Kichdi Post

By the Lakeside
On a day and at an hour when the whole world likes to sleep late and when no one in his right mind would get up before seven a.m., I was up and out of the house. It had been more than three months since I had done my monthly Necklace Road routine, and last Sunday I went to fill up on some calm that I desperately needed. It wasn’t very chilly when I started at half past five in the morning but still dark with the streetlights still on. I reached Necklace Road in fifteen minutes and settled down on the bench where I usually sit. It was still dark and the lights on the Tank Bund were reflected in the waters of the Hussainsagar Lake. There was no one around as I soaked in the silence.

Soon, the darkness cleared up slowly and the daylight began to seep into the sky. The morning seemed magical last Sunday. Flocks of birds (geese, I guess) flew out from the horizon and some flew low, really low, just inches from the calm surface of the lake, and then rose suddenly gained height and flew away. I had not seen so many flocks of birds before. There were birds swimming in the water in pairs. Two birds sat on something that looked like a metal platform, quietly looking around.

The solitude and the magic of the morning on the lakefront was something priceless. I sat there watching the sun come up slowly, watching its reflection in the placid waters of the lake. I had missed this sight all these three months and I felt glad to be experiencing it again. I left after making a promise to myself to come again sometime next month. Afterwards I bought the Sunday papers and sat in Adarsh café sipping tea and reading the papers for more than an hour until it was time to return home.

The HaulOut of the dozens of articles on the Jaipur Literature Festival one that made me regret not attending the event was an article by Rajni George in the India Today magazine. The article made me wish I had gone to Jaipur and participated in the event which would have helped me do something about my book. Curiously, I came across Rajni George’s name again in a copy of Mridula Koshy’s ‘If It Is Sweet’ that I found at Abids on Sunday. When I first saw it I did not pick it up because it was not in a very good condition. I had read glowing reviews of the short story collection so on my way back I bought the book for forty rupees. One of the blurbs inside the book was an extract of Rajni George’s review in India Today.

The previous Sunday, The Hindu came with its monthly supplement of ‘The Literary Review’ which had Navtej Sarna writing in his column (Second Thoughts) on attending the Jaipur Literary Festival and his attempts to get his copy of Orhan Pamuk’s ‘The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist’ signed. This is one book that I plan to buy soon along with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘Living to Tell the Tale’ that I saw at the Oxford Bookstore the other day when I went there to attend a book reading. Something I had been expecting from TLR happened. I had thought that if the supplement carried a regular column on writing it would have been helpful for writers. In the latest TLR there was such a column by Vikram Kapur called ‘The Creative Writer’ which I hope will be a regular feature.

Getting the Meisterstuck back
Finally after what seemed to be after ages I’ve got back my precious Meisterstück back after repairs. Two days back I got a call from the Mont Blanc boutique at Taj Deccan informing me that my fountain pen had arrived. Though I wanted to go right away and collect it I couldn’t for various reasons. Yesterday evening I raced to Taj Deccan and took my pen back. It now appears perfect with a new Mont Blanc star on the top of the cap of the pen. Boy, was I glad to have it back notwithstanding the fact that it cost me a bomb to get it fixed. I’d been missing my Meisterstück like anything.

Like it wasn’t enough shelling out nearly four thousand bucks on the repairs to the pen I also picked up a bottle of ink that cost me another eight hundred and twenty bucks. It looks like I have to use my Meisterstück only when I want to sign on papers and make very short notes. I cannot afford to use it to write regularly since I write quite a lot everyday and actually use up an ink bottle every month. I have to buy another branded pen to use as a workhorse to do my regular writing though the ones I currently use are doing a fine job, just that it gets a bit boring to write with the same pen every day unless it is a pen like the Mont Blanc.