Petals!

This weekend, I read a book that dealt with death, a fact of life that has always fascinated me because it is more real than life, like the darkest colors that haunt the night just before the beginning of dawn. Have you not ever felt that way on losing some one you've loved? The feeling of never ever being able to see or touch that person, that can be so heartbreaking even if you've got tons of memories stocked away in your mind. When I was a kid, I remember a wonderful, picture perfect Christian family I'd known. They were family friends. Extremely rich, well spoken, happy and wonderful to be with, their story is something I never forget because its the first time, as a child, I sensed and witnessed the power of death. The mother, a wonderful human being, died in a tragic car accident. Their two daughters were just beginning their teens. They were two beautiful girls. No body knew what happened to them. Their mother's death destroyed them. I remember hearing the younge...

One of India’s most celebrated writers, Anita Desai visited Delhi on 1st December 2007. Taking part in the brief talk on her novels, Anita Desai made a rare appearance amidst enthusiastic fans and readers thanks to the well organized function that was put together by Random House. As most of us already know, her name was nominated thrice for Booker Price but it happened that her daughter Kiran Desai won it for the book Inheritance of Loss in the year 2006. But coming back to Anita Desai, it has been a long, interesting journey for her because she recalled how it felt to be a writer in early post colonial India. When her American publishers asked her how it felt to be a writer in India, she recalls telling them, “It is like writing in a cave.” The reason, she explained, was that she kept on writing and writing but didn’t get feedback on her writings for several years. It pained her that while her novels were studied in Universities abroad, it hadn’t been the same in her own country, Ind...