This is a repost of a much older series I had worked on. They have a special place on my shelves dedicated only to Nobel laureates and a few other writers who I felt should or will win the Nobel one day.

Tale of Two Cities: Part one of five

An Imaginary Conversation between Pamuk’s Istanbul and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities

Nişantaşı, Istanbul

Dear C,

There is a boy in my neighborhood who walks the streets with a sketchbook and A leaky pen. I think of him often, because I was once that boy. I remember

drawing sagging windows and tired spires, trying to capture a city I knew was

already vanishing. This boy does not speak much. But he sees everything.

He is a witness to what I call hüzün — not simply sadness, but a strange,

pervasive melancholy. It settles over Istanbul like dusk—heavy, everywhere. It is

in the ruins of once-grand palaces now turned into crumbling apartments. It is in

the silence of dinner tables, in the dusty books our fathers never finished.

I wrote about this, about Istanbul. Not as it is in maps, but as it lives in our hearts.

I wonder, in reading your Invisible Cities, if you were writing something similar.

Rome, or perhaps Venice

Dear O,

Yes, I know the boy with the sketchbook. In my own way, I have followed him

too. I gave him a new name — Marco Polo — and asked him to speak to an

emperor. But really, he was speaking to himself. And to me.

He travels a lot, this man—Marco Polo and every tine he returns he describes

each place he has visited. They are not real cities, like yours, but they are real in

their construct and in their anxieties and their feelings. I do think, like you, there

is an emotion hanging over special cities.

This man once described to me the city of Diomira— with sixty silver domes,

bronze statues and a golden cock that crows in the morning. But the special

quality, he tells me, of this city, is that every man who once visits Diomira, sees,

upon his return, other people, who think they were happy like this at one time,

and feels envy towards them.Like your Istanbul, my cities are haunted by memories and desires. But mine

float. Yours sink, gracefully. Both try to preserve what slips away.

Dear C,

You say your cities float. Mine, as you say, do sink — under the weight of

empire, of failed Western dreams, of time. My father, too, sank beneath that

weight. He carried Proust in his coat pocket but never read it. He dreamed of

writing, but never did. And still, I do not resent him. I believe, like the great

Tanpınar wrote, that to love Istanbul is to accept its broken continuities.

You once wrote: “The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between

the measurements of its space and the events of its past.” I often think of that.

My city’s sorrow is not only in its ruins but in the way we carry those ruins inside

us.

To live here is to remain. To watch the ferry cross the Bosphorus again and

again and know it is not arrival that matters.

Dear O,

Your words remind me of Isadora— the city which fulfills every dream a man

could possibly have. Sadly, the man had those dreams when he was young and

by the time he reaches Isadora, he is old. And he sits in a row, with other old

men, watching the young go by. In my book, Marco Polo told Kublai Khan: “Every

time I describe a city, I am saying something about Venice.” But truly, I was

saying something about loss. About longing. About the impossibility of return.

Yes, your Istanbul is filled with people and time. Mine is full as well, much in the

same way—in ruins of memories and wishes. But my cities are quiet, almost in a

ghostly way and yet, like all cities of the world, there exists in them anxieties and

struggle. Like you, I too was searching for the feeling of exile, not from leaving a

place, but from the opposite— to be somehow remain condemned to it. A self

proclaimed exile. Yet how do we find a place that is always vanishing?

I imagine the boy still walking. I imagine he now writes.Dear C,

Perhaps all cities are letters sent to someone who will never quite read them the

way we intended.

You imagine cities. I excavate one. But we are both drawing maps of something

almost impossible to put on paper. We are both trying to hold onto something

fleeting: desire, memory, meaning.

My city is one of fog and ash, your cities of glass and air. And yet we ask the

same thing: how do we live among its devastation? How do we carry what has

gone?

You say your cities are metaphors. Mine are stories. Maybe all cities are stories

in disguise.

Dear O,

Let this be our final letter, though the conversation continues.

You wrote of exile without departure. And I understand. My Venice is made up of

lampposts that string the railing in a line, and festoons that decorate the queen’s

nuptial path. It remembers the tilt of a guttering path and the same window where

the cat once slipped; the rips in the nets and three fishermen sitting in a row,

mending the net. A city soaks up theses memories like a sponge and any

description of it today contains what it was in the past. In that sense it is always

present, even in absence. Your Istanbul lives in the shadows of your father's

suits, your mother’s silences, the black-and-white photographs of Güler.

Cities, after all, are not where we live.

They are what we live through.

And what we carry with us — even long after we’ve gone

My mother just attended a seminar on ‘Creative Economies’ in New Delhi. People from various professions discussed how they are doing things in their areas of expertise.

A major publisher spoke about publishing and how to navigate the current problems the publishing world is facing; Musician and son of sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan—Ayaan Ali Bangash spoke on performing arts. Martand Khosla, architecture and artist on architecture town planning.

The idea is actually quite beautiful. How to navigate current issues in all aspects from city planning to music composition.

And this got me thinking about all the disabled artists who had navigated barricades to figure out ingenious ways of continuing to create, despite their physical bodies working against them. Perhaps because I am one of them.

Matisse, after his cancer surgery in his later years was left him bedridden and wheelchair bound— Photographer Robert Cappa captured an iconic image of Matisse using a bamboo pole with charcoal attached …

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Every year, for seventeen years, I went to the US Open. And always alone. It was a ritual with myself 

One year I met this woman. I was about 20 and in my all-black goth phase. She- in her late 40’s or early 50s, frumpily dressed. It was Labor Day weekend and there was a rain delay. We were amongst the crazy few still waiting it out. A bunch of drunk Floridians were shouting behind us. We got talking and she asked for my email. Reluctantly I gave it, although I had no interest in seeing her again. We had nothing in common whatsoever.

The following year, just before the Opens, she got in touch with me. Would I like to meet up with her at Flushing Meadows? I did, again, reluctantly. Then again, the year after and the year after that till it became our ritual, together. We met every Friday through Monday of the Labor Day weekend because that’s when I would go. Barbara went almost every day.

Although we both lived in New Yo…

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A very old post I thought would be useful to all the new writers who’ve joined the club….

I’d like to completely demolish a myth. Once and for all, because I’ve been living proof of it for the last fifteen years and it irks me to read posts all the time complaining about this myth.

The myth is about the ‘gatekeepers’ of the writing world; about how no one really gets published in The New Yorker or The Paris Review. How everything goes into the slush pile and there really is no democracy in submission.

Well, how about I tell you a different story?

How about I tell you that there is a gate, a gate carefully placed by the administration of an institution but inside that gate is an editor is genuinely interested, curious and eager to read good writing no matter who you are. And this editor, even though she may know she’s behind a golden wall, has not built it herself , doesn’t really care about its existence and welcomes anyone in if they try to enter.

When I first contacted the online editor of NYRB, I had no references. I had no track record of publishing essays at all, although by then I had some fiction in some solid journals.

I know a lot of people who know people . I could have easily asked someone, sent out emails. But to be honest, it never occurred to me.

I just thought, well, why don’t I try? What’s the worst that can happen.

So I googled the person, found his email address, which is very easy to find if you spend as little as ten minutes on google (ai is NOT competent in this area yet even when I tell them yes, so and so’s email is out there) and sent of an email.

I’m not good at querying. can attest to that. But I just kept the email simple, introduced myself in two sentences, another two sentences of my publishing record or degrees, and then just a few lines on the essay.

To my utter horror, the editor wrote back and not only did he go on to print that essay, commissioned me to write more (which fell through for a variety of reasons most importantly because he was leaving NYRB itself).

And what if I tell you that it is the same for Paris Review and The New Yorker.

True, I have not been published in either yet, but using the same method, I sent off submissions to what I thought would end up in a slush pile. But again, to my horror, the fiction editors of both those magazines responded, responded rather quickly— within a week or two— and although they haven’t published anything yet, (I tend to write immensely long stories anyway so I don’t blame them), even now , several years later, they keep in touch, respond to my emails (I try to bombard them no more than once a year), pass me on to other departments when I’ve asked them to and in short, been extremely kind and generous.

In fact, when the previous Paris Review fiction editor left, and a new editor came in, she wrote a personal email to me, introducing herself, asking for work. I almost fainted by then.

There are a lot of reasons a piece doesn’t get published, but it’s not because the editors don’t care to read something that is not submitted by an agent, or because you’re not famous.

Theme, length, timing, backlog….

Back in 2011, when I was doing my Masters at University of East Anglia, I suddenly realized one evening, after a few glasses of wine that I’m in Granta land, and the least I could do was to at least attempt sending them something. They did not have online submissions at this time and my Googling skills were not so savvy. I just sent in the one story I had ever written so far (which, funnily enough, is not in my book because it just didn’t fit with the rest) to the general submissions address provided on their website.

A few weeks later, I got an email from the then editor.

I called my twin immediately. Do you know who just wrote to me?

That’s big, she said, I recall clearly.

If you get into Granta you’ll have an agent in no time.

Well c’est la vie. The editor loved the story but it didn’t fit there theme. Did I have anything else on such and such theme? I did not. Alas.

I never sent in anything else again. But what was really touching is that over the years, he would email me, on his own accord, asking how my writing is going, when my book would be done. He said he thinks about that story from time to time. That in itself is flattering enough for me.

He even tried to help me find an agent

Sadly, Granta has changed a lot since that editor left and I don’t think things are as it used to be out there. Or so I’m told.

Editors are not this mythical creatures they are made out to be. They are human and if they are good editors, the one thing they care most about good writing. If your work is genuinely good, I vehemently believe there is a crack in that golden gate through which you can slip in. is one of them too and you should all send work to . He replies even to the emails he is not interested in. He is just genuinely interested in a good idea and that’s a mark of a good editor.

You don’t need to go to publishing parties and schmooze. You don’t need to pepper others for names and act as a reference.

My twin is a publisher in India and knows most of these people. But I don’t even tell her what I’m up to. I never once asked for emails. And when I write to these editors, I never mention my affiliation to her. Considering we live in different countries, luckily no one has put the two and two together.

I kind of like this anonymity. But mostly, it’s a kind of pride. You see, I, stupid and defiant as it may sound, still believe in being appreciated for my own worth rather than bagger someone for someone else’s email.

If people ask me for these editors emails, I will not give it to them so don’t ask. It feels like an infringement on their privacy to me. But do feel free to google them and get their email addresses the way I did and send work.

Whether you send an email through a known mutual or by yourself is not going to make much of a difference, let me tell you that straight off, so don’t bother going to that New Yorker party next week. If your work is good, if THEY like it, they will respond.

wrote about the gatekeepers, or at least in her notes she did, quite a bit, when I first joined and I told her these stories and I told her that genuine talent, if really genuine, does get rewarded in the end.

I sincerely believe in that. A year later, she was ‘discovered’ by The New Yorker for exactly these reasons.

So here’s my little sermon for the day:

Do not be a whiny, sulky thing and throw down your papers because you think there is a ‘system’ and that it is rigged and that it is certainly not in your favour.

There is a ‘system’ if you want to use it but there are also ways other ways to ‘get in’ and that is simple: you just have to be good at what you do.

Just do your research on the editors and their emails which almost 99% of the time you will be successful at, and send out your best work.

What have you got to lose anyway?

The world is really that simple.

A gentle reminder: Not Quite A Disaster After All is finally out in the US thanks to my publishers Flowersong Press and this time the dedication page made it in the book. The dedication page was the first lines of that book I had written, all the way back in 2008 or 2009.

My collection of poetry, My Dead Flowers — words and images—, (Harper Collins India), is forthcoming in January— curated and guest edited by Jeet Thayil for a special imprint Thayil Editions. And it’s a little different than usual poetry books.

You’ll see.

You can read part one here:

And part two here

THE WIFE CALLED: PART THREE

She spots him way ahead on Clinton Avenue, dragging a wheeled suitcase that jumps up on every sidewalk crack. Dark patches bloom under his arms like ink stains. He looks up, sees her approaching with open arms, and his shoulders immediately contract inward.

“Wait. I need to—I’m very sweaty.”

“So?”

“I smell.”

“You always smell.”

“Not like this. I need a shower first.”

“You could have just hugged me.”

“After I clean up.”

Her arms, held out in ecstasy, this moment she had been waiting for for one entire year, drops. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a damp streak across his skin.

“You could have just hugged me.”

“After I clean up.”

She turns and walks ahead of him. His suitcase wheels scrape against the pavement like fingernails on chalkboard.

“How was your flight?”

“Long. Turbulence over the Atlantic. Very bumpy.”

“Did you die?”

“Almost.”

“Shame you didn’t. Would have saved me the trouble.”

The apartment is on the basement level of a townhouse. He stops at the landing, before the two steps leading down, breathing heavily, adjusting his grip on the suitcase handle.

Inside, he opens closets, checks window locks, tests the shower pressure.

“This’ll work.”

“Your approval means everything to me.”

“I’m being practical.”

“You’re being weird.”

This wasn’t meant to begin this way. Their first night actually spending together.

And she hadn’t even initiated it. It just so happened that both their trips to New York coincided. And she just casually mentioned— Well you could always just stay at the Airbnb I rented.

He didn’t say anything. Not for weeks. But two days before she was leaving, he asked for the address and said he’d be there the day after.

She has stopped pondering on matters that had no answer.

He disappears into the bathroom. Water runs for twenty-seven minutes. She counts.

When he emerges, pink and scrubbed, she’s arranged takeout containers on the small table.

“Thai food. Your favourite.”

“I have dinner plans.”

“With who?”

“Colleagues. I told you I had meetings.”

“You didn’t tell me about dinner.”

“It’s part of the meetings. Business dinner.”

“What kind of business?”

“Media industry connections.”

“What do you connect?”

“Writers. Journalists. Publishing people.”

“You’re having a business dinner about writing?”

“It’s more complex than that. Networking is crucial.”

“Networking is complex now?”

“You wouldn’t understand. You’ve had every door opened for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I just... these relationships matter.”

He dresses carefully, checking his reflection multiple times. Adjusts his collar, smooths his hair, sprays cologne that makes the small space smell like a department store. She notices him practicing expressions in the mirror—the confident smile he’ll use with editors, the thoughtful nod for literary conversations.

“When will you be back?”

“Late. Don’t wait up.”

“I’ll wait.”

“These people stay out until two, three AM. Very sophisticated crowd.”

“Very sophisticated.”

“You don’t have to say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re mocking them.”

“I’m not mocking anyone.”

“They’re important in the industry. The Times, The New Yorker, publishing houses.”

“I know what those are.”

“Of course you do. Your family probably knows half of them personally.”

The door closes behind him with the soft click of dismissal.

She orders wine. Drinks it while watching Netflix on her laptop, the screen casting blue light across her face. Outside, Forte Greene hums with Friday night energy—couples walking hand in hand, friends spilling out of bars, music drifting from open windows. There would be a farmer’s market the next day. She was hoping they could walk there, hand in hand, just as they had at the Union Square market, exactly a year ago, when things happened— those things that just happen.

At 11:47 PM, the key turns in the lock.

“How was dinner?”

“Productive. Made some good connections.”

“Anyone I’d know?”

“Probably not.”

“Try me.”

“Just... industry people.”

He collapses onto the sofa fully dressed, shoes still on, tie draped across his chest like a noose. His shirt is wrinkled, his hair ransacked.

“Come to bed.”

“Too tired.”

“You can be tired in bed.”

“Comfortable here.”

She watches him for fifteen minutes. His breathing slows but doesn’t deepen into sleep. His hands rest on his stomach, fingers occasionally twitching.

She moves to the sofa, climbs on top of him. He tenses but doesn’t protest. Her head finds the hollow between his shoulder and neck. His cologne has faded, replaced by the smell of restaurant air and nervous sweat.

“This is nice.”

“Mmm.”

“We never do this.”

“Do what?”

“Lie together.”

“We do other things.”

“Not the same.”

His hand finds her hair, fingers threading through it absently. For a moment, his body relaxes beneath hers and everything is a peaceful pitch black that, at least for then exists purely in its own time, with no questions, no more expectations.

“Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

He undresses but keeps his boxers on. She watches the careful way he folds his clothes, places them on the chair with a cleaning lady’s precision.

Strange how one comes to know these things after sleeping together for an entire year. But they had never spent a full night together. She had begged him once, when she’d woken up at three in the morning with panic attacks.

But of course, a married man cannot just leave his house at twilight. She knows this now. At the end of the day, they always leave.

“You’re very neat.”

“Habit.”

“Good habit.”

“Sometimes.”

They lie in opposite directions on the mattress, a careful gap between their bodies like a moat.

Morning light sneaks in through thin curtains, like a single shard—straight and sharp. She reaches across the space between them, aiming for his shoulder.

He jolts upright.

“Sorry. I was just—”

He moves his head to avoid her’s.

“I was being gentle.”

“I’m not fully awake yet.”

He sits on the edge of the bed, head in his hands. His leg bounces against the mattress frame in rapid, nervous percussion.

“Coffee?”

“Sure.”

She moves to the kitchenette. He follows, hovering near the counter, picking up objects and putting them down. Sugar bowl. Spoon. Her reading glasses. Nothing stays in his hands for more than five seconds. He pauses at a framed photo of her with what appears to be her parents at some sort of gala—everyone in evening wear, standing in front of artwork that looks museum-quality. She carries that photograph with her on every trip. A little piece of home.

“Sleep well?”

“Fine.”

“You were restless.”

“Was I?”

“Talking in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

“Something about deadlines. And someone named Vikram.”

“Vikram?”

“You kept saying his name. Is he important?”

“He’s... he got the Times assignment I wanted.”

“Ah.”

His phone buzzes. He checks it, frowns, checks it again.

“Everything okay?”

“Work stuff.”

“On Saturday morning?”

“India doesn’t observe American weekends.”

The phone buzzes again. And again. His thumb moves frantically across the screen.

“Shit.”

“What?”

“I have to go back to Delhi.”

“The Thai food is getting cold.”

“There’s a flight at 6 PM.”

“What happened?”

“I need to pack.”

“You just unpacked.”

“S ?”

“I have to go.”

“Be where? For what?”

“The flight’s at six.”

“You said that. Is it about S?”

“Four hours to pack.”

“To pack what? You brought nothing.”

“Something happened.”

“What kind of something?”

“Traffic might be bad to JFK.”

“Did something happen to S?”

“I should leave soon.”

“It’s two fucking PM.”

“Better early than late.”

She watches him fold and refold the same shirt three times.

“Is she hurt?”

“International flights require early arrival.Two hours minimum for check-in.”

“What happened to S?”

“Sometimes three hours.”

“Are you having a stroke?”

“The airline recommends—”

“Answer the fucking question.”

“I have to go.”

“Go where? To do what?”

“Home.”

“To S? Who what?” “For her broken fingernail?”

“It’s not about fingernails.”

“Then what is it about?”

“I just have to go. I told you.”

“You told me nothing.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“You’re telling me flight schedules.You’ve mentioned the flight seventeen times.”

“Airport security is very thorough now.”

“What does that have to do with S?”

“Post-9/11 protocols.”

“Is she dead?”

“Long lines at immigration.”

“Fuck you.”

“Sometimes they search luggage.”

“Is S in the hospital?”

“Random security checks.”

“You’re insane.”

“I don’t want to miss it.”

“Miss what? S’s funeral?”

“The flight.”

“What happened?”

“Traffic to JFK can be unpredictable.”

“I’m going to scream.”

“Saturday afternoon is particularly bad.”

She moves to the window, opens it wider. The sound of Saturday afternoon Farmer’s Market drifts up—children playing, couples arguing about restaurant choices, someone practicing violin badly.

“Are you leaving me?”

He was heaving like a dog at the vet.

“I’ll be back.”

Really?

“When?”

“Soon.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“After I handle things.”

“What things?”

“Things.”

“S things?”

“I have to go.”

He lifts his suitcase, sets it down, lifts it again. The zipper makes small metallic sounds as he tests it.

“I should go.”

“You have two hours.”

“Better to be early.”

“Two hours early?”

“Just in case.”

“In case of what? The airport moves?”

“You never know with international flights.”

“You’re not international yet. You’re still in fucking Manhattan.”

She stays by the window as he moves toward the door. Her fingers grip the sill, knuckles whitening against the painted wood. Something rises in her chest like a bird trying to escape a cage, but when she opens her mouth, only air comes out.

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Apologies to those who subscribe to both my lists and get this twice.

This is sort of a sequel to or at least part of the story of my last short story ‘The Wife Called’

Terms of Affairs

“Coming today? I bought new biscuits.”

“What kind of biscuits?”

“The expensive ones. With chocolate.”

“Are they British?”

“Does it matter?”

“I prefer British biscuits with my tea.”

“They’re fucking biscuits. Yes or no?”

“Yes. 3 PM as usual.”

“I’ll hide the cheap biscuits so you don’t see them.”

“Thank you. That’s considerate.”

She arranges the peacock cups at 3:00 PM. Earl Grey measured into the small metal strainer, sugar cube placed beside his cup. The expensive British biscuits arranged on a plate like tiny brown soldiers. The office, with the divan, where they normally sit, clenches afternoon heat like a closed fist.

Her phone shows 3:17 PM.

“Running a bit late. Traffic is very philosophical today.”

“What does that mean?”

“Very slow and contemplative.”

She sets the phone face-up on the coffee table, its black screen reflecting time’s cruel elastic nature. Outside, Delhi moves in contradictory rhythms—some minutes stretching like elastic around one’s waist. While others wrapped so tight, strangle the waist till one can’t breath.

At 3:45, she waters the single plant she has managed to keep alive since moving here. A small jade succulent that her sister brought from Mumbai, its thick leaves dusty despite her weekly cleaning. Water beads on the waxy surface and rolls onto the windowsill.

“Still coming?”

The typing indicator appears, disappears, appears again. Her thumb hovers over the phone screen, leaving a small smudge on the glass.

“Yes. Just delayed.”

She places the phone on the kitchen counter, then picks it up again. The first fat raindrops spatter against the glass, each one exploding into smaller droplets that race downward in zigzag patterns.

At 4:30, the rain begins in earnest. Heavy monsoon drops that turn dust to mud instantly, that send vendors scrambling to cover their fruit carts with blue plastic tarps. The sound against her window is like fingers drumming impatiently.

She reheats the water in the kettle twice.

“Where are you?”

“Still at office. It’s raining.”

Her fingernail, painted in a shade of coral that looked different in the New York light, taps against the phone case. Three quick taps, pause, three more.

“And?”

“I might get wet.”

“You’re not made of sugar.”

“What?”

“You won’t dissolve.”

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The photograph proves that beauty existed. That’s what Barthes said, more or less. But in proving it existed, in making it past tense, the photograph also proves that beauty is over, that it has passed into the realm of the having-been, that it is no longer here, no longer now, no longer happening in the urgent present where beauty actually lives.

This is the terrible bargain: we trade the living thing for the image of it, and the image is always lesser.

When I first met Sofi (ig @soufois) , she picked up my Italo Calvino letters and read through while posing.

An Italian comparative literature student in Paris Soufois is different from anyone else I’ve photographed. Every shoot is an adventure and sometimes, she comes up with the adventure herself— as she did when we did the Alice Guy shoot together.

But here is a series we shot on our very first time meeting. I had little repertoire when it came to props. A pearl necklace and some head tiara thing was all I had. And a bronze fabric I was obsessed with in my shoots.

None of these ‘looks’ were planned. I’d just throw things at her and say, try this. Oh and try this. Oh and why not that? let’s see what happens. I’m not a fashion photographer— far from it. Sometimes I wish I had a make up artist who would help me…but in the end, it gives a roughness or rawness to the series which I’ve come to like.

I’m not a Francesca at all, as people think I am. Woodman’s every scene was well planned.

I have no plan. It’s like having a first sentence and then hoping your fingers do the rest of the work.

So today, i give you Sofi.

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This is part of a series of stories that’s the India version of the David/Airbnb Saga (which eventually will all become one collection)

THE WIFE CALLED

“Your wife called,” she said, not looking up. She focused instead on the mint she was crushing in her mortar and pestle. “I answered.”

He sat upright in bed in a way he was never able to do while they were actually in bed. “You what?”

“She has a lovely voice. Very cultured. We had quite a chat.”

“Please tell me you’re drunk.”

“I told her you were in the shower. That you’d slipped getting out of your car in the rain and landed in a puddle, so I’d insisted you come upstairs to clean up before driving home with pneumonia.”

His face turned the color of the curd rice Kamala made for her in the summers and kept in the kitchen with a plate covering the bowl. “What the fuck—”

“I also told her I was Mrs. G from 3B, recently widowed, and that I’d been bringing you homemade ladoos because you looked thin.”

She finally looked at him and smiled that particular smile she’d perfected during her own marriage. The smile at every woman has perfected in her own way over generations. Centuries.

“She invited me to dinner next week.”

“Not funny.”

“It’s hilarious. She wants to introduce me to her unmarried brother-in-law. Apparently he needs a nice widow to settle down with.”

He was pulling on his clothes with the frantic energy of a man who just woke up after an accidental nap.

“Did you tell her anything else?”

“That you’re a wonderful neighbor. Very helpful with heavy groceries. She seemed pleased that there are still good men in the world.”

“Good men don’t fuck their neighbors twice a week.”

“Good men don’t fuck their neighbors at all.”

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A prose poem, partly inspired by Henry James’ Beast in the Jungle….

Waiting
Six am. 
The man stands at the edge of the courtyard with his dog. 
Nothing moves but the animal, circling. 
He watches. This Time belongs to him
No one can take it away from him
Till the city wakes.
The windows across the way are mostly dark. 
But one is lit. 
Inside, a figure. 
Or the shadow of one. 
He cannot tell which.
To wait is  a kind of losing 
—one might say. 
Nothing happens 
Although you keep wanting it to—
So you keep waiting
For nothing to happen.

The trees surround him.
Their branches are bent as if to hold something inside.


A lattice of black lines against the gray sky
That might otherwise crash on him.
It is as if the trees are folding their arms around this hour,
Around this man who is allowed, for now, to be still.

A room.

So as to imagine that this waiting is purely intentional
But also to protect it—
This loose, flagging piece of Time.

Everyone is in control—

The dog will finish when…

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Alice Munro’s “Floating Bridge” tells the story of Jinny, a forty-two-year-old woman undergoing cancer treatment who, after receiving unexpectedly hopeful news from her oncologist, finds herself on a visit, reluctantly, to trailer park relatives with her well-meaning but emotionally distant husband Neal and their new caregiver Helen. Jinny wanders away from the oppressive social gathering and gets lost in a cornfield. In the sky high cornfields which blocks her view of the outer world, she encounters Ricky, the teenage son of their hosts, just home from his job at a garage. What begins as a scenic route through back roads leads to an encounter on a floating bridge where the two share an unexpected kiss—his first with a married woman, her first taste of genuine connection in months—the collision between youth’s careless abundance and mortality’s hard-won truth.

Water has no memory, but skin does. When Ricky’s lips touch Jinny’s on that precarious wooden platform suspended over dark water, two universes come together. Here stands a woman who, undergoing cancer treatment, has spent months learning death intimately, and here stands a boy who still believes in the infinity of tomorrow. The kiss becomes a bridge itself, spanning not just the distance between what was promised and what remains, but between two different ways of life.

Life, it seems, saves its most startling revelations for the moments when we think the story is nearly over. Jinny arrives at this encounter through a series of small rebellions against the careful calibration of everyday routine that illness demands. After receiving unexpectedly hopeful news from her oncologist—hope itself becoming another thing to navigate—she finds herself trapped in a suffocating afternoon visit to Helen’s trailer park relatives, watching her husband Neal perform his particular brand of social enthusiasm while she wilts in the heat. The cancer has already stolen her hair, her certainty, her old understanding of time as something to be spent rather than counted. But it hasn’t taken her instinct for the surprising detour, the sudden left turn that life always throws at you. Despite cancer, and mortality, Jinny is still alive.

While her husband and the nurse socialize inside, Jinny remains in the car. Eventually, she wanders away from the trailer and into the corn field. She’s following more subconscious than illness, more primal than fear: the human need to disappear when the performance becomes unbearable. This is where Ricky finds her—the teenage son of the trailer park family they’re visiting, still wearing the sweat of physical labor. He emerges from the corn rows like some rural cherub, this boy who knows the secret pathways through sky high corn stalks, the way city kids know subway maps. When he discovers Jinny lost, he doesn’t fuss or panic. He simply, in Munro’s casual style, asks if she’d like a ride home, then suggests a route through the back roads that will show her something worth seeing.

What he offers her is something Neal, for all his good intentions, cannot: the gift of being seen as a woman rather than a patient, a person rather than a problem. More than that, he offers her the perspective of someone for whom death remains an abstraction and more importantly for someone life is still present. In that capsule of time, with Ricky, she remembers what it felt like to actually live, without hoping.

This is where Munro’s story begins—not with cancer, death, a stale marriage, a callous nurse (these are just props to continue the story)— but actually with the contours of simple life and what it means to be living—not exuberance but just every day living and breathing.

When Ricky stops the car and asks her to step out, Jinny follows him down a dirt path toward the sound of water lapping against wood. The floating bridge emerges from the dusk like something in a fairy tale—weathered planks strung together with rope and faith, bobbing gently in the current. She realizes she’s forgotten her hat in the car, left her careful armor of sun protection behind, and feels the evening air touch her scalp ––with surprising tenderness.

They step onto the bridge together, and immediately the solid world falls away. The planks shift and sway beneath them, alive with the river. Jinny grabs the rope rail, then releases it, discovering she doesn’t need steadying. Her body, which has betrayed her so thoroughly these past months, remembers how to balance, how to move with something larger than itself. The water reflects the sky’s dying light, creating the illusion that they’re walking across clouds, suspended in some liminal space.

Here is the heart of the real story—understanding that death doesn’t end the story. The floating bridge becomes the perfect metaphor for where Jinny finds herself: no longer the woman she was, not yet whatever she might become, but fully, intensely here. But here, with the bridge responding to their shared weight, moving in rhythm with their breathing, she feels something she’d forgotten existed: not sex but the simple human pleasure of being, of occupying space in the world not as a patient but as a presence.

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I had a lovely seance with Laurence again. I had posted images from our first here.

Well yesterday, we did all the things I forgot to do the first time and had to make a list on the iPhone Notes.

Red Kimono—check

Umbrella (both)—check

Mirror shots — check

That’s about all I can remember off hand. I refuse to look at an iPhone again unless it’s work related.

I’ve been thinking long and hard all night as to why the generation younger than me, I’d say forty and younger handle situations so differently than we used to. I mean of course, in every generation everyone did, but everything from the term I detest, ‘safe place’ (which had a real genuine meaning in the sixties) to ‘I don’'t feel comfortable with ….’ or of course when Me Too went a little berserk even when a drunk man pinched a woman’s bottom. My dry cleaning lady would tell me stories about how the door man on Park Avenue, was high on acid and pinched a resident’s bottom. Hell, growing up, a girl could never stand in queue anywhere in India without getting our bottoms pinched.

We reacted— we shouted at them, some even slapped the men. But no one took it to a jurisdiction level.

Or say, in universities all over the US now, professors/instructors are having to censor their curriculum in case you offend someone.

You can mention Israel, Palestine and Jews. And no course material related to them. I know this has happened very recently at NYU and The New School first hand.

Why does this generation have this feeling of righteousness? What happened? I mean there were always differences of opinions as far as man could think for himself but there were angry letters, bar brawls, bitch slaps.

But now we have to tip toe around almost everything.

I can think of two phenomenons— one obviously, social media and the other through none other than from universities itself which had to protect its donor money and keep everyone happy so became extra conservative in their method of operating (on many levels, not just curriculum) when receiving student complains.

If people are thinking of self publishing, I think self educating at a university level, unless you end up at a really good one, is a better career option.

EVERGREEN REMINDER: ALL PAID SUBSCRIBERS WILL RECEIVE ONE OF THESE IMAGES IN A POSTCARD SIZE. SO, IF YOU ARE ONE, SEND IN YOUR ADDRESS AND OTHERWISE, JUMP ON BOARD.

OKAY, REAL POST BEGINS HERE:

Here’s a few images from my latest shoot which I’m quite pleased with. I haven't done edits yet so the colours will be a little different in the end.

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This essay, on Kapurush, or The Coward, is part of a duo of films Ray made: Kapurush (The Coward) and Mahapush (The Great Man— about a fake guru)

EVERGREEN REMINDERS:

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Kapurush means coward. Ray’s 1965 film (the fairest of a couplet of two short films: Kapurush O Mahapurush) gets its title not through the traditional meaning of cowardice but perhaps through an accumulation of surrenders—moments where nerve abandons a man.

Based on a story written by Premendra Mitra, Janaiko Kapuruser Kahini, this, in one sentence is a story of a man, who, accidentally, finds himself meeting his only ‘love’, from when he was in college many years later.

Amitabha, a screenwriter finds himself stranded when his car dies in the hills. Rather than face the area’s single decrepit hotel, he accepts shelter from a stranger: a wealthy plantation owner whose pipe smoke and whiskey breath fill the repair shop with the particular bonhomie of men who’ve learned to make noise and sip whisky till the ice melts into water.

Amitabha finds the man amusing until they reach his bungalow--a simple acceptance of generosity turns into something infinitely more than what he’d bargained for.

In the doorway stands Karuna. His college sweetheart. Now another man’s wife.

The shock hits Amitabha’s face like winter morning water. His features collapse inward—a man punched somewhere soft and vital. Karuna watches his face and reveals nothing. Her composure doesn’t crack, not even bend. She maintains the careful composure of a hostess, greeting an unexpected guest, though everyone watching can feel the electricity between them and the lack of resolution of their past.

The husband, Bimal, remains oblivious. He talks and drinks and fills the evening air with stories while the cigarette smoke rises in the air in its mysterious ways. The darkness around their bungalow seems to press closer, as if the night itself is holding its breath.

Years ago, her father had disapproved of Amitabha—probably the money, always the money. She had come to Amitabha’s tiny studio desperate, rain-soaked, saying they would take her to Patna in three days. She could stay if she found work, if he found work, if they could somehow make the finances work out. He didn’t respond. Instead he had turned his back toward the window instead.

That night, at the house of the plantation owner, Amitabha remains awake. He moves through their house, restless, imagining the others to be asleep. But she hears his wandering and emerges to find him in the courtyard—her hair loose, wearing her dressing gown, brushing out the day from her long hair.

This is where Ray portrays intimacy in his iconic style. Here she is in her nightclothes, tending to herself with the unconscious grace of someone who finally belongs somewhere, who has made peace with her life. His presence feels both necessary and transgressive. The questions she’s held back from herself; the answers she dare not confront.

“Are you really happy?” The question escapes him. “Seriously? With this alcoholic?”

She regards him with those eyes that only Madhabi Mukherjee, the actress can. (Perhaps Sharmila Tagore as well). Every glance between them becomes a kind of assessment. She offers oblique answers that answers everything and nothing, her face still stoic, and expressionless although expression is everywhere on the screen. Years of knowing Amitabha, his behaviour, his spineless character live in the silence between her words.

As she turns to leave, he addresses her in the formal”Aapni,” (vous)–– the careful distance of strangers—and asks for sleeping pills.

She disappears.

Returns with tablets.

“No more than two,” she says.

When he asks what would happen if he took more, her mouth curves into something that isn’t quite a smile. She doesn’t think him capable of it, she says. Again, a nuanced, dismissive way of letting him discreetly know that she remembers.

Here is a woman who has appraised him twice—once when they were young, again now—and found the same essential absence where the courage of true love should have reigned.

The pills pass between them. Such a small transaction in the larger ‘space’ of what they’ve lost and found and lost again.

Soumitra Chatterjee (Amitabha) brought fourteen films’ worth of trust to this role. Ray’s most reliable leading man, the face of the adult Apu, here plays a man who has spent years constructing a life of success around a fundamental failure— of nerves. His Amitabha carries himself like someone who has learned to live with his own disappointment, and make a career of it.

Madhabi Mukherjee commands the screen with what critics call “deep, mysterious self-possession.” For her, Kapurush marked the end of a remarkable trilogy with Ray—Mahanagar, the lonely house wife in Charulata, and now yet another study in withheld emotion of discontent and isolation. Ray’s wife later wrote that Madhabi possessed not just extraordinary acting ability but fierce intelligence. Here, that intelligence becomes Karuna’s weapon. She sees through Amitabha completely, and her judgment proves devastating precisely because it’s accurate.

Rumors circulated about Ray and Madhabi during this period—whispers of connection that went beyond director and muse. His wife confirmed years later that her husband had been “involved with another woman” in 1965, causing her “immense” pain. Madhabi herself admitted to “yearning from both sides” while stopping short of confirming an affair.

The next day the plantation owner insists on a picnic which feels more like Beckettian theater. Karuna armors herself, quite literally, in a scarf and sunglasses—barriers against recognition, against their past’s intrusion into her meticulously chiseled life, although one which could collapse any minute like a house of cards. She offers only clipped responses to his questions, each word rationed like teaspoons of time.

The plantation owner confesses his loneliness, explains the unwritten codes that separate him from his workers. “I didn’t have to follow the rules, (of the fact that managers and their subordinates do not mingle socially).”

Amitabha asks him, “ And you followed..? (These rules). “but it was easier to, to keep things smooth,” said the plantation owner.

When Amitabha presses him, the man laughs with genuine amusement. “You think I have no conscience? I did, once. Used to itch every day. But now I just soak my conscience in whisky. Like everyone else on the plantation.”

Sitting under the high altitude sun of the hills, with elaborate food packaged carefully in a wicker basket by the house staff, it is ironic that no one is happy in this trio and yet they have all managed to find a way to continue. One through his writing, one through being the dutiful wife and one with his whisky.

All the while Karuna maintains her careful distance from her past lover. When her drunk husband falls asleep, Amitabha approaches her with desperation. Surely her husband has mistreated her? Surely there must be grounds for leaving? He tells her he’s never loved another woman since she left.

But trucks rumble between them on the narrow mountain road. By the time the noise fades, the husband stirs and the moment is gone and she has no chance to answer.

Another Ray moment where the unspoken and visual direction of a scene says what is perhaps too opulent to actually say in words.

There’s one exchange that cuts through all the careful politeness. In a flashback when they were lovers, Amitabha, in trying his hand at fortune telling, tells her his palm reading was just an excuse to hold her hand. “You think it wasn’t an excuse for me to offer it?” she responds. The words land like a slap and a caress simultaneously— she’s been playing the same dangerous game, allowing touch while maintaining absolute control every proper Bengali woman of her class must.

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Wimbledon is around the corner and with the collection of ‘ova’s, all the Netflix series, new faces, old faces, faces I don’t give a damn about and what not, I thought it was time I imparted on you some serious tennis facts.

Now most importantly— a disclaimer: what I am about to tell you holds true ONLY for women. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps because I am one and my woman radar is more sensitive.

So, most of you don’t know this, but I was a trained junior tennis player, ranked in in my state although back in the 80’s in Calcutta that was not much to brag about; played for my state, played a few national tournaments till, at the age of fourteen I had the wisdom to realize competition is not where I thrive. And I made the most difficult decision of my life—to stop training to be a pro. To give up my dream of beating Steffi Graf. I had it all calculated. When I would turn eighteen, she would be twenty eight, which meant I would still have two years to try and beat her. But other things see…

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I discovered Laurence on Instagram and was enchanted by her face. But Laurence only worked with very selected photographers and those who mostly paid.

I couldn’t afford to pay. But I took a chance and wrote to her anyway.

I suppose the series piqued her interest because she was interested.

We met in person, eventually— that was some months ago. It took a little while to get our schedules to match but eventually we made, what I think is quite magical.

When people praise an image of mine, I always say, it wasn’t me, it was the model. It really is true.

It may not be true for my street photography (Calcutta series, the monograph) but in this series, which is a collaboration with women who are given the freedom to show themselves as they wish to, so much depends on the model.

I shouldn’t call them models. I don't know what to call them because so many of them have become close friends. (There’s actually a waiting line now for shooting!!)

So I call them my Ladies. Because that’s what they’ve become to me— a very intrinsic part of my otherwise sedentary and housebound Paris life.

So here, I present you, my newest Lady, Laurence. Her instagram, if you want to see her other work with other photographers is (at) stu_dioloo . Tell her you saw her in my blog.

She’s a beautiful, talented, simply sublime artist to work with.

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Here’s a new poem and images from my latest shoot for Women and Bodies.

Evergreen reminders: Always looking for women in Paris who’d like to take part in the series.

The best way to introduce yourself to it is on my instagram @bukuagain since my website is not updated with this new series.

Print Giveaways

I’m giving away small post card sized prints from my monograph, Photowali Didi (which is on my website bukusarkar.com) to all paying subscribers.

And as a thank you to my old, loyal paying subscribers, you as well. So please message me with your mailing address at bukusarkar@gmail.com

Please don’t message on this platform.

I have a whole set of new Calcutta prints which are available for sale. They’re on off prints and not part of an edition.

Here’s a little video of some;

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When people tell me what do you do? I answer— I write.

What do you write?

This is where I get stumped.

What do I write?

Stories, I say. It’s the simplest answer although it leads to more damned questions I do not have answers to.

What kind of stories?

….Stories…just stories.

We’ve been discussing ‘fiction’ and ‘non fiction’ here a lot lately and I have a few things to say about it.

The first—and most obvious

Fiction is set more in reality than non fiction is. In the sense that fiction deals witih a larger ‘truth’ and in a more introspective, honest and thorough way.

And funnily, almost all fiction writers, even Marquez, bases their work on real events—personal or social.

In that same context, then, ‘non fiction’ is less real than fiction especially pertinent today when fake and AI generated articles sprinkle our feeds like street dust . But even before all of these technologies were in our lives, ‘non fiction’ writers, even historians, have always taken certain liberties in embellishing, which makes the work ‘technically’ more inauthentic than ‘fiction’.

So then, what really is ‘true’ and what is not?

And why does it really matter?

Everything is true with the end.

There are many writers I can think of who use this technique of using history/politics and merge them into a kind of affable storytelling—from Kapuściński to Indian historian William Dalrymple, almost all of whose books are best sellers. William is not the serious historian to read if you’re doing a phD or writing scholarly work, or, if you really want to read the seminal Indian books. But he is the writer the layman will read— which makes him a huge bestseller in India and UK. He has a gift of knowing how to tell a story, presented with a touch of lightness and beautiful prose. So the layman, doesn’t really feel they are reading a history book which can be daunting with all its footnotes, but rather, almost a story told of things that happened a long time ago. He certainly uses the intersection of real and what is not real (I will call it embellishment or rather, making it more reader friendly ).

Everyone has done this— Hemon, Ernaux, Llosa, Munro Naipaul— I cannot think of one writer who has not written about something that has affected them from real life . In fact Marquez said that his writing is ‘not fiction’ regardless of the fact that it uses magic realism.

Genres have only begun to exist after publishing houses had proper marketing departments and possibly even earlier, with book shops Wanting to make it easier for their customers to find the books that they are really looking for.

But writers, all writers, write for one reason only— because they have something to say in response to something they have witnessed or heard. Something that has stayed with them. Something that begs a response of fond kind from inside them. Writers like Tolstoy weave a story around it while Dalrymple will write straightforward history.

In that sense, everything is real.

I’ve come to a point where I’ve even stopped changing names of my characters, much to the dilemma this puts my family in.

I mean why bother, really? We all know who it’s about. Why should I waste my energy?

What’s actually funny about this is that everyone other than who the character might be loosely based on , think my characters are about them.

Second—

Most English language writers are not aware that there is no word in European languages that differentiate between ‘fiction’ and ‘non fiction’.

In Bosnian, says Hemon, “there are no words for fiction and nonfiction, or the distinction thereof”.
“This is not to say that there is no truth or untruth,” he continues. “It’s just that a literary text is not defined by its relation to truth or imagination.” When Bosnian speakers try to articulate this distinction they have to reach for awkward constructions or terms from other languages, he explains. “Some literary people have bastardised fiction into ‘fikcija’, which makes me cringe, while ‘ne-fikcija’ is even more atrocious. I would never use those words. Your average taxi driver would not understand them.” (The Guardian)

Similarly in France too— if you really have to specify, which again, is a modern phenomenon, you would use the word ‘romanesque’. However, As Hemon said, people are beginning to use words like ‘fiction’ in French, which makes the literaire Frenchman wrinkle up his nose as well. ‘

As Hemon said, fiction and non fiction do not mean that there is truth or no truth. And as I said before in point one, if you’re really going down that rabbit hole, then ‘fiction’ as English language countries know it, is possibly set more in reality than non fiction.

Hemon’s Bosnian translator, Irena Žlof, can find themselves stumped. When Žlof was working on the Bosnian edition of The Book of My Lives – Hemon’s “first book of nonfiction”, according to his US publisher – she “did not know” how to translate the terms fiction and nonfiction,.. Since they “only appeared in the acknowledgments, we just cut them. When I have to describe the pieces in my book, I call them ‘true stories’ or ‘personal essays’.”

He says, in the article, that categorisation in English literature may have something do with religion. “My sense is that relating and evaluating a literary text in relation to its truthfulness has to have some kind of religious and moral, probably Protestant, possibly Puritan, roots,” he says. “In that context the model for truth-telling is, of course, the Holy Book, while non-truth-telling books are always suspect, only permissible if morally rewarding.” Hemon says he doesn’t speak many other languages, but it seems to him as if “English is the exception, and my sense is that the distinction became axiomatic relatively recently, and more so in the United States.”

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That you live

That you must love



That you will die

That days must be one long image of changing seasons



That you see

That nothing must remain



That you sit by the window

That you will know something



That you sing

That you won't hear the little voice



That your legs are heavy

That you must dream



That you sleep

That there must be a tomorrow



That you love

That you must know my name



That you were born

That you will learn these things

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After two years in Paris, I finally found strength to put up bookcases and categorize my books. All this time they had been placed meticulously in vertical stacks on the floor and on my long wooden bench, part of my reclaimed wood dining table set from New York, circa 2009. The movers lost the other one.

While re organizing it, some muscle memory started returning and I could actually turn without having to think how to turn. I almost felt normal for a little while.

But, something more wonderful happened–– I found the notebook and sheets of paper where I had first started writing ‘The Lockdown’—my memoirs of living with this illness (named so as I started it just as the first Lockdown began, and this being my personal lockdown…)

I had lost that notebook very shortly after that when I moved back to my own flat from my parents’ home. I was distraught as it had a great deal of writing in it. At least twenty pages worth.

I'd given up and started from the beginning again.

Today I decided t…

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