Flux of Time

That was not a bad year after all. How can it be, when London appeared on the horizon, and I lapped it up. That was a great year. Memories of London still stay with me. Until the next time, of course. 

My piece on the last two journalists to check out of Fleet Street in the Sunday Magazine of The Hindu The last newspaper on London’s Fleet Street downed shutters in August, turning the U.K.’s iconic newspaper hub into just another street It was summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and one half of London’s Fleet Street was awash in sunshine. Long shadows fell on the other. I could see St. Paul’s looming large at the end of the street, but that could wait. It was Saint Bride’s Church that I was looking for. Famously called the Journalists’ Church, it is still dubbed the ‘spiritual home of journalism’ in the United Kingdom. Still, because Fleet Street, once the hub of the newspaper industry in London and the U.K., is today just a term used collectively for the British press. The Street has gone pale for decades now, and in August, the last two journalists working on Fleet Street left the building. They had been working at  Sunday Post  , a DC Thomson public...

When you love something too much, it becomes painful to even talk about it. That's how it is with London. I just can't muster up enough strength to even look at the photographs, lest they remind me of how wonderful the fortnight in London was. But, am trying, and here are my five favourites for now: The tube: Tapping the Oyster and walking down the stairs/elevator and then looking this way and that to figure out which is the Westbound and Eastbound. Getting into the train followed by the familiar 'Mind the Gap', watching people in their trenchcoats and their workday faces. Grim, largely, boisterous or chatty, rarely. Getting off nonchalantly and exiting to the street to find sunshine! Ah, love you London! Walking the streets: Rain, yes, take out umbrella...oh no, gone, fold it and shake it furiously at a corner like a typical Londoner. Soak in the sunshine. Walk, walk, walk. Oxford Street, Regent Street, Fleet Street, Nottinghill, Piccadilly Circus, Baker Stre...

One of London's most iconic streets, if you are a literature lover or a journalist or anyone who has anything to do with words. That's Fleet Street for you. The St Bride's Church, designed by Christopher Wren, located on this street has a lot of history associated with it. It is called the Jounalists' Church because of its location. Some of London's oldest papers were born on this street. When we walked into St Bride's, it was all quiet. We were the only visitors and the place was being renovated. Yet there was a free exhibition on. We enjoyed looking at old newspaper extracts, the history of the Church, clippings of how the Church was bombed during the WW II, how it was destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt etc. It was next door to this Church that the first printing press in London started to function as well. Our second stop on Fleet Street was the pub that came with many recommendations in books such as the Lonely Planet. The debate continues on whether...

My piece in the Deccan Herald Romancing Kolkata It was a humid December afternoon when I landed in Kolkata. As the yellow taxi made its way through labyrinthine roads, I tried to take a deep breath and search for the Kolkata I had imagined from Tagore poetry, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland or Amitav Ghosh’s Flood of Fire.  I strained my ears for Rabindra Sangeet, bits and pieces of which I had listened to, on the Doordarshan of my childhood. Why, I even looked for the Kolkata of Saurav Ganguly, with the distinct voice of Geoffrey Boycott — “He’s the Prince of Calcoottar” ringing in my ears!  It became an obsession over the next few days to look for the familiar sights of the famed city I had only seen on television and read about so far. And I found them as well. First, as we walked along the wide footpaths near the Victoria Memorial and the extremely well-curated museum inside. Then, as I walked along Sudder Street and took a turn to enter Mirza Ghalib Street, I chanced on...

This afternoon, I went to Blossom Book House on Church Street after a gap of some months. Felt like visiting an old love, but it was an effort to rekindle the old magic. Has the book-buying experience changed? Or have my circumstances changed?  Blossom Book House, Church Street, a sanctuary once, an old love now I first discovered this bookstore about 13 years ago, in 2002, when it was a small one-room store in Brigade Gardens. When I was working as a sub-editor in a newspaper on MG Road, I'd end up at Blossom during the famed 5-6 pm 'thindi' break. Blossom was a sanctuary for me. I didn't have too much money to spend, but would end up buying a nice second-hand one for about Rs 50, and come back to the desk, in time for the post 6 pm rush. Work on the State Desk was dull and dreary sometimes, and we had to edit poorly written copies or make page after page on old systems that often hung! And the endless translations from Kannada to English. Going to Blossom bec...

The Indian Express edit page was left blank in protest against the Emergency. Photo courtesy: The Indian Express 25th June, 1975 . One of the darkest days in Indian democracy, when the Emergency was declared. Growing up, I was fed on a steady diet of anecdotes from those days.  Both my parents worked in Central government offices, so I have heard a million stories about the disciplinary action taken by authorities during the Emergency. Of office gates being closed, so people wouldn't leave before 5.30 pm etc. And stories of colleagues speaking against the government at bus-stops in hush-hush tones. Of the louder ones asked to keep the volume down. My parents recall how they'd have to take a day or half a day's leave even if they were late to work by a few minutes. They recall how union leaders would be put under suspension, and many people dismissed. Some were even demoted as part of disciplinary action. They also talk of how it was when the Emergency was lifted even...