Read my first John Banville and Alice Munro, and my first Jhumpa Lahiri novel.
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Monthly Review: May 2023
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Rage
[Image credit] This 100-word story was originally published in Fairfield Scribes Issue #27. *** Up and down the condo tower mid-desert, pipes dripped, taps leaked, and toilets dribbled. The residents, paying a flat-rate water bill, whistled about their days. The background watermusic trickled gently on. The activist/artist watched, then began a performance piece at the […]
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Change
This 100-word story was originally published in Fairfield Scribes Issue #28. *** Chanchal’s always complaining about her university. The class sizes are unmanageable, the dress code ridiculous for a professor, and administrative duties leave no time for research. She applies everywhere. She can’t wait to tell her colleagues she’s got another job. She won’t flaunt […]
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Dusk
[Image credit] This story was originally published in Proem Vol. 2 (2020), available in print only. At dusk, the old man jogs slowly to a halt. He’s been jogging an hour. Three laps around the park. He’s slow. Many young walkers overtake him. But those young ’uns tire after one lap. Then they climb on […]
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Timeshare
What if you could store, and buy, and sell time, as you can money? Is youth really wasted on the young — and could we use our time better if we got more of it later?
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Walking
[Image credit] This microstory was originally published in OPEN Journal of Arts and Letters. *** I speedwalk down the tessellated concrete tiles. I’m bored stiff, but my headclock says I’ve only twenty minutes left. I never bring a watch: that makes me impatient. I never count laps: that makes me rush. Round and round the […]
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Monthly Review: April 2023
A month of endings and beginnings.
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Monthly Review: March 2023
An eventful month. Also got a bit of reading and writing done.
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Dusk
Flash story set in Company Garden, Allahabad
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Monthly Review: February 2023
A slowish month. Problems to fix. But got a couple of new experiences.
NOTE: This is mostly a summary, not a review.. I’m trying to resume reading nonfiction occasionally to keep sharp. *** Major theorists mentioned, besides Kant: John Balliie, a physician who wrote an essay about aesthetics; Alexander Baumgarten; Edmunde Burke; Joseph Addison; Seneca; Longinus. The sublime is a perspective of nature whose contemplation inspires the human mind […]
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Afterwards
When you get what you want…
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The Andromeda Strain (1969)
An exciting premise, with clear and detailed accounts of (what was then) cutting-edge science, but the action lags, and ultimately everything in the novel feels pointless.
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DIY
Image credit Bottomless masala chai with flaked almonds kept the grownups warm. We ran around playing Lock-and-Key. Dinner was at twilight: slow-cooked mustard greens, butter chicken, paranthas swimming in ghee, and daal so thick the ladle chopped it up like a mountainside. In winter in Ropar, we dined in our coats. The steam from the […]
What I read and wrote and published and how I fared
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Night
Dark short story published in The Dalhousie Review (Summer 2022)
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The Revolutionaries
Alternative history. If the political-historical relations of two nations were reversed, would the characters of the nation’s peoples be reversed too?
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Re:Birth
A grieving mother has shut herself away from the world. Can she rediscover love and life?
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Courage Anniversary
Astrid has a dream. Pleo likes dreamers. What could go wrong? In this story written in 2020 I dip my toes back into magic realism.
Read a lot, but not enough. Several unfinished WIPs. A fair number of publications, including in four good magazines . Attended my first writing workshop online; it was fruitful. Joined the volunteer staff of two lit mags. Grew my circle of critique partners. Spent most of the year working on short fiction, a new experience for me. Discovered several authors I plan to read more of, and revisited some old favourites.
Visually resplendent, and laudable for its environmental messaging, this film suffers from an underdeveloped story, incoherent editing, flat characters, and a resolution that resolves nothing. “Humans = bad, greed = bad, and living with nature = good.” I guess that’s a message we can all stand to be reminded of, but I do wish the packaging were more artful.
An entertaining and neatly-fitting little puzzlebox, much like the one in the opening sequence.
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Monthly Review: December 2022
A slow month for reading and writing. Stocktaking underway. Working on revisions of a few longer stories.
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Retreat
It’s easy to chafe against your privilege, to resent it as constricting. But what happens when a tiny incident shows you the extent to which your privilege protects you from life’s tooth and claw?
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Sunday Afternoon
Or: What is it Like to be a Housewife?
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Backsides
A funny flash story.
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Monthly Review: November 2022
A slowish month.
Short essay on craft.
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The Doll
100-word story.
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Monthly Review: October 2022
An English Hollywood actor’s autobiography, my first Cormac McCarthy and J. M. Coetzee, a study of my favourite novelist, and some Bertie & Wooster to round things off.
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Giveaway: *Sandman*
Answer a simple question for a chance to win a hard copy of *Sandman.*
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Last Sunday I reviewed Berner’s 2022 novella *Sandman,* a novella that uses golf as a metaphor. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with David about the book, his experience with the sport, and the writing life.
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The Hours
“The Hours” explores deracination via the protagonist’s skewed time perception. How do you tell time when you’re insulated in a climate-and-lighting-controlled environment, doing the same desk work day after day, isolated from the weather, the changing seasons, and the life rhythms of the people on the street? Having realised you’re alienated, which way do you go — back to life, or deeper into the belly of the beast?
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Sandman (2022). David W. Berner
Full of humour and vivid natural scenes, colourful characters and introspective passages, Sandman is many things: a coming-of-age tale, a mystery, and a meditation on golf as a metaphor for life.
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Full-length book reviews: Lydia Davis’s short story collection *Almost No Memory*; Faulker’s *The Sound & the Fury*; began reading *godel Escher Bach* and abandoned it; short reviews of some films I watched in recent months including *American Beauty* and *Sleepy Hollow.* Wrote a fair bit, including rewrites and microstories.
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Over the last few weeks I’ve rewatched *Breaking Bad* and *The Lord of the Rings* trilogy. Here’s what I thought of them.
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What I Read: Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of DH Lawrence (Geoff Dyer, 1997): The narrator is trying to write a book about DH Lawrence, but keeps getting sidetracked: by trips to Greek islands where everything is dull but the traffic, the unpredictable unavailability of cornetti at his favourite café in Rome, his […]
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Mothers and Sons
The lives of two women & their sons intersect against a background of violence & secrecy. Do we feel less able to hurt someone when we realise they’re already hurting?
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One Day
A set of ten loosely linked microstories set in Allahabad. Tales of ambition, grind, love, loneliness, & social conflict.
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Read: Stendhal & George Saunders. Wrote: a fair bit of short fiction. Fared: energetic, optimistic, & focussed, bordering on manic territory.
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To Decide or Not to Decide
Ganesh is trapped at home in Bangalore w/ Achal, his wife from an arranged marriage. Covid has brought Ganesh unexpected new opportunities. The life he’s living feels suffocating, & he now has the chance to escape from it to pursue the dreams he had as a child. Will Ganesh seize the day, or keep writhing in the grip of decision paralysis?
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What I read, wrote, & published, & how I fared.
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Last Day of Freedom
Forty-year-old Elef enjoys his last day of freedom before heading to prison. He catches up with Clive and accompanies him on his errands. Elef contemplates the crimes that have condemned him to prison for the rest of his life.
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Waiting
A new couple drive up a mountain to enjoy a day together, but they’re both waiting for something.
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Bukowski & Shakespeare. Some writing; some publications. Another depressive episode, followed by introspection & course correction (ongoing).
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At Play
A young girl spends a summer back home in Calcutta in the 1990s. She makes a new friend. Both girls face crises and contemplate the future of their friendship.
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Highway
A 100-word story.
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What I Read: Kafka’s Letter to My Father. Finished Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Judith Guest’s Ordinary People. Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (reread after primary school) & The Poison Belt. Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. Needed a light read, and I’d never read this. This is super-light, touching when it’s not preachy, not a story […]
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Lots of stuff.
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Amita Basu 