All my friends ask me where The Story-Catcher is available, all the time. I know how easily it's available online, and I tell everyone to buy it online. But I've wanted to know for a while where it is actually available so that people can go to a store and pay for it at the counter (and so that I can take a picture and prove to myself that a childhood dream has really come true).So yesterday, a very dear friend and I went on a treasure hunt for my book. It's the most fabulous experience of my life because I tried so hard to spot my book amongst all those haphazardly lined on the shelves. I had a list from my publisher and we went to Pune's famous Appa Balwant Chowk, hunting, hunting, hunting.We went first to Venus Traders. Running up and down looking for a book in a place that does not have a catalogue is far more exciting than I could ever have imagined. My book was not there. This … [Read more...]
Cyber Café
I remember the year we created email accounts (which, of course, we used more often than not to send forwards). There was a cyber café at the gate, and we used to go at least once a week to check our mail and feel excited.Every year, we went to Bangalore for our summer holidays. That year, we felt a little lost without our precious email, so we scouted around for a nearby internet centre and found one, fairly close to home. We told our grandparents that we would like to go the cyber café for an hour in the evening."Go where?" asked my grandmother. In Bangalore, we will always be children. Even now, I don't go out without telling my grandparents exactly where I'm going and for how long."The cyber café," we explained. "Internet. For email.""Where is it?" asked my grandmother."Just here, down the road."My grandmother wasn't too sure about sending us there by ourselves, but she … [Read more...]
The Mice who Turned into Fairies
I think I'm finally old enough to read stories I wrote when I was seven years old without cringing in embarrassment. Some still make me cringe; this isn't one of them, perhaps merely because it won the first prize in a story-writing contest when I was seven years old. Written in a four-lined notebook with painstaking neatness, it was 'edited' by my mother because seven-year-old Varsha did not understand the purpose of commas and paragraphs. Other than those original changes, The Mice who Turned into Fairies has been reproduced here as it was written.Once upon a time there lived five mice in a hole. One day another mouse came and said: "Please give me some food."So the five mice gave her a lot of food and to their astonishment, she turned into a fairy! After that, leaving a note saying where she lived, she went away.The mice thought that if they ate a lot of food they would also … [Read more...]
Getting back from Olympia
We managed, somehow, to get to Olympia, thoroughly unprepared. (How do we go to Olympia, please?) We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly there - how could we not?Yet, the whole day out in the sun got to us, eventually. And living on juice, bread and cheese is never a good idea. At Patras, we had an awful youth hostel. We'd read reviews that called it a 'filthy scum hole', but there was no other place to stay. Calling in Greece was ridiculously expensive, so we hadn't been able to call home. We were planning to go next to Athens and had no idea where we would stay there. All in all, we were well on the way to being upset by the smallest things.And then it happened - that which got us upset. We discovered that even though museums in Olympia close at 19:30, the last train out of Olympia is at 15:20. That meant two things - we would have to take a bus to Pyrgos (and spend more money again) and … [Read more...]
Experiences on Stage
I'm sure every performer could write a book about things that go wrong on stage. The most wonderful part about performing on stage is the fact that nothing is predictable. Even after practising for, say, a year, something is bound to go wrong.I remember when we performed the Ramayana on stage. Deeply inspired by performances we saw at Kalakshetra, we wanted to put up something grand, something that audiences in Pune don't see very often. My dance teacher choreographed a beautiful dance ballet in Kalakshetra-style - the Ramayana.A problem we face very often is that we have very few committed dancers, which means that each dancer often has to play more than one role. Changing took rather longer than planned, and Ravana was not ready in time for his grand entrance at the Sita swayamvara. Unwilling to leave the stage empty, we went on to stage to play for time.Then ensued the most … [Read more...]
Local Trains
I have a distinct memory of a ride in a local train when I was two years old. I remember crazy traffic on Mumbai roads - the reason why my parents chose to take a local train even though they were with two young children. I remember boarding the local with my mother, somehow. I remember that a gentleman - who I distinctly categorised as a 'kind uncle' - put me on the luggage rack, out of harm's way. I remember wide-eyed, yet dry-eyed, fear as I looked down at more people than my childish brain could process.I'm sure time has embellished the memory, but that was my idea of a 'crowded' local train. Fourteen years later, when people warned me that the local train from Kharagpur to Kolkata would be crowded, I admit I was more than a little nervous. I dressed simply - no loose clothes that could get caught in other people's things. I carried no luggage at all because I've heard horror … [Read more...]
On Being Outdated
The other day, I saw that the window of a friend's car had not been raised. She had just parked, and was using the remote to lock the car. Helpfully, I told her that the window was open. She grinned and said, "I know", and proceeded to use her remote to raise the window. I gaped and shook my head. Technology moves too fast for me.Yet, that's just one of many incidents that make me realise how easy it is to become outdated. I find myself sympathising so often with my grandmother, who asked me long ago in utter confusion what a Facebook was.Last week, I went to withdraw money from an ATM at a kiosk attached to a bank. It was a slightly fancy place with two machines, and I confidently went up to one and swiped my card. I was told that my transaction was not allowed. I tried again. It still didn't work. Shrugging at how inefficient banking can be with machines instead of people, I went … [Read more...]
Apricots at Midnight
Many would say that Apricots at Midnight is an outdated book: old-fashioned and preachy. Yet, the simple childlike stories made it altogether loveable.Imagine a patchwork quilt, in which each little bit of cloth has a story to tell. I wish I had one! Apricots at Midnight has the sense of a collection of stories, united by this idea. A young girl listens to her aunt Pinny talking about her childhood and the making of the grand quilt. Affection takes away the sordidness of poverty, and imagination makes every tiny bit of cloth a wonderful new world.There's nothing at all romantic and exciting about poverty, Aunt Pinny is quick to point out. Poverty coupled with the attempt to appear respectable makes everything even more difficult. Clothes need to be made out of old drapes and cushion covers. Even the tiniest sliver of soap is a treasure. Yet, the biggest … [Read more...]
Reflex
If I don't read, I can't write. It's as simple as that.My mother introduced me to Dick Francis years ago, and I never imagined I would like more than one odd book about jockeys. I'm not horse-mad, and I don't like the idea of horse races. It's a lifestyle about which I know nothing. In Reflex, Francis too answers the question as to how racing contributes anything at all to society and to humanity. Yet, I find myself turning to Dick Francis every now and then for different reasons - the stoicism of his characters, the simplicity of the narrative, and the pace of the story.Reflex, like so many other works by Francis, explores a world about which I know little, or rather, two worlds about which I know little. It is, as usual, set within the racing circle, but the narrator is also a passionate photographer, solving puzzles left to him by another photographer, George Millace. The … [Read more...]
Performed today!
Nothing is the same without our teacher, but we did what we could anyway.The good news: We carried off Pinnal Kolattam well - no mistakes, thank God for that! Even with our teacher not there, no one's hair fell, nothing terribly embarrassing happened, thank God for that too! Changes were hurried, but were carried out as well as we could, each girl as independent as she could be.The strange news is that the interval was far longer than we planned, for the most bizarre reason ever - no one was able to draw open the curtain! What got us stressed was the fact that we were sure the audience thought we were taking ages to change, but that was not true! The button to operate the curtains didn't work, and we couldn't draw them open manually! For twenty minutes, people ran up and down, trying to figure out what to do, even calling up the person who installed the curtains. Finally, the … [Read more...]