It happened on our second day in Iceland. Late in the evening, when the bedside timepiece tried – without success – to convince me that it was close to midnight, I discovered that I was locked inside my hotel room. Wife was outside, in the corridor, with the hotel manager. After several attempts to open the electronically operated lock with a key that resembled a discarded ATM card, the manager gave up. “I’ll call the locksmith,” he said, in a muffled voice across three inches of wood. Then, following a few token words of apology, he added: “This has never happened here before. Never.” Continue reading “The Locksmith of Reykjavik”
Notes from a music festival
Straddling the border between France and Germany, the fortress town of Belfort is unremarkable save for a large sculpture – by Frédéric Bartholdi, designer of the Statue of Liberty – of a lion carved into the cliff that forms a natural wall of the fortress. The lion, its head reared up in pride, is more striking at night, when artificial lights accentuate the lines and contours and the figure seems to emerge, in triumph, out of the cliff. But this star attraction is all but ignored by the fifty thousand or so people who visit the town each year in May, during the three days it hosts FIMU: Festival International de Musique Universitaire. Continue reading “Notes from a music festival”
Back from Iceland
Yesterday we returned, reluctantly, from a vacation in Iceland. The mind, though, is still there: in the streets of Reykjavik, full of color and gaiety; on the shores of lake Myvatn, swarming with midges; in the vast emptiness of the southern coast, with astonishing cliffs where arctic puffins nest and fly about in strange circles; in the bizarre landscape of moss-covered lava fields; in the salty warmth of the blue lagoon; amidst the Icelanders, relaxed yet enthusiastic. Continue reading “Back from Iceland”
An SMS travelogue
(Some weeks ago my parents and sister traveled through parts of northern India. Before they left, when I asked my sister to keep in touch through her mobile, she replied that she would be “on roaming” so would prefer to send SMS messages rather than talk. What follows – in unedited form – is the full set of messages I received during their trip; all messages, save one, are from my sister, who figures in my contact list as ‘H Cell’)
Continue reading “An SMS travelogue”
Seven Things
A fellow blogger – or better, a writer and photographer – has invited (tagged, as they say) me to write about “seven things I love.” I spent a good part of the previous weekend thinking what to leave out from this list. It helps, of course, that the tag is not about “seven things I love most”; that would have been an impossible task. It also helps that a “thing” is vague enough, left to one’s interpretation. I’ve chosen a thing each from seven categories: a composition, a book, a place, a movie, a process, a medium and a person. Continue reading “Seven Things”
A Weekend in Milan
There was a small English bookshop next to the hotel we were staying at in Milan. On the evening of our second day, after a round of shopping and walking in the city, I decided to visit the shop. When I entered I found two old men talking in loud voices. There was no one else around, and seeing me the younger of the two stood up: “How can I help you?” Continue reading “A Weekend in Milan”
Remembering Grandpa
And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.
Marcel Proust (Swann’s way)
It is one week since I received news of Grandpa’s demise, and in this period I have tried, for the most part unsuccessfully, to recreate moments I spent with him during my childhood. All that remains is a collection of hazy images that lack the depth of more recent memories, and a few incidents which, for unclear reasons, I can recollect as if they happened yesterday. Continue reading “Remembering Grandpa”
Perspectives
Does happiness go around in pairs?
Sifting through the pictures of a recent weekend in Brussels, I find that images with pairs seem to radiate contentment and joy …
Saturday
There are some days – and this happens much too infrequently – when he feels he is living in a dream. But in this dream he is in a state of heightened awareness that makes him piercingly sensitive to everything around him. This Saturday is one such day. Continue reading “Saturday”
Utsav, and lists in The Kama Sutra
Yesterday, while scanning a set of disks for a movie to watch, I stumbled upon Utsav. I had bought the movie a couple of years previously on a trip to India but had never got around to watching it. The choice for this Saturday evening seemed to agree with Wife also, so we settled down under a quilt on the sofa, in a dark room suffused with the dim glow of city lights filtering in through the windows. Continue reading “Utsav, and lists in The Kama Sutra”
Parmanu 