Story of the Week

I stand near the road-verge. The artist who brought me here from another realm caresses me whenever I feel homesick. Passers-by who see my flower-clusters can’t take their eyes off.

Travelling to any place, I often go out exploring it in the dark.

That night, in a secluded spot under a last quarter moon in a town called Bansuri, I found a besuited man in conversation with himself.

Just as I appeared directly in the line of his vision, he fell silent.

Read the book by the Jewish Memoirist I prescribed for you? She regards journaling thoughts as her Saviour. Tell me straight up what does writing do for you? When I get eyeballs on my work, I live, otherwise I wilt. So publication comes uppermost, right? Yes! You must revisit Emily. Bronte? Dickinson. She’s very famous. …

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The wind was ripping at him as he entered the tree-shaded Ashram. The garden path led him to the riverside where he sat on a chair and looked out at the coursing river.

Recording at the Radio Station done—a talk on Ernest Hemingway—he felt thirsty.

Hello Ka, do you still write poems these days at the drop of a hat? Stopping by at mysterious nooks at odd hours waiting all-eyes-and-ears for its birth with a notepad and a pencil, sharp as a quill, resting between your finger and thumb?

Train and my mouthpiece: how could you separate the two?
Homeless, he spent years inside a rail-carriage, almost like Penelope Fitzgerald did on an old barge.

Quite early one morning I was crossing on foot the bridge on river Ganges. There was noone save a lady coming from the opposite direction. As we got closer, I could sense she was shooting repetitive glances my way. When we were about to pass each other by, she waved her hand as if to say hello and said: “Your face rings a bell. Although these days I have memory lapses, didn’t I meet you at this very place many years ago?”

The motorised boat left the ghat. When we reached mid-river, I could asee a floating black dot near the shore just left behind moving in our direction.

Last month I was at Oxford Book Store, Park Street, Kolkata, one of my favourite haunts. As I stepped in, I did not pause at the New Arrival sec- tion near the entrance as is my wont. As if drawn slowly but inexorably by something at the far end on the right-hand corner just past the stairs, I kept ambling along. Then I found myself near a shelf stuck to the wall, my hand reaching towards a book placed on top of it: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.