The Sideways Door: December Prompt

Gosh we're almost done with this year, aren't we? Tail-end and what a wagging tail it is.

Speaking of tail-ends, I've said this on this blog before - and I suppose it's a kind of spatial synaesthesia - but things that normally don't have shape can be given one by the imagination. 

So that's what this month's Sideways Door prompt is: poems about shape and form.

Though what's really occupying my mind is the Chennai (and TN) floods.

That's for another post, though.

randomised keyboards

So I was doing some netbanking this morning and discovered that the virtual keyboard, which is usually the standard issue Qwerty, had suddenly become a random one.

I stuck my face close to the screen, searched they keyboard and picked out the first letter of my password. 

The keyboard randomised its letters and numbers. And this happened with each keystroke.

I mean, I understand it's a great idea for security reasons (or so I imagine? I someone going to tell me it's all rubbish?) but it's a pain in the retina to try and figure out where each letter and number is every time. This particular password didn't have any capitals otherwise I'm sure I'd have discovered more difficulties. 

*

Speaking of eye trouble, I have decided that one reason I have written so little this year is because I cannot read my notes. 

I write 'em well enough, but when I write, my handwriting tends to be frugal and cramped, as if I were running out of paper and no more forests were available for pulping into papyrus.

End result: I can't make out what the heck I was saying, so I don't bother looking at notes once I've done making them. And it's not as if my mental retentive powers have compensated or anything. 

All this means that if I can't read my notes, I can't write.

(Or so I tell myself).

The Sideways Door: November Response Column

This month, The Sideways Door had a disappointing crop of precisely one submission. And it's not even the first time this has happened. I have said in my latest column that TSD will close when there are no submissions in any given month. 

But I wonder whether I should wait to have that particular ignominy come to pass, or if I should just close the door on my way out in a month of my choosing.

Watch this space; I'll let you know when I know.

Fwiw, here's the column.

The Sideways Door: November Prompt

This month, I dusted off a prompt I'd written but never sent it. I guess now I'm in the mood to read poems with myth at their heart.

Here's the prompt.

I also discovered last week, while curating the @genderlogindia handle and posting poems by women poets, that I may have got the name for my poetry column from a poem by Ursula le Guin without realising it. That is to say, I didn't quote it when I wrote my first column more than a year ago, when I spent a little time talking about doors on their sides.

Oh well.

So. Please write and send in poems. This month I'm allowing 40 line poems.

The Sideways Door: October Response

Yes, I seem to be changing it up here by posting this column all by it's lonesome. Actually, I never do post the column here, do I? I just link to it. 

Here.

*

From today for the coming week, I will be curating the @genderlogindia handle on twitter. So heads-up!

The Sideways Door: October Prompt, September Response

I'm at all certain why I arrange these posts this way, with this month's prompt and last month's response all in one column, but whatever.

Here's October's prompt column, in which I am fascinated by pebbles and by what Syrian sculptor, Nizar Ali Badr has made of them.

September had a thin crop of submissions - one, to be absolutely truthful. I thought people would want to give life advice in pithy sentences but apparently not. You'd think, in an age where were celebrate the 140 characters allotted to us, we'd be pros at the aphorism.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this month.

Leaves of grass

As we were leaving from a place yesterday, we noticed this deep maroon flower. "Cotton family," my mother said, authoritatively, and I took her word for it.

I got into the car. My mother gestured for me to return. She was bent over that 'cotton' plant but for some reason now, she kept saying "grass". 

I looked at her blankly. 

"Marijuana!" she said, as to someone particularly slow.

Oh! I looked. And sure enough, those leaves. 

 I have to say, at this point, that I have never actually seen a marijuana plant. I don't know what it looks like in situ, or what kind of flowers it has. I just know the shape of the leaves.

We stood indecisively over it (I really couldn't tell you why. In addition to our general ignorance about the plant in its raw state, we were also pretty unlearned in processes. And we'd finished admiring the flower early on in our acquaintance). 

A couple of people gathered around us.

"What is this plant?" we ventured to ask.

"Gongura," the lady replied. Apparently it can be cooked and eaten.

Well, of course, I thought. (Also irrelevantly, I thought of brownies).

I took a couple of photos and plucked a flower with a leaf attached. It withered on the dashboard before we got home.

Book Release: Karthika Nair's Until the Lions in Hyderabad | Monday 28 September

Karthika Naïr's Until the Lions, a re-imagining of the Mahabharata in the voices of its marginal characters, will have its Hyderabad release tomorrow. Details below.

It is a fantastic book and if you're in Hyderabad, and free in the afternoon, do try and make it.

Monday, 28 September, 4.30 pm.
School of Humanities Auditorium, University of Hyderabad.

This reading is a part of The Park's New Festival's events in Hyderabad, in association with the Prakriti Foundation.

I will be in conversation with Karthika.

Reading list

Possibly the most fun thing I've read recently is Zen Cho's Sorcerer to the Crown. It has one of the best character names of this decade (Georgiana Without Ruth) and the most magnificent last chapter this side of Georgette Heyer.

In fact, if you've ever wished for one last, undiscovered Heyer, this is the book you need to read. There's adventure, magic (which, all right, Heyer didn't have; but then there's magic and there's sorcery) and some truly laugh out loud moments that are pure comedy and timing.

All in all, it was a joy to read.

*

Having done with the Cho, I flitted and sipped and left many things unread. I enjoyed Jo Walton's The Just City.  I am wondering if I should jump on the Elena Ferrante bandwagon. 

There's a book in every space I occupy. Michael Pollan in one place, Anne Carson in another, Nabaneeta Dev Sen in a third. And yet, I think the book I will begin today and carry everywhere with me, is George Eliot's Romola. [see pic]

I found this copy in Jan this year, at the Hyd Lit Fest's second hand book stall, along with a right loot of good stuff, all of which I failed to catalogue. And, I guess, I'm in the mood for some proper historical fiction. 

*

Oh - the other thing I'm carrying around with me everywhere is Karthika Nair's soon-to-be-released Until the Lions, her re-telling of the Mahabharata from several perpectives not limited to women. 

It is magnificent and I am looking forward to being in conversation with her on the 28th at the UoH. Details of all Park Festival events here. Do come if you're in town.

The Sideways Door: August Response & September Prompt

Thought I'd wait until August blew over. 

Here's my response to August's villanelle submissions.

And this month, I rewrote my entire column at the last minute, changing the prompt entirely. Yup. I thought short and sweet was the answer to the tribulations of the last two interminable months.

Here's September's prompt.

Get working!

**

A thing I've noticed (since they've begun tracking this stuff at The Daily O) is that more people share the prompts on Facebook than they do on Twitter. I wonder why. I mean, of course I wonder, because I'm not on FB and twitter is where I tend to hang out. And all kinds of stuff gets shared on twitter, so I wonder why the prompts don't.

Not important.

**

I've been reading a bunch of stuff and staying offline and it feels good. Yesterday I called precisely two friends after ages and it struck me as odd later that I apologised to my virtual world for not being around, but it took real effort to do the same thing when I tried it on my present-right-here friends.