THEY SAY THAT THEIR EVENINGS

Begin like perfect meals
prepared
With equal parts of love
and skill

And end
When breath and limbs
Lie adrift
like starfish on a beach

Passing it on

Sorry not to have updated in so long. And thanks for your e-mails, i am, indeed, okay :)

Big A and i just returned from Texas after retrieving Li'l A. We had ten days to accomplish that mission, so other than the three blissful days we spent eating platesful of my mom's divine food in San Antonio and the one day celebrating Big A's stepmom's 50th at a luau in Jacksonville, NC, we drove ten-plus hours everyday...

I guess that puts us in the 80 m.p.h. range. But please don't tell. It was bad enough that everytime sirens sounded on a hip-hoptastic gangsta track on the stereo, i instinctively freaked and tried to slow our speeds waaaay down.

Anyway, after listening for the 486th time to the same songs we'd originally started off kinda liking on the radio, we had to switch up stations and try not to chortle (ok--who am i kidding?) as evangelical and twangy talk radio went ape after the latest in airport terror.

And in listening to hitherto undiscovered tracts of Big A's playlist, i came upon this reggae gem:

Pass it on;
Pass it on;
Pass it on;
Pass it on.

Be not selfish in your doings:
Pass it on.
Help your brothers in their needs:
Pass it on.

Now you wouldn't be all mean like and tell me that they're not actually talking about a joint ummm property, right?

INVENTIONS

She says, don’t ever ask me where I go--still
last night they asked her
not to go

Then they watch expertly as her smile shamefully
strains through the sieve
of her teeth

And her excuses perform colorful cartwheels
That finish by lashing into perfect
knots inside her

Still last night they ask her not to go and their
voices become bigger and they
Grow better

And they throw words that are as hard and bouncy
Or breakable as things
that hurt

She makes a tall fence of silence and repeats to herself:
monsters should really only scare
themselves

So that by the time the writing gets to the end of the page
the only thing running is
her mouth

War On--

for a consecutive eighteenth day, today. What's left to say?

The Diameter of the Bomb
Yehuda Amichai (Translated from the Hebrew by Yehuda Amichai and Ted Hughes.)

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective
range - about seven meters.
And in it four dead and eleven wounded.
And around them in a greater circle
of pain and time are scattered
two hospitals and one cemetery.
But the young woman who was
buried where she came from
over a hundred kilometres away
enlarges the circle greatly.
And the lone man who weeps over her death
in a far corner of a distant country
includes the whole world in the circle.
And I won’t speak at all about the crying of orphans
that reaches to the seat of God
and from there onward, making
the circle without end and without God.

HEARSAY

Soon there are eyes in the dark
Tongues in the breeze

That talk and talk
To cold reprise

Traffic sets up its uncertain tune
The night dresses down

Under bloody moons.
Under bloody moons,

Frost cracks the first of many frowns
Stories assemble then decide to drown


________________________________________________________
I've slept badly just about every night this week...

Encounters with Writers: Amit Chaudhuri

Amit Chaudhuri’s inspired reminiscence of Bombay in London Review of Books follows in Suketu Mehta‘s footsteps.

I first met AC and his wife in Oxford. We had these slender details in common: he’d been a post-doctoral fellow at my college, his wife’s advisor was my mentor, we were slightly homesick--meaning we found the company of fellow south-asians significantly enjoyable. Later that year, he visited Chennai (Madras) on a book tour for his third novel, Freedom Song, while i was home for a visit. After his reading at the British Council, my mom, my favorite aunt, and i gabbed with him at the reception and ended up taking him to dinner at the Gym (the Gymkhana Club--where a hundred or so years ago, dogs and Indians weren’t allowed). There you have it: Oxford, British Council, Gymkhana…it sounds like i'm *such* a citizen of empire, but i'm not, i'm not!! :/

There were some terrific conversations: my mom and my aunt are among my best friends and AC got along great with them, very sweetly explaining cultural theory and reminiscing about similar childhood experiences. When I saw him during his next summertime visit to Oxford, he invited me to dinner with his wife and daughter and gave me a copy of his new novel, A New World. Since my first reading of ANW, i haven’t been able to escape the sinking feeling that this portrayal of narrator Jayojit’s wife was based on me:

She began by phoning her parents twice a week… it was her mother, he knew who was her confidante, and could chatter and whisper with her daughter as if she were her twin sister, while with her father Amala, on the phone was still the flirtatious, slightly high-pitched little girl, always being reprimanded for not realizing it was a long-distance call…

Help!! Am I really that super annoying or does that depiction fit most Indian kudis?

Touching Tough

Some girls fantasize about book deals or marriage proposals, I fantasize far more frequently about be(com)ing streetwise and street-tough. This morning, i woke up from dreaming that I was threatening some guy, who had dared accost me on the street, with a fake can of Mace (i.e. it wasn’t actually Mace, but perfume or WD40 or something) saying tough stuff like, “You get that one for free, but don’t try it again. Think again, Loser.”

In other news: My friend Clo and Big A and i are on TV today! The Discovery channel--’cos we be wild like that! (Alright, that would really be Cash Cab @ 5:30 p.m.)