I remember going to a creperie in Grenoble a few years ago – an important part of my French experience. I was in a large group of Indians for once, and soon after we had placed our order, our delicious lunch was served to us. And then, there was a power cut. We were surprised, […]
The Golden Rule
During our exchange programme with a school in France, my sister formulated for me The Golden Rule. If you don’t know a word in French, pronounce the English word that you do know in the French way. The likelihood of its being the real French word is very high. We used it for the first […]
A Train to Vienna
Why do people like us? Why do random people whom we will probably never meet again come up to us and do things for us? I wonder if we look young and innocent and vulnerable – if so, how long will we stay that way? I remember our journey to Vienna from Venice. I have […]
Experiences on Stage II
I remember the first time I performed with the Senior Girls – the Big Girls at Satara. We were doing a dance drama to recorded music. That’s always a challenge because we can’t let our emotions run free, expressing ourselves the way we want to and letting ourselves get carried away. We were performing Draupadi […]
Dress Rehearsal?
Last evening was the first show of our cultural programme at Sanskriti. Everyone in charge treated it as a kind of exalted dress rehearsal. Everything was practised – giving gifts to the teachers, standing for a photo, everything. For them, it was just a complete, thorough rehearsal before Saturday. For me, though, yesterday was the […]
The Circus Boy
I did two more book-readings yesterday – The Circus Boy and The Old Yellow Scooter. The reactions were completely different! Children never stop surprising me. The first reading (The Dictionary) was wonderful – I got questions about reading, writing, publishing, drawing… The second reading (Dreams) was strange – I wondered whether the girls understood the story at […]
Performing tomorrow and on Saturday!
I teach dance at a school run by the Army Wives’ Welfare Association (AWWA) – and they have their annual cultural programme tomorrow. Beginning with a Ganesh Vandana, there are several performances on the programme. My girls are going to be doing a Kannada folk dance and Swarajati (Raag Hamsanandi). I’ll be concluding the programme […]
Why I Write for Children
My first reading at St. Mary’s school yesterday told me, yet again, why I love writing for children. The number of questions they asked me and the way they interacted with me for a whole hour was simply wonderful. Writing, editing, publishing, marketing, illustrating and designing – they had questions about all these things. They […]
Book-Reading in MY School!
Once upon a time (in 1995, to tell the truth), my wonderful school-librarian encouraged us to write and illustrate books of our own. A friend and I sat and wrote a book of stories and poems. I forget what it’s called. We illustrated it painstakingly – and one important lesson that I learned from that […]
Treasure Hunt
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
Performing Tomorrow!
As part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of St. Mira’s College for Girls, the Academy of Indian Dances will be putting up a programme of Bharatanatyam and folk dances on Tuesday, the 22nd of January, 2013. We begin with a traditional Ganesh Vandana – an invocation to the elephant-headed god. After that, we travel from […]