The Spaniard In The Works

So this is where I've been and what I've been doing.





If you're in Hyderabad, please come.

That's on the 12th of November, from 5pm to 6pm at Kalakriti Art Gallery, Road No. 10, Banjara Hills.

The exhibition will be on until the 18th. So if you're in town and can't make it to the opening, drop by on any other day.

(There will be more posts but only after the exhibition has opened.)

Did ya'll miss me?

Updates from tomorrow. Now I need to sleep.

Via email from Aparna Rayaprol:

The Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust

&

Department of English, University of Hyderabad

Invite you to the presentation of the inaugural

Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize

to

ADITI MACHADO

Presentation by: Padmabhushan

Prof. Shiv K. Kumar

Chief Guest:

Sudeep Sen, poet and editor, Atlas

Poetry Reading:

Aditi Machado

RSVP:

9490317318/rayaproltrust@gmail.com

to

Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 5.00 pm

Saptaparni, Road No. 8, Banjara Hills

Congrats Aditi!

The new issue of Pratilipi is up and no, this is not a pointer to anything I've contributed!

Look out for the six essays by Keki Daruwalla, K. Sachidanandan, Priya Sarukkai-Chhabria, Arshia Sattar, Noor Zaheer and Giriraj Kiradoo (also co-editor of Pratilipi).

Also two of Vivek Narayanan's poems (about which* more when I return**.)

__

* And that's a promise, Vivek.

** This is also the time to say that there will be no more posts until mid-November. I'm travelling until then. I'm on mail, of course, but the Spaniard will be asleep.

In the last year I have carried The Book of Disquiet with me everywhere. If it means I must carry a bag large enough to accommodate it, I find one that fits the purpose. Only in the last few weeks, Pessoa stands in the bookshelf with the glass front that once belonged to my grandfather (who kept in it a flat, small round of Vicks that he would take out and sniff. To me, the smell was magical and meant possibilities). The cover - with one man shot, his back arched and his hands flung up in the air, and another caught mid-stride, his day's purpose re-shaped - looks out at me every time I pass.

It would be a crude formulation to say that I have learnt immense amounts from Pessoa but it is a crudity that is given shape by my inability to put any of that 'learning' into practice in the last year. I dip into the book when I want to know what the day holds for me; to find the words for things long known; to confirm my objective self-pity. I consult it as I would an oracle.

So here's Pessoa in Poetry this month, translated by Richard Zenith:

In me every thought, however much I’d like to preserve it intact, turns sooner or later into reverie. If I wish to set forth reasons or launch a train of argument, what comes out of me are sentences initially expressive of the thought itself, then phrases subsidiary to those initial sentences, and finally shadows and derivatives of those subsidiary phrases. I begin to meditate on the existence of God and soon find myself speaking of faraway parks, feudal processions, rivers that pass almost soundlessly beneath the windows of my contemplation . . . And I find myself speaking about them because I find myself seeing them, feeling them, and there’s a brief moment when my face is grazed by a real breeze rising from the surface of the dreamed river through metaphors, through the stylistic feudalism of my central self-abandon.

See?

See also [via Mitali Saran].

Space Bar is ready to throw a tantrum. Who wants to join her?

I'm tempted to put a picture of a spinning top or something here and leave (it at that). But I won't, because a) it doesn't do to repeat oneself and b) it's not that I don't have things to blog about; just not enough time to lay them all out post by post.

So I'm going to do what Ludwig usually does.

1. Last things first: Some people are calling this a Lit Spat. I think that's a bit of a misnomer. If Bal had a larger point to make it is so large as to be invisible.

2. This is much better. Seriously.

These days, the debate over how to write about reading is a cold affair: a de-militarized zone. I avoid the terms literature and criticism here, and perhaps even debate is too hifalutin a word to describe what has amounted to a decades-long pissing match between creative writers and critics. The current steely silence is evidence only of empty bladders; the combatants have become preoccupied with internal skirmishes.

( the editors of the Quarterly Conversation respond to the essay). [via 3qd]

3. My recent hang-outs include: The Green Light Dhaba, The Plastic Graduate, The Last Resort (what is it with the kids? Why was I not like that?). Also a German blog that I just like to read, even if I can't understand a damn thing. And Sarah Jane.

4. By now everyone knows about Steve McCurry's blog, right? I think I landed up at Tom Pietrasik's blog from there. (while we're on the subject of photographs, go see Sydney chez BM).

5. There's something I'm forgetting, but not sure what. Will return to update, maybe, but mostly this should keep everyone occupied until I return (which is likely to be mid-November or thereabouts).

6. Oh, ya - I remembered. Don't forget to check out Mint's new Free Verse page every Saturday. Can't remember the last time a newspaper published poetry. So far there's Anjum Hasan (better read the poem here, since it's terribly formatted on livemint and not fixed yet), Chandrahas Choudhury, Aseem Kaul and Vivek Narayanan. Yay for Mint and a special thanks to Chandrahas, who has pushed hard for this.

It's still hard to believe. Meenakshi Mukherjee died this afternoon, on her way to the release of her new book in Delhi.

More later, when I can string my thoughts together.

The first obit here. [that was, apparently a beta page. Here's the link now]
*

9.15 pm: I'm still trying to say something useful but it all seems like a gross breach of privacy or is just too incoherent. I think I'm going to leave it at an announcement.

Chandrahas Choudhury's first novel, Arzee the Dwarf is being launched in Hyderabad on Saturday, 19th September.

I will be in conversation with Chandrahas and he will read from the book.

That's:

Saturday September 19, 5.30 pm
Crossword Bookstore,
City Center, 1st Floor, Shop No. 101-108,
Junction of Road No. 1 & 10,
Banjara Hills, Hyderabad - 500 034.

Note: Those who got mails from me about Chandrahas' talk at the University of Hyderabad, please remember it has now been cancelled.

Forget everything else about this day - you know what makes it memorable?



The release of The Beatles' Mono Box Set. It makes me apple green with envy, to think of all the people who can (and will) order it off Amazon (let's not talk 'afford' here, okay? I can give up plenty to be able to 'afford' this. I'm fanatical like that).

So now you know what's #3 on my wishlist.