just noted that he probably said one or two sentences in all).

And, thus history was made!

But that's not all. The little man also took recourse to a notebook and a pen -- to write down instructions for me, more or less to say that :

1.) He will be carrying along the notebook and the pen, just in case I cannot hear when he says something to me.

2.) I should carry some money with me, because if we stay out too long and he gets hungry then we may need to buy something for him.

As it turned out, he bought his favorite biscuits and some bubble gum (one for him and one for me -- according to him) and we made it to the wallow and I put up the tripod (with him offering to help carry the tripod on the way) and set up the lens too.

But then, his snacks got over, he got bored (and progressively tired) of standing, and we did not do any photography as such.

Oh well, there would be another time again, I am sure.   

              

Dushman na kare

दुश्मन ना करे दोस्त ने वो काम किया हैं
दुश्मन ना करे दोस्त ने वो काम किया हैं
उम्रभर का गम हमें इनाम दिया हैं
उम्रभर का गम हमें इनाम दिया हैं

तूफां में हम को छोड़ के साहिल पे आ गये
तूफां में हम को छोड़ के साहिल पे आ गये
साहिल पे आ गये
नाखुदा का, नाखुदा का...हम ने जिन्हे नाम दिया हैं
उम्रभर का गम हमें इनाम दिया हैं
दुश्मन ना करे ओ ओ...

पहले तो होश छिन लिये जुल्म-ओ-सितम से
पहले तो होश छिन लिये जुल्म-ओ-सितम से
जुल्म-ओ-सितम से
दीवानगी का......दीवानगी का फिर हमें इल्ज़ाम दिया हैं
उम्रभर का गम हमें इनाम दिया हैं
दुश्मन ना करे ओ ओ...

अपने ही गिराते हैं नशेमन पे बिजलियाँ
अपने ही गिराते हैं नशेमन पे बिजलियाँ
नशेमन पे बिजलियाँ
गैरो ने आ के...
गैरो ने आ के फिर भी उसे थाम लिया हैं
उम्रभर का गम हमें इनाम दिया हैं

दुश्मन ना करे दोस्त ने वो काम किया हैं
उम्रभर का गम हमें इनाम दिया हैं

From Akhir Kyon, 


P.S.

What a fabulously beautiful song this is, no?

And Smita Patil was absolutely ethereal in it! Lovely trip down memory lane in piecing this song together, hopefully perfectly. Do write in, if I have missed something :-)

Why am I blogging this here now? Ha ha let's not get into that, shall we? 

  

An encounter with a Citrine Wagtail

The White-browed Wagtail is an old, old friend. And, a resident at the buffalo wallow (okay, call it a pond if that suits you more, or a lake if you please) barely 200 metres from where I stay, where I do a lot of my birding.

Naturally then, I have any number of absolute stunners of this constantly tail-wagging bird; and it weighs in with a big (or long) poem in Stray Birds too.

But this post is not about the White-browed Wagtail -- rather its about a Citrine Wagtail that I encountered today morning on my traipse around the buffalo wallow. As encounters with birds go, this was long and extended (and since I had the extended reach of a Nikon 14 E II TC aiding me) and also led to quite a few keepers.

Incidentally, this bird is not a resident at the buffalo wallow, but a migrant who -- if I am right (along with the White-faced Wagtail) makes its appearance in end September / early October.

That I got to meet it so late is testimonial to the fact that I have been busy elsewhere, and also to the fact that the buffalo wallow's perimeter (the Wagtail is essentially a bird that is always on a walkabout at the edges of water bodies, a wader so to say) is nowadays heavily overgrown with weeds and grasses.

But meet it I did, and that too when it was bright and light, early in the morning. If White-browed Wagtails are tough to photograph (they will saunter in a zig-zag right at waters edge, through all the the dregs of civilization piled up there -- the plastic bottles, the plastic packets, the quarter and half bottles of cheap alcohol, the coconuts and so on, all the while wagging their tails furiously) but not exactly shy, so waiting up for them works. The Citrine Wagtail however is a different kettle of fish and doesn't take kindly if you come close and also doesn't saunter as nonchalantly as the White-browed Wagtails.

Suffice it to say that I have never managed to take "exceptionally good" photos of this bird, so seeing one of them feet deep in a trickle of water (technically the run-off from a still full buffalo wallow) made me feel that I have struck gold.

Of the 50 or so photos that I could take a lot were truly full-frame; but then not surprisingly a lot of them are useless too -- with such a small bird, DOF is a huge thing...and in most of the photos, the entire bird is not in focus, in quite some of them the eye and bill are certainly not!

But then, I know I will meet this fella again :-)

And I do have a couple of exceptional photographs from this encounter. Especially one which shows the bird facing the camera and looking askance, its tail in the background and out of focus and its yellow breast dappled / lambent / awash with the light reflected by the water from the runoff.

I don't have the right word to describe it -- light bouncing / reflecting from rippling water, itself looking like a ripple; but then its a good problem to have, its a good problem to have...and maybe the word will come to me too, as the bird has -- unbidden.

             

Stray Birds @ Thalam -- an update

The exhibition is still open.

That is to say, it has been extended till this Thursday, the 21st of November.

So if you are in Bangalore (or passing through) do go and say hello to the Stray Birds! 

Must have something to do with the fact that it is seeing a lot of footfalls.

Or that all the birds look serene and peaceful on the walls of Thalam, as if they were on familiar perches, and as such, the Thalam guys are not too inclined to take off the exhibits.

Anyway, I wouldn't know, I am here in Hyderabad and missing out on all the action.

~~

The Bangalore Mirror did a story on the Stray Birds.

Read it here 

The actual story (in the physical -- as opposed to online -- newspaper) has a lot many more birds.

Hopefully, I will get my hands onto a copy of the newspaper.

 

  

Stray Birds in the news, etcetera

The Hindu's Metro Plus Bangalore edition covered Stray Birds today.

No, this was not my doing at all, but rather that of the Thalam guys (from what little I understand about how these things happen). Do take a look, see here. I must say the questions I was asked were pretty thought-provoking (and evidently well thought out).

I would have liked some more questions about the bird poems themselves, but as we all know pictures (or photos) garner far more notice. In fact, I am told that Thalam is seeing a lot of footfalls everyday since the opening of Stray Birds. 

Thank you Harini, thank you  Thalam!

~ ~ ~

In the little bit of boxing that I have done, I have never lost a tooth (thanks to technique, gum guards, etc.) and the damage has been limited to swollen lips and the taste of blood -- which in a very funny way, is heady, almost a mood-upper, in the way it keeps you keyed up.

It was that very taste of blood that kept me going through the bus journeys to B'lore, the pillion-borne flying on a friend's bike and the launch of Stray Birds.

Yet, spending the whole day with your tongue trying to be an eye proffering uneducated diagnoses of your oral well being is no way to be.

So, the tooth had to come out (on Tuesday, some three days ago).

The knockout blows of the painkiller thereafter has been something altogether, even to someone like me.

The morning after grogginess (especially on the first day) was yet another. Luckily for me, I have a Dentist whom I can trust my life with, yet getting a tooth removed is certainly unnerving. But somehow, in some kind of an evolutionary way, I seem to have managed to survive it. 

And yes, pain is good -- if for nothing else, for the fact that it makes one feel alive.

(On an irreverent, very self-depreciating aside -- that leaves me with 30 teeth. Thirty teeth and 2 hearing aids in my 40th year. If I do the math, what exactly is my value in the Marriage Market now?)