The Rebelle blog

My Dad misplaced some medical records in our house and we spent pretty much the entire day looking for them. Almost searched every nook and crany of our newly renovated house. It has been a taxing day more so for me because I had been travelling for two days straight in one of my  most uncomfortable & harrowing train travels ever prior to landing up in this search mission. Now, I've caught an allergic cold from all the dust and still no success in locating the records. So, it has been a very unexpected gift only because I was proudly boasting last week about my immune system and how healthy I am while my family fell ill with allergic cold and from the heat. Life has a way of getting back at us. Is it Karma? Who knows? I certainly don't believe in it. May be, a tiny part of my brain dwells on it but never with full faith. Another unexpected gift has been the surprising retrieval of two design manuals I'd misplaced and thought lost. One of them is an Accessibility Desig...

While synchronising a book catalogue application with Goodreads today, I realised the huge number of unread books I possess in my collection. Why I never got around to reading them or why I left them unfinished will truly take a large share of my memory to remember! Some days I feel the fire burned & extinguished out of me, while some days it is so fierce that I feel a strong unstoppable force within me. These moments of introspection come not without their terrifying implications on my psyche. Even the festive season is not uplifting my mood. There is just so much going around us at the moment. I am at a cross section of journeys that I feel too stifled to endeavour upon. One would think ageing gives us enough power to confront our demons and demolish them. Not always happening. I am reading a lot of diverse material from Gender Studies to Polity and Social Structure of Economies but it leaves a gaping hole each time I dwell upon this utilitarian arrangement we are part of, ...

AAH, Annie! I remember the first time I heard Arundhati Roy's name. It was in 1996-97 when she won the Booker Prize for her novel, The God of Small Things. It was considered as a major achievement by a young novelist, Indian, mind you at that time. I still remember her frozen image on the TV screen, the curls dominating her delicate face something about which made her so different and stand out from the crowd. About a decade later, I entered Architecture school. I was still fascinated and hugely obsessed with her. She became a one time writer, published that one and only novel, won the booker and was an architect by education. It was enough to be transfixed with her. In the very first week of architecture school, we, first years were gathered in the big seminar hall and shown "In which Annie gives it those ones". When I saw the title I thought, what kind of absurd grammar error was that. Then, Arundhati Roy's name flashed on the screen and I kept my patience. Th...