Holy Holi!

One of the reasons why Indians feel so sorry for Brazilians is that they only have one week during the entire year during which to dress up and parade through the streets looking funny. One week!

We’ve got one week during which it’s not considered cool to play loud music, dress like Tory’s at an underground coming out party and flounce through the streets, and I’m determined to find out when that week is.

It’s Holi today; I was going to write the spring festival, but it’s aspring festival, or at least North India’s spring festival, southern states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala having their own festivals. The colours used at Holi to douse each other mirror what nature has on offer around this time of year. The weather is turning warmer, and April and May will be hot!

-“The kids are alright”. Mira, Tarini and friends, moments after having ruined Dad’s Sunday best.
-Holi is the great equalizer. Our apartment’s security guards were at the receiving end of some wild colours, but gave as good as they got.

Writer's block

I can imagine you having writer’s block if you’re sitting at our desk in the north of a Scandinavian country, staring out the window at a desolate wintry landscape for eight months of the year. What do you do? Start a local chapter of AA, write a best selling crime trilogy or turn your hand at designing modular furniture?

You can’t have writer’s block in India. You can have “writer’s processing block”, an inability to process the 1,000 and 1 images that come at you daily. 

How do you choose between the cricket world cup, the almost daily disclosure of some corruption scandal or the other (this year’s pickings have been big even by Indian standards), the visible increase in poverty of some and the equally visible increase in wealth of others?

I guess I was suffering from a bit of processing block.

Up next:

1. •Mira’s school trip to Jaipur
   
   
2. •Sanjay manages to tick off a police inspector and still get a driving license
   
   
3. •Someone gets married and plays loud music
   
   
4. •It’s not that funny: life on the street