Have you ever been to a poetry reading event? If you have, you blow how in most cases there remain in the hall more chairs unoccupied than otherwise. There is apathy towards poetry; maybe it’s got something to do with obscurity it usually entails.
The name I Allan Sealy, for those who dip into his soulful yet difficult prose, conjures up the image of a versatile writer. But the act of writing about what Allan is really known for pales somewhat when his other vocation, gardening, takes over. He beds out very uncommon and near-extinct shrubs and plants at his racecourse retreat in Dehradun. And at a time when the whole world was in a shuttered state last year, Allan was out in the open, right under the sun, tending to his favourite plants. I know this because we exchanged mails, frequently so, stuck at home as we were.
Whenever in Mussoorie, Bill and I walk the talk, mostly. At the end of any lit-meet or get-together he usually lingers a while absorbing the ambiance before making the move, and I catch him on the trot.
Imagine you are marooned in an island like the one in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Before the rescue team arrives you have only one way to keep thought of any danger at bay: To erect a tent, take shelter in it and keep each other occupied by telling and performing stories created on the spot!
It’s almost like a leaf straight out of The Naïve & the Sentimental Novelist by Orhan Pamuk or Preoccupations by Seamus Heaney at the 4th Mussoorie Lit-Fest held at Woodstock campus, Landour, Mussoorie, on 5th & 6th Oct’11, where the writers, editors, poets and publishers delved deep into the art and craft of writing and publishing; into what they call finding the center or spirituality that the process of writing leads to.
When the Air India flight touched down at Devi Ahilyabai Holkar airport in Indore at around 2 pm, the temperature outside, the air-hostess announced, was 40+ degrees Celsius. Out of the airport in search of a cab for an hour’s journey to Ujjain, I just recoiled from the blistering heat. Would I be able to withstand this intense hot spell and have a good look around this holiest of holy place, hosting the Simhasth Kumbh Mahaparv 2016, I wondered.
People Who Meet People is an amazing anthology of uncommon interviews of the finest spread and variety. Each of these interviews is a specimen of meaningful dialogue that makes for compulsive reading.
Rusty and Iis a tangible expression of the highest admiration for the great literary gifts and rare humanism of Ruskin Bond.
When we reached the Ashram, Lord Krishna had already been put to bed for His siesta. The temple would reopen at 4 pm, the Ashramites told us.
Celebrated author Amos Oz says that you cannot write unless the subject is given to you by the Governor who rules the universe. So the days when his output is insignificant, he does not feel guilty. His duty, he says, is to open the shop every day. Whether there’ll be any footfall on a given day is not in his hands.
