The Rebelle blog

Best to meet in poems: cool speckled shells in which one hears a sad but distant sea.   When writers go to some dark spaces and then pull out of them to unravel the brightness specking the surroundings, that's when we enter this happy sojourn into their world. How many times have we heard about everything that has a reason, a time, a place? Somedays my nights are spent excessively dwelling upon this reasoning of time. How do we really get into and out of this catacomb of emotions so frequently and so easily? I just finished reading two works of fiction, both intense emotional dramas and my heart couldn't stop from beating hard for the people in them. I shipped them when they fell down and struggled to move on in their fictional lives. No comparing our complex lives on hand, but isn't fiction the escape from reality?  The more I think about necessities and lost opportunities, the more I revel in the knowledge of self-evaluation. Anyway, this is the l...

SO TODAY has been a very mixed productive work day. I believe I have absolutely tired my eyes out staring at the computer screen so much in 9 hours. More than that actually. Do we ever stop working by the clock? I envisaged two lines of a story throughout the day just to keep up with my energies for some creative output for the day.  I was very happy in the morning after my dance class and decided to paint something today. The morning breeze and slight drizzle on the way back home put me in high spirits. I felt charged and every atom within me bounced with endless energy. Something about witnessing the bright day and chaos on the streets had me unexpectantly cheery for my usual self. There is a madness in routine and habits. Anthony Trollope is said to have written meticulously every day. He wrote every day for three hours, 250 words in 15 minutes and 66 pages per week was his decided course for a book draft. This kind of routine is sure to produce good writing habits. I have...

Should we be apologetic for what we read? Could it be embarrassing to admit that some of us do read YA fiction because some of it offers great advice on life! It was with such thoughts when I read this article  on why reading fiction has become more important than ever. On Kindle, I have had access to some great fiction books that I would have otherwise not read as paperbacks. One among them is Love in the Present Tense by Catherine Ryan Hyde whose another book, Pay it Forward was made into a movie. The reasons for explaining our literature choices are more important these days is because all of us get labelled and categorized by our literary tastes in a book club. On Goodreads, when I see a healthy mix of fiction, non-fiction, history and sociology books it makes me realise this variation in our reading is essential for our thinking caps to grow and expand so as to behave sensibly in public. The moral code for behaviour is set pretty hard for people who read a multitude of su...

It's one of those days, you know when you are feeling low and your self-esteem is at a real zero, that the universe provides hope in unexpected forms. With me, this happened in the form of postcards, not one, two or three but ELEVEN of them. My Dad bought the post on his way back home and I almost cried with joy to see them all.  What makes a random activity like Postcrossing really click with people and invest their time in sending postcards with messages to strangers all over the world? I believe, it is the necessity to claim humanity, to claim the love that is lost in the vast sea pool of hatred, discrimination and diversity. The more connected the world has become, the faster we have lost our shroud of humanity. We are increasingly being divided on the basis of race, colour, religion, economy, culture, geography and politics, of course! Our conscious collaborative is not working amidst high powered business economies and commercial profit ventures. People who come from di...

In a writing workshop conducted in IIT-B on Saturday, we were asked to write about our favourite food memory. What I couldn't conjure then, I shall write here today. My earliest pie memory is from reciting nursery rhymes from childhood. A porcelain bowl with dripping dark chocolate over sugar glazed green apples later baked with a caramelised crust, hot from the oven had my mouth watering many years ago when I saw it in a movie on Pies titled Waitress . Years later, I tried recreating it in my home with a not-so-same effect other than enjoying the bitter chocolate in my mouth. Each new pie recipe inspired me to go through Crawford Market on Friday evenings looking through fresh fruit stalls. The mounds and colourful assortments of juicy, ripe peaches and apples sent a surge of happiness through me. I started imagining baking pies in my head like Jenna did. Unlike her, I did not have names for my pie but I did imagine colours and fruits of all kinds in mine. Vanilla and Pineapple ...

A flute chimes an endless melody in the house as I open the door and step in, crossing the reflecting floor tiles with drapes around the window fluttering in a constant breeze on this summer day... And then I hear Doris Day's voice singing Que Sera Sera. Is this a wistful dream from stormy nights or my many thoughts that wrap themselves in music and summer light? The very first thoughts when I enter my house are of the light that streams through those windows next to our library. The books bathe in a shiny gleam of yellow and sombre tones warming my heart every moment I see them. There's a different emotion while penning thoughts about a heart song that lingers for a while, extending its stay for a long time far in the future. For a long time since acquiring a new phone, I did not have music in it. I would hum in my head while travelling with my head buried in books. And then one day, I heard a group of women sing some classics from my childhood in the train. It evoked nostal...