Anik and I are going on a holiday to the city of our birth. We will spend the first three weeks of June doing things we haven’t done in a long time. This includes visiting many of our dearest friends, loitering for hours at roadside tea stalls, sipping cup after cup of lemon tea near the Lake embankment, foraging for old books in the second hand book market, perhaps catching a good play or a movie, getting drenched in unpredictable monsoon showers, smoking weed on the banks of the Ganga, maybe chartering a rowboat and playing rock bang in the middle of the river, eating too much street food for our own good, getting more body parts pierced, getting high before having to meet uninteresting relatives, getting sloshed in the middle of the day at some disreputable bar, and ambling aimlessly along unfamiliar alleys while languidly indulging in some socio-political debate .
Among other things, this means that there will be no posts on Rivers I Have Known for the next three weeks. I will, however, be reading all your posts, though I will probably not have time to comment. I promise to be back with lots of photographs, poems, experiences, observations, and Anik-dotes.
Take care of yourselves meanwhile. Will miss all of you. Will miss Cat’s foray into the world of fiction, Deepa’s adorable creations, Karen’s paintings with words, Sweta’s world-wise observations, Kriti’s plaintive rants, Joaquin’s musical expeditions every Thursday, Goirick’s bitter-sweet nostalgia, Jason’s maggot-kissing photos and spooky psychopaths, Aniket’s sometimes innocent sometimes sinister stories, Anirvan's passion-play with words, Priyanka’s utterly libidinous poems, Crafty’s unbelievely cute crochets, Mahesh’s heartfelt stories, Sawan’s poems that are sweet and sad at the same time, Margaret’s earthy poems, Atanu’s beautiful use of words, Amit Das’s homesickness, Amal’s daring experiments, Arnab's ruthless murderers, Quaint Murmurs’ funnily sad interpretations, Preetilata’s strange way of looking at life, Pradiptaa’s collection of amazingly good poetry, Sucharita’s little angels, Sarmistha’s tongue-in-cheek annotations, Amit's lyrical hindi poems, Smitha’s comments on my favourite books, Kirti’s well-aimed advice in her letters, Shubhajit’s ventures into darker and darker cinema, Sagorika’s sparkling poems and prose, Sakshi’s bizarrely funny experiences, Satan’s Darling’s acrostics, ….’s deadpan humor, Chriz’s very gross and very hilarious essays, Nikhita's bitchi rantings, TFL’s dark tales, Gagan’s love’s labour losts, Cherry Blossom’s photography. Amith’s adventures, SSQUO’s oddities, and all the other magical blogs that I read. See you guys in three weeks time.
Hasi, Bokom, Shila- am really looking forward to meeting you guys.
Happy Monsoons.
Ciao.
Oh- by the way, because of the recent cyclonic devastation, we have decided to scrap our plans to hit the beach.
Watercolor by Dilip Chitre. Photograph of Watercolor by LGL.
