I'm a writer based in Bangalore, India.
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.
Over the last few weeks I’ve rewatched *Breaking Bad* and *The Lord of the Rings* trilogy. Here’s what I thought of them.
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 […]
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?
A set of ten loosely linked microstories set in Allahabad. Tales of ambition, grind, love, loneliness, & social conflict.
A speculative short story examining poverty, hard choices, and a ray of hope.
Read: Stendhal & George Saunders. Wrote: a fair bit of short fiction. Fared: energetic, optimistic, & focussed, bordering on manic territory.
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?
What I read, wrote, & published, & how I fared.
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.
Amita Basu 