a sadhu in the river ganges

Oh yeah baby, let it fly

(from BBC News In Pictures)

cooking

Another successful cooking day! Made garlic-rosemary lamb with cucumber yogurt puree in whole wheat pita, and roasted nectarines to finish off. Next, I think I would like to master a complicated dish- not along the lines of molecular gastronomy, but something with a little more finesse...

Met a Sri Lankan friend who'd spent the year in Sri Lanka, and he talked about having to defend Eastern council elections (when he was against it on principle), on having to defend a rape case of an 11 year child by her uncle, who ended up with a miscarriage, on traffic violations with racist cops and how he was so incensed that he was determined to take it to court: the slow, and steady unravelling of any sanity and calmness.

there used to be a playground

Found myself quite unexpectedly at school again after being unable to get an internet connection or phone signal where I am currently living (in the boondocks known as Harvard Square), and it was quite disorientating to wander these empty corridors, after lunch with a good friend and reminisce about all the times we would be rushing around late for class, talking smack about professors and fellow class mates, furiously working on an (inevitably) last minute assignment, having to work in one of those mandatory group assignments (a favorite of the Kennedy School) and silently grinding a pencil into my thigh as a self-important gasbag drones on about Iran's nuclear policy (a nother favorite at the Kennedy School). Eating from the world's worst canteen known as Sodexho where food comes to die. Trying to print yet another draft of a paper on school printers that ran out of toner and the will to live sometime back in 1975. Reading the NY times coverage of our school and a professor who quite inexplicably was named the "Prince of Darkness" in said coverage. Bumping into the various hookups and breakups on campus fulled by politics and desire. Talking to Pulitzer-winning professors who inexplicably burst into tears when asked about their personal life (or lack thereof). Obamamania on every corner and corridor. Damn, I miss this place.

bale-fully yours,

Managed to haul my (rather large) ass to the gym today, thereby dispelling the contentedness I have been feeling for the last 2 weeks. Man, it still hurts.

I am starting on an intensive French and gym regime. Rented Indochine, an old Cesar winning movie with Catherine Deneuve. This had all better come back to me rather quickly OR ELSE. As for the gym I plan to spend at least 2 hours a day (HAHAHAHAHA) for 22 days (the time it takes to form a habit) this month. It's going to be brutal but I am inspired by Christian Bale who a) lost 63 pounds in 12 weeks by eating an apple and a can of tuna a day (don't worry that is (sadly) not going to be me) and b)got fit for American Psycho and Batman by working out 3 hours a day for 6 weeks. My goals are a bit more modest, but then again, I don't have the body of Bale, who let's face it, is a Greek God with a Welsh accent.

On other news, it is amazing how difficult writing is. Particularly, the architecture of a story with plot, meta themes, character development, denoument, finale. And how the language should not serve itself, but should be in service of the story. Some writers (y'all know who I am talking about), make it seem effortless, like magic. Ahhh. Another aspiration, filed away in Things To Do When I Return As a Grasshopper.

And how could I post today without writing about tennis? I remember when I first saw Nadal play against Federer. It was with my mum, and it was back in 2003, in a hotel room in Cambodia. The sum total of what she knows about tennis can be described as Every *Bleep* Thing Shouted By John McEnroe, but she was quite enamoured of Nadal. (She has a thing for Latinos- cf Desperado, which I think we watched 3 times because of Antonio Banderas.). In any case, what a match.

american psycho

"Do you think Soho is becoming too... commercial ?"
" Yes. I read that."
" Oh, who gives a rat's ass ?"
" Hey, that affects us."
"Well, what about the massacres in Sri Lanka, honey ? Doesn't that affect us too ? Do you know anything about Sri Lanka ? How, like, the Sikhs are killing tons of Israelis over there ?
"Come on, Bryce. There are a lot more important problems than Sri Lanka to worry about."
American Psycho

random

So... by all accounts... its' been a month since I last posted during which I have a) graduated , b) survived 2 weeks with the family at the Cape, c) moved house and packed up 2 years worth of stuff, and d) continued working.

I have July off so I shall be posting thoughts such as I wish I had tartes framboises and Why are there endless storms in Cambridge and How many movies can I watch per day (record of 5 so far.)

But quite seriously, I have been on a massive Christian Bale streak, he of the cheekbones-so-sharp-it-could-slice-sexual-tension fame. Watched Equilibrium yesterday, a Matrix-type movie in which Bale was quite extraordinary as a robot who learns what emotion is. I had seen him first in Empire of the Sun, a rather prosaic Spielberg tearjerker, in which Bale was so astonishing that they had to create an awards category for him (Best Juvenile something or other). And then of course had seen Laurel Canyon, and American Psycho, and of course the Batman movies. I like actors who do not impose their personality over the role, but rather are in total service to the role and do not try to be likable. Another fine performance seen recently was Casey Affleck in Gone Baby Gone.

Am also reading Dreams From My Father, a poignant, searching memoir written by Barack Obama which was started right after he graduated from Harvard Law and way before he acquired Bono-like fame. Next is A Writer's People by Naipaul, whose nonfiction writing I adore for its simplicity, elegance and insight. He is such an un-showy writer, unlike Rushdie.

Which brings me to my recent Rushdie sighting at the New York Public Library attended with JP. Suffice it to say, that the man was utterly repellent, and for, I might add, not very good reason either. The truly great are truly humble, and those who fall just short of greatness in their work, especially as writers, also lack that humility which allows openness to perspectives and the ability to continue plumbing the depths of the human heart.

It's a Beautiful Day (U2)

A new day, a new nominee, a new graduation, a new life. If this country can change, then by god, so can I.

food!

C and I made dinner yesterday, to wit, the following: watermelon, basil, mint, watercress and feta cheese salad, followed by cava beans, spinach and pasta salad, followed by roast nectarines with a vanilla bean sauce, with of course, copious amounts of zinfandel (and when that ran out), pinot grigio and shandies. The menu tonight, spinach and red onion salad with maple-dijon vinaigrette, roast salmon with fig and onion jam, and sour cream and cinnamon cake.

Gardening

On the return from Quebec City, we drove through the rolling hills of Vermont, the White Mountains of New Hampshire (where we stopped off at a true-blue diner), and back into Cambridge. Opened the post to see that my package of Jo Malone samples had arrived and now, having sprayed White Jasmine, Amber & Lavender, Orange Blossom, Nectarine and Honey, and French Lime Blossom on me, I am happily content, smelling like an English Garden, writing my very last paper.

Vive La Quebec

Am in Vieux Quebec City now. Who had a clue that this existed in North America, this old town, that looks like it was plucked out of fairy-tale Berlin, Prague and Paris, where everything is in French (as the proud Quebecois and their independence movement will attest to), and where above all, the food is in French. Although it has been busy with work, being holed up in cafes in Montreal and Quebec on cobblestoned streets with horse carriages passing by, with endless chocolat chaud, cafe au lait and croissants, with rain pattering off the grey stones, with the sun bursting out of clouds, ricocheting off an ancient chateau, and every arrowing spire in the city, with tiny art galleries and Catholic churches around every corner, with Nina Simone singing in every cafe, it feels like I have walked into an alternate universe, and the past and the future both seem very far away.

negating my ass

I am valiantly trying to write my hardest paper yet: a paper for which I receive no credit, which topic I have to conjure out of thin air, which will be read by one of the few people whose intellectual opinion I consider relevant, and which is daunting because it is about literature, which I have enjoyed as a reader, but never as a critical theorist (and thank god for that).

For example, consider the sentence below:
"What Hegel established is, then, that violence is a necessary moment in the history of the recognition of human freedom. This history initiates a contradictory outcome: it asserts freedom through the negation of freedom. However slavery, generates the conditions of its own emancipation so that the process moves toward the mutual cancellation of servitude and domination. It is a negation of the negation: The negation that instituted bondage is negated in its turn."

I have read this paragraph 3 times and I still don't understand it. ARRGHHGHGHGHGH.

2 more papers before the conferral of a degree- so close and yet so far.

An Application For Credit For PostColonial Literature

The course is a rigorous examination of political and social identity as seen through the prism of personal experience, and taught by the leading postcolonial theorist in the world. We examine the works of Frantz Fanon for example, a Algerian revolutionary who wrote the discourse on Algerian independence and use him to understand the role of violence in transitioning societies such as India, South Africa and Sri Lanka. We examine the results of Empire, as seen through the works of Conrad and Bronte and analyze how they create a dependent society which, when given freedom, fractures into internecine strife due to an inability to self-govern. We examine black history, through the works of Jean Rhys and Toni Morrison, and analyze what happens post-independence for oppressed communities, and the struggle to rebuild themselves, their society and their identity. These are broad topics and we examine how they interlock, create cleavages and result in how identity is formed, and how personal identity translates into a political consciousness.As to how they are relevant to an MPP degree, I find here at Harvard that many think of policy as a series of economic and theoretic prescriptions. Understanding how individuals and communities are shaped by policy is, I believe, integral to crafting humane and sustainable policies. Coming from Sri Lanka, a country to which I intend to return, and which has been shaped by war and by a colonial experience, I find it essential to take ONE course here at Harvard, which allows me to explore all these themes above and reflect on how they may shape a country.

Cry, beloved country

The City

You said: "I'll go to another city, go to another shore
find another city better than this one
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead

How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them
totally."
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things
elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.

Constantine P. Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeley & Phillip Sherrard

A Bus Named Desire

What a night! North Carolina called for Barack, and Indiana with only a sliver of a margin of victory for Hillary. It has been the most astonishing of campaigns, and of primaries to date. While at many moments I have been numbed by the sheer drudgery of it all, at many other moments too I have been excited and thrilled by the prospects of change in government, of youth turning out in droves, of contests between a black man and a white woman, and most possibly of all, of hope. I started the campaign a fervent Hillary supporter, but the dial has now swung to Obama, especially after his speech on race. If he could grow up in this country, run in politics, and still give a speech like that- then that's it. And Hillary with her ridiculous proposals on a gas tax holiday, and her attempts at populism amongst working-class white voters is just alienating now. I relished the prospect of a fight for the nomination, but now I join the clamouring for her to step down, for the party to rally around Obama, for the national mood to turn towards the general election. And to many friends who have literally taken the semester off school in all but name, campaigning in rural North Carolina, in Pittsburgh, in New Hampshire, running call shops out of their garages and mobilizing the campaign; a massive congratulations for the ardour, the commitment and the belief in public service.

xobni

So I have just downloaded this app called Xobni, for those of you who are Outlook users and have clunky interfaces, (read the NY Times article on it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/technology/05xobni.html?em&ex=1210305600&en=ec7ba19942188f37&ei=5087%0A)

It tells me that my number 1 ranked most frequently emailed person is my co-chair of the Conference. The total tally? 1739 emails sent over six months over 1244 different conversations.

And you ask me why I needed a Blackberry.

let a thousand flowers bloom

Took the afternoon off with C, and we hiked through Boston, including the never-before-ventured-into Jamaica Plain. C's plan was to go to the arboretum, (a place like a topiary, aviary but focused of course on trees), and set on sprawling acreage in JP, at the heart of beautiful parkland. So in no short order, the following specimens were noted and surreptiously smelt, ; rosehips that were not yet in bloom, wisteria, seven different specimens of lilacs, elms, sassafras (which apparently goes into root beer until they discovered it could give you cancer), some japanese cherry trees, willows, violets, grape hyacinths, and of course tulips which are everywhere in bloom. C, the budding horticulturist, could identify at sight all of the above, whereas I of course, vainly ran to the copper tags and feigned knowledge.

my girl

"We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience"- The English Patient

The reading by Michael Ondaatje under the quiet cavernous New York Public Library and the discussion that followed represented a four year break in the time that I had seen him. There was an astonishing passage, hallucinatory according to one reviewer, of a boy on a horse riding through an eclipse. Though I have only read the book Divisadero once, the reading of it was like opening a wound again, the scar the memory of it.

There are many flaws with Ondaatje's style of writing, which I am not oblivious to; the inability to pitch dialogue, the inadequacy of the political and moral vision, which is found in the best of Naipaul, the perfection of every character; that is to say, a lack of mundane, annoying characteristics (no one is a habitual nose-picker in his novels) which epicizes the characters. All of that is true. But there is an unbearable compassion in his writing, a true recognition of pain, loss and betrayal, a haunting that is there in every story, and is left like the memory of lingering smoke in every reader. For the sheer humanity and understanding in his novels, for his homage to the complexity of how the past links up with the future, and the present, there is no one quite like him. And all of that is leaving aside his much feted language; quiet sentences precede quiet sentences of clarity and beauty, until in the middle of a paragraph, at the end of a sentence, there is a sudden starburst of beauty that verges on pain; because the revelation on the page is so true, so unexpected, and now, having read it, changes life so imperceptibly.

And with all of that, I am plunging into Divisadero again.

the postcolonial wretched

"Each age has its peculiar opacities and its urgent missions. The parts we play in the design and direction of historical transformations are shadowed by the contingency of events and the quality of our characters. Sometimes we break the mold; at others, our will is broken. What enables us to aspire to the fraught and fervent desire for freedom is the belief that human beings are capable of imagining what Fanon once described as a "time [that] must no longer e that of the moment or the next harvest but rather of the rest of the world",
Homi Bhabha, in his introduction to the Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon

H and K

Having just watched Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, I can safely concur with the review of an institution as august as the New York Times in saying that this, pardon the oxymoron, is an intelligent stoner raunch comedy. Kal Penn as an actor has never appealed to me: even in comic roles he seems to be constantly overacting with his timing just that little bit off, and as for well serious acting, the Namesake: enough said. John Cho is the real gem in this comedy, and I much prefer this to the Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle.

I have been putting the P-R-O back into procrastinating and need to really plow through some serious work OR ELSE- all will be doom and gloom. In a way, and I am going to regret this the moment I say it, being at a desk 24/7 does mean that one tends to get things done; especially things that one is interested in.

ice cream

long conversations with father, and things are progressing slowly but surely.

I have discovered a new, favourite ice cream: goodbye strawberry cheesecake (Haagen-Dazs), hello caramelized pear and pecan. Needless to say the corporate drones at Haagen Dazs did not come up with this winner by themselves; it was the result of a nationwide competition on flavours, and its out on limited edition.

Now if someone, why not, can make rose and almond ice-cream, and other floral/nutty combinations, my heart is theirs.