delhi 3-6 july

delhi is all yellow and green and blue









with some grey

(this is vikram's building)



full of awesome, interesting people


sendy, the slowest rickshaw driver in the world.


non-stop book-reading expat uncle


pretty but chain smoking boys and girls


bihari madhubani painters who didn't believe vikram was from bihar


parking lot attendant who knew how to break into the car and get our keys out. (but please don't steal the new music system. again.)


technicolors!


mrs. kaur


sitter-around

and vikram has many faces here

goofy


suspicious


angry


lazy


concentrating


sad (no free table)


amused


bored-but-hiding-it

but my favorite thing of all are the spellings!

menu at gulati on pandara road... chaach, not chaas; zeera, not jeera! that's when i really felt like i was in north india :)

nooootro!

flying cursor's latest acquisition

sleeps like a baby


pees ALL the time



loves biting chins

ok, i will

pull... your socks up


push... your luck

cafe coffee day humor

edit - regina spektor

i'm not sure what this song means and what the beatles references are doing in there, but it sort of kind of maybe somewhat makes "edit" sound like a nice word again. i think. so i'm happy :)

You don't have no doctor Robert
You don't have no uncle Albert
You don't even have good credit
You can write but you can't edit

http://www.last.fm/music/Regina+Spektor/_/Edit

re-thinking life plans at 2.30 am

why why why am i doing this

going through 5 years of editing manuscripts

to go through 1 year of shit at uni doing hyper expensive course basically involving several complete strangers telling me how shit my writing is

to go through some months of shit at unpaid internship where getting to edit shit manuscripts would be like dream come true

to go through undisclosed amount of time of shit looking for job editing shit manuscripts

to do... god knows what post that, but most likely editing more shit manuscripts

why doesn’t my previously awesome life plan sound smart brave sparkling anymore

seems more like shit story written by shit writer with predilection for depressive existentialist indie shit

ah europe, i'm waiting for you

must remember!

anne enright on the importance of failing as a writer:

Now when I hear of people taking a year off to write, I worry that a year might not be enough. You must fail as a writer for much longer than that, I think, before you know what failure is and what use you might make of it. I didn't realise, when that first book fell apart, that every book falls apart. That this is the gig. You sit there and watch your word-count drop, and you hold your nerve. I have survived this process now many times. But the first time was the worst, and I was lucky to be among friends.

from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/22/anne-enright-writing-author

the suicides - janet frame

It is hard for us to enter
the kind of despair they must have known
and because it is hard we must get in by breaking
the lock if necessary for we have not the key,
though for them there was no lock and the surrounding walls
were supple, receiving as waves, and they drowned
though not lovingly; it is we only
who must enter in this way.

Temptations will beset us, once we are in.
We may want to catalogue what they have stolen.
We may feel suspicion; we may even criticise the décor
of their suicidal despair, may perhaps feel
it was incongruously comfortable.

Knowing the temptations then
let us go in
deep to their despair and their skin and know
they died because words they had spoken
returned always homeless to them.

message in a bottle

been staring at gaurang's photographs much too much
bas, no more external stimulus
now i want to see ladakh as i see it
take my own pictures
make my own memories
locate thoughts in my head on my own
no not some forced attempt at "originality"
just an attempt at thinking on my own again
before it all slides back down
and these thoughts i want to write, whenever possible
and those written thoughts i want to
hopefully
translate visually into pictures, doodles, photographs
film, collages, maybe even other words (others' words)
don't know anyone who wants to collaborate just yet
but you don't find unless you look
come let's be unselfish partners in crime
for two weeks and no more
there are many ways to talk to me
if you think about it

not all those who wander are lost

there is a very-far-away feeling building
distance is the theme song of this year
my heroes are dying
my myths are fading
it's not fun being lost anymore
so much that i
need tattoos to remember my mottoes