Category: General
Humility
You glow on the universe of your foliage–
As the world goes to sleep.
Silently you come, without a fuss;
No announcement, no flaunting of beauty
Not any attempt to hold the passerby spellbound.
In the morning, before the world rubs its bleary eyes,
You silently drop down,
No clinging, no worrying
about getting crushed under walking feet.
Yet, you draw us–
By your plain scent,
Your unassuming beauty,
Your amazing way with stopping passersby,
Bringing them down to their knees,
To pick you up gently.
You just smile, silently.
Note: Every autumn, the Shiuli, a small flower with white petals and orange stalk, blooms in different parts of India. This delicate flower blooms in the dead of night and by morning, drops off the branches. It has a soft, mild fragrance and heralds the biggest Bengali festival, Durga Puja.
Writing Strengths Meme
Just when I was contemplating that post, Onipar, a gifted (I don’t say that lightly) horror writer and one of the most inspiring writing buddies I have seen spared me the sentimental outpour by tagging me for the Writing Strengths meme. The brief guideline for the meme is this:
Make a list of five strengths that you possess as a writer/artist. It’s not really bragging, it’s an honest assessment (forced upon you by this darn meme). Please resist the urge to enumerate your weaknesses, or even mention them in contrast to each strong point you list. Tag four other writers or artists whom you’d like to see share their strengths.
I laughed at first. Like many other aspiring authors, I wondered if I had even three strong points as a writer. In the end, I could think of five, though. Here they are:
1) Faith: This isn’t just a strong sense of hope that I will be a published writer some day. This is deeper. It’s the heart’s connection with my writing itself. Faith in what I write and what it means to me. When I write drafts, the writing quality may be (and usually is) pathetic, the style stilted, the grammar unsure. But in the midst of all that I see a reflection of my inner world, merging at once with the world around me. I guess this is the most important element of my writing life.
2) Perseverance: Oni calls it courage. I will go with the more conventional term. All true writers persevere; it’s not really an option for them, it’s just part of the game. The odds are high and keep going higher, rejections come slamming on your face, finances play hide-n-seek with you, and you are in an arena even more uncertain than gambling or lottery. But you plug on, driven by a strange rush, aiming for a star many galaxies away.
3) Voice: Most of the feedback I have received on my writing has mentioned this facet. It’s a fusion of the social milieu I come from and the cultural sensibilities I have absorbed over the years. I write what I know; my lack of international experience makes my English writing a translated rendition of the Indian life I have known and seen.
4) Humanity: This isn’t to imply my writing is humane. It’s just to say my writing is mostly drawn from life—mine and of those falling within my immediate, extended, or distant environment. The best of writers, those who have told stories of ordinary people and their trials and triumphs are not preachers trying to teach the basics of a just society to the world at large. Nor are they messiahs, offering solutions for the repressions they witness. They are mirrors, reflecting us just the way we are—fair or ugly (not in the literal sense, of course).
5) Student: I am a lifelong learner when it comes to writing. Having a student’s outlook helps me remain open to advice and smart enough to glean benefit from even not-so-positive feedback. I have seen the results over the years; they aren’t too bad.
So there. I can now officially thank Oni for bringing me out of my self-imposed blog exile. Writing is the reason this blog is facing neglect. I am choking with freelance work and other assignments to the extent where I only find scraps of time to work on my personal writing projects. Since the blog is less demanding than those pesky projects, it waits patiently. Until a friend nudges me to return to it.
Who do I tag? Lisa, Alicia, Bob, and John Baker.
Seven Writing Questions: A Meme
1. What’s the one book or writing project you haven’t yet written but still hope to?
A travel book that will combine food and journeying and will take me to hidden corners of India.
2. If you had one entire day in which to do nothing but read, what book would you start with?
The twelve volumes of Rabindranath Tagore’s writings. I look at them wistfully every day, but a dozen “important” tasks draw me away from them. On a day meant just for reading, a dozen tomes will draw me—to a lifetime’s feast.
3. What was your first writing “instrument” (besides pen and paper)?
That has to be my PC. Got it around five or six years back—a second hand machine. I was thrilled to have a computer of my own. By then I had good enough typing skills, thanks to years of writing-related jobs, like when I used to do the service of rewriting a paper. The PC was a godsend, not just because it boosted my writing efforts, but because it introduced me to fellow writers from all parts of the world. The internet led me to my first writing forum, enabling me to connect with writers—aspiring and published, while at the same time helping me hone my writing skills, discover my voice, and lend me new dreams.
4. What’s your best guess as to how many books you read in a month?
I am a painfully slow reader. At my best, I can finish two good-sized books (300 pages) in a month. This also explains why I am so ill-read.
5. What’s your favorite writing “machine” you’ve ever owned?
I will cheat here and say what Lisa said. My laptop, which isn’t even a year old (touch wood!). The light black notebook has given my writing life much-needed mobility—even if that only means being able to sit and work in the TV room when cricket matches are on. The laptop aided me well during my Bengal trip—I could download photos, take brief travel notes, check email, and generally didn’t feel internet deprived.
6. Think historical fiction: what’s your favorite time period in which to read?
My limited reading stock doesn’t include much historical fiction, but if given a chance to select a period, I would like to read books reflecting the British Raj and 20th-century India.
7. What’s the one book you remember most clearly from your youth (childhood or teens)?
Gone With the Wind. This book had a sweeping impact on me. Everything in it—the setting, the storyline, the unfamiliar (for me) speech patterns, AND Rhett Butler made the summer of my school-leaving year a hard-to-forget one.
As for tagging, let me at once tag any and every one who would like to do this. Do let me know, though, so I can read your responses. 🙂
Fresh Connections

Friends, in a blogosphere cramped by barely literate fans fawning over celebrities and barely literate celebrities pandering to fans, there’s a wide open world indeed waiting in weblogs like At Home, Writing.
Even more delightful was discovering the Readers and Writers blog itself, an excellent venue to bring readers and writers together. To have found a place in his blogroll–which features Bernita’s brilliant and classy An Innocent A-Blog–is indeed an honour for me.
Thank you, Sid. For taking At Home to the world.
Ready to Fly
All five senses are alert and excited. I hope it turns out a trip to remember.
I will miss you all. Honest.
The image: Hazarduari Palace in Murshidabad, one of the sights the eyes are eager to embrace.
Courtesy: http://perso.orange.fr/nos.voyages/bengale/060.htm
Booklane: Remembered, revisited



Special thanks to Bhupinder for making me Booklane bound.
Wishing You Well
Good Reads…
Dotara, the instrument Bauls play while singing
Writing Palestine at Words Without Borders, my window to contemporary world literature (‘wish I would visit the site more often). The WWB feature showcases the writings of nine Palestinian writers, reflecting the many hues of the conflict-ridden desertscape. Some great writing, brought to us through sensitive translation. My favourite is The Shoes by Nassar Ibrahim:
Time passes slowly, hot and dusty: Barriers, guns, soldiers, identity card checks, long waits, curses and humiliations. Everything mixes with everything else; the advance and the retreat both have the same measure of suffering. In the back, the barriers and the humiliations; ahead, the same thing. So, forward he went. Isn’t arrival, isn’t the surmounting of suffering, the defiance of being broken down a simple, clear parity? An entire nation finds byroads, steps over logic and reason to maintain for itself the logic which says, Persistence first, or death.
Bhupinder Singh’s most inspired tribute to India’s firebrand socialist poet, Kaifi Azmi. The quality of the post is made better by Bhupinder’s wonderful translation of Kaifi’s poetry. A great read.
To look for Kaifi, is to keep on searching the for new, better, more egalitarian worlds. And heavens that are more just. To remove this search from his poetry would be to take away its soul.
William Dalrymple’s feature article on Bauls or Bengali minstrels. The essay is engagingly heartfelt, yet at the same time marked by a traveller’s objective recounting and a historian’s passion for research. Besides being a treat in itself, the article brought back great reminiscences. The mention of Bhaskar Bhattacharya, a former colleague, and of his association with the Bauls of West Bengal, revived some wonderful memories. My brother happened to be a part of Bhaskar’s team working on a film on the lives of these minstrels, and some of them even came to our house during their Delhi visits. I don’t know how I missed this superb article for so long.
Throughout their 500-year history, the Bauls have refused to conform to the social or religious conventions of conservative and caste-conscious Bengali society…The goal is to discover the “Man of the Heart” – Moner Manush – the ideal that lives within every man…
Happy weekend reading to all. 🙂
Words Without Borders, Palestinian Literature, Kaifi Azmi, William Dalrymple, Baul
At Home, Working
The pending post-it list never lets up.
Words get written, exploding on the screen in gazillions; not one of them is for my Work In Progress (WIP).
The cell phone rings intermittently–morning, noon, night. Regular work briefings. Emergency calls to “please accommodate” new work within tight deadlines.
The calendar polar bear gives me quiet, understanding company.
Work doesn’t suck. It brings in money, much needed for survival. But…
In trying to resuscitate my bank account, I seldom find time for the joys that filled my inside. I miss visiting my blog pals. The mind yearns for those daily doses of laconic, exquisite, epigrammatic cyber inscriptions. The heart longs to go and say a hello to the authors of those inscriptions, dear friends, all.
The WIP unassumingly positions itself at the bottom of the “work” heap, not pestering to be paid attention to. “I will wait,” it says “for the moment you are ready to pick me up with love, not because you have to, but because it will bring joy to the spirit. I know you will, no worries. Do tend to the ailing coffers first.”
Here is someone trying to find her feet in the land of freelancers. That’s all that keeps me away from here lately. Trust me, I am still…
At Home, Writing.