- The evening birds never come to drink water, the morning birds do. The evening birds are always flying, towards home perhaps? And they fly quietly, like they have time.
- The koyal near my house sings sweetly but it doesn’t take very long for it to get aggressive. It begins mostly at 5 am and does it continuously. I have a feeling that it knows I am writing this.
- One evening at Glen’s, it rained like it does in May in Bangalore – moodily, heavily, nicely, laughingly, groaningly. I sat and watched it feeling dizzily happy and not realising that my helmet which was left hanging by the seat was slowly getting filled with rain. When I saw it, a big laugh came out and then I said, ‘Why do you do this, Vjjjj?’
- Reading Natalia Ginzburg is a gift. I unwrapped it slowly one evening and wept bitterly. Her essay ‘My Vocation’ made me tell myself that I am ok, it’s ok, everything is ok, as long as I just keep writing.
- I want to write like Alice Munro and Deborah Levy and Natalia Ginzburg. They wake me up in beautiful ways.
- Chai immediately after coffee is heavy, curdling.
- Having female students in my life is very important. Without them, teaching doesn’t make sense.
- Cold water bath after 12 suryanamaskars is slicing, gasping, happy.
- I like avocados and eggs.
- The sun falls beautifully on some days. Last evening it fell like a disturbed egg yolk. It broke and then the orange oozed out in various places, places it wasn’t even setting in. I was puzzled by this and went looking for the setting sun in the west, couldn’t find it. But its colors were beautifully soaking in the east. I like that this is possible.
- After days of being terrified of writing, of running away from the humiliation of my own words at 6 in the morning, of wanting to erase all the words I have ever used in excess – in emails, in articles, in texts, on twitter, on instagram – I scrolled down my old posts on FB and discovered that through the good days and bad – even though I have always told myself I suck at this – I have always still written. For now, that’s enough.
- Dorothy Parker said ‘I hate writing. I love having written’ This is the month where I realise that I like eating. I don’t like having eaten.
- I don’t trust the words I use with people anymore. They are too much.
- I want to watch a Simone De Beauvoir and Sartre film. She lived. She really did. I want to do it too.
- Elaichi shrikhand is back in my life.
