FOR GOOGLED ACQUAINTANCE

When she was fifteen
Sreekumar Verma told her
That his poems
Turned out
Exactly as long
As the sheet of paper
He happened to be scribbling on.

Not Alan Maley. Ahem.

On her first landmark
Visit to Crossword
She met R. Sriram
Marveling his empire of books
Recalling their frail memories
Across an intervening decade
And a pregnant belly.

Wonder where Ameen Merchant,
Who gave her
Her first copy of Midnight’s Children,
Is.

Vasantha Surya
Told her to read Chomsky
“There’s such a nice chomp in it,”
She said, sweetly.
Will she as sweetly forgive
The blue-pencilled query:
“Is this a cookbook for the Yanks?”
In the fiction manuscript that cast
“Vadai” as “a spicy lentil doughnut”?

And Sujatha Devadoss
Sujatha Devadoss Pelletier.

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Because the "exotic dancer" thing has been done to bits

But we still need something that suggests “erotic…”

Hmm…

Hows about “ecstatic,” or “economic,” or “eccentric,” or “epiphanic”, or “electric,” or “elastic,” or “emphatic,” or “erratic…”

Nah!

Let’s go with this word I’ve never heard before and can’t be bothered to look up in the dictionary…

Behold! “Eclectic Dancers.”


I guess the ad could mean that the dancers derive their styles from various sources--but i'm not really getting that. Now i'm waiting for "ecclesiastic" dancers...

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On How I’m bringing up an LOTR geek

They’ve changed the color of the casing on Li’l A’s Albuterol inhaler from grey to white. His eyes light up and he goes, “That’s like when Gandalf the Grey became Gandalf the White.”

My jitters about being late for school melt into a happy drippy puddle of pride.

“YaY!” I say.


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[Incidentally, not that I’m jealous or anything, but i'm that girl who spent much of her early teen years in an LOTR haze, running around declaiming my mock up of Eowyn’s lines:
“No man am I; Eowyn of Rohan am I.
Now weep Nazgul and DIE.”
But it's Li’l A who gets to experience LOTR in a whole new dimension via his Gameboy. It Sucks. I'll tell you that much.]

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AlternaWriting

At the end of a women’s studies seminar in 1999, my friend Susan Stone told me that I absolutely should read The Little Princess. It’s not the kind of thing I ever remembered to reserve at the library, but recently, I found a copy at The Strand that I picked up for under two dollars and then couldn’t put down.

The novel is pretty precious--after all it’s by the same Frances Hodgson Burnett who wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy. But there's plenty of dross of a cultural nature that i found extremely interesting--the titular character comes from India (she’s the daughter of a British colonial officer) and there’s an Indian butler, Ram Dass, who has a fair amount of agency in the latter half of the novel.

Also, I guess that I was subconsciously hooked (!SPOILER AHEAD!) to the plight of the motherless child who suddenly loses her beloved and doting father to illness. Because at some point in the night these words emerged:

Now although you may believe that Sara’s father had died and perished in the forests of India, in truth, he was biding his time in order to re-enter his beloved daughter’s life at an opportune moment. Only the contemplation of her jubilance allowed him to rein in his impulse to present himself to her at once.

And so the next day, I continued with the rest of the novel quite optimistically.

Until I reached the end of the book and the child's father, kind of obstinately, stayed dead.

And then I realized that I must have dreamt that buoyant passage.

I wonder how much of my reading I habitually morph into a shape that is more agreeable to me without realizing it at all.

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Although my subconscious is continually playing wordy tricks on me, I’m somewhat mollified by the passable imitation of Burnett that it accomplished.

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Bhaumik on Why We Love to Hate Arundhati Roy

Saba Naqvi Bhaumik would like us to know that Indians have a "love-hate relationship" with Arundhati Roy because, you know--

First, there is the macho male response to a woman who is not just brilliant and beautiful, but is also blessed with a talent for turning out powerful prose. Roy would be adored by the Indian male if she had been content to sit prettily on a pedestal.

And so some advice for Ms. Roy from her loyal backer:

But if Roy insists on staying on in India, there are a few things she could do to soften the hatred she often inspires in some Indians. Wear saris, shut up, stay at home, have babies, grow her hair long and start plaiting it.

Bhaumik doesn't mean it really, of course. Just being funnee.

But still, how sad and strange that a criticism of patriarchal mores should have internalized toxic levels disdain for the sari-wearing, long-braided populace.


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Patriotism = Shopping

I’ll tell you all about my 19th Century-Young-Adult-fiction binge soon--

But in the meantime, just having come out of the X-mas extravaganza reminds me--by virtue of contrast--of this passage at the beginning of Little Women:

You know the reason Mother proposed not having any presents this Christmas was because it is going to be a hard winter for everyone; and she thinks we ought not to spend money for pleasure, when our men are suffering so in the army.

I'm still trying to understand how the very people who took us to war pretend that that everything is normal and that we should all go about our shopping as usual. Isn't that more disrespectful than anything that has come out of Kerry's yap yet?

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Resolve

* Finish the dissertation already.

* Take the next step in adopting us a couple more kids.

* Get to yoga on Tue &Thu.

* Take completed projects to publisher.

* Perhaps, maybe, possibly think seriously about applying for U.S. citizenship.

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