I really am on hiatus, but ...

... I just wanted to clear the decks before November 1, the beginning of National Novel-Writing Month. (I tried it last year, got a third of the way through, and decided that my novel was unbearably drab, dull, etc. etc. -- in short, I gave up. I'm trying again this year, only with less advance preparation. If that makes sense. I'm retaining the thing I liked best about last year's effort, the title: Waiting for the Moonsoon.)

bananas and steel

On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, was assassinated by members of her own guard. I was in the Foreign Service at that time, working as the junior visa officer at the American Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan. I was standing at the desk of one of the Pakistani staffers, in the room just behind the visa window, looking through a stack of passports and visa applications. Then someone called someone, and said that the radio had reported that Indira Gandhi was dead.

An Inspector from the Customs Service dropped by the office to meet one of the staffers, and related some of the street gossip about the assassination. I said to him that it was strange news, and he replied, "Why is that strange? For a ruler there are only two paths, taj or takht." Taj means crown, and takht is a throne; but it is also the platform on which people are hanged.

kitchen shelf

Some weblinks that I've been saving up to post one of these days:

Use this animation to explore Picasso's collage 'Guitar', 1913. You can move the components of the collage around, to see if you can do better.

draw a girl -- this one you just watch, but it's so cool...

100 years of illustration and design -- a beautiful weblog, by an expert on the subject.

The artwork of Warren E. Saul (saw it on Everyday Matters) -- I've been looking at a few pages of this every day.

"For over 20 years, Warren Saul kept a daily self-illustrated diary he called "Sketchnotes." It ran to some 55 volumes, including many thousands of quick sketches, comments, and watercolors on all conceivable topics. His notebooks at times are reminiscent of an almost Leonardo DaVinci-like rambling, but entirely serious visual inquiry into the world around us. Sometimes, the drawings are just stream-of-consciousness cartoons done while my Dad sat at the kitchen table, at a meeting, or in a waiting room. He sketched from his car in a parking lot, or at a stop light or drive-up window. I like these the best. They are his take on his own life, seen through his own eyes."

Blogstreet's list of Chennai blogs