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Continue reading →: Bugis, Singapore: Why I keep coming backTraveling is often conceptualized as a passive activity, as though seeing new places enriches you somehow when you gather new experiences. Yet, it often turns out to be more about active self-discovery than about seeing a new place, about experience that could not have happened exactly the same way without…
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Continue reading →: Signs of SingaporeWhen you come to a new country which is multilingual and English speaking, where the number of languages most people speak is at least two, if not more, you tend to think, at first, that you understand signs and what they mean when they are in English. Until you realize…
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Continue reading →: Looking for a title
I have so many things to write about that I have written about nothing.
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Continue reading →: Writer’s Block
Singapore July 8, 2015 I have my word processor open but I’m thinking of the ants this morning. They are not the ticklish, harmless, black ants climbing all over the tabletop I wrote about earlier (from coke can to mouthwash) but a line of red ants on the concrete walkway…
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Continue reading →: Assumptions
While discussing student written responses on Amy Tan I’m telling the class it would be conventional to refer to her as Tan rather than Amy because . . . when I look around and realize that some kids present have no lastname, some have upto four names, some may be…
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Continue reading →: Sudden Status
A familiar sight after many years once again: moving black dots covering a neglected coke can as soon as I’m done, the white sink covered in moving black dots in the morning drawn by the sweet, peppermint mouthwash from last night, dead, winged insect on the white floor suddenly moving…
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Continue reading →: Goodbye, Friend, until we meet again
I cannot say, and I will not say That he is dead. He is just away. With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand, He has wandered into an unknown land And left us dreaming how very fair It needs must be, since he lingers there. And you—oh…
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Continue reading →: What Blog IsSometimes a blog is just what a blog is. The recording of a moment, a sudden attempt to capture what is by nature ephemeral, to grasp at the truth as though it can be held back as it slips through the sieve. Sometimes, a blog is just talking to yourself,…
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Continue reading →: In Singapore: The Year of the Goat, 2015It is my nature that on festival days, I feel very restless at home. It doesn’t matter whether it’s traditionally a festival I’ve followed for years or a festival I’ve just been immersed in due to the accident of location or company but there is that smell in the air…
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Continue reading →: The Circle of LifeKahin To Yeh Dil Kabhi Mil Nahin Paate Kahin Pe Nikal Aaye Janmon Ke Naate Ghani Thi Uljhan Bairi Apna Man Apna Hi Hoke Sahe Dard Paraye Kabhi Yun Hi Jab Hui Bojhal Saansen Bhar Aai Baithe Baithe Jab Yoon Hi Aankhen Kabhi Machal Ke Pyaar Se Chal Ke Chhuye…
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Continue reading →: Ten Thousand Followers!
Would love to say something on all ten thousand of you but realized that a poet had said it so much better than me about 200 years ago.
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Continue reading →: Festival Art and Ephemerality: End of Durga Puja 2014It was Durga Puja. The air was full of the non-stop beat of pujo’r dhaak (drum), music, microphone announcements, children’s elocution recitations, honks of a thousand cars, autorickshaws, rickshaws, voices of screaming kids and parents, lost and found announcements, children bursting crackers in their toy guns (“caps”) that went off…
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Continue reading →: Street Food: Calcutta Durga Puja–Shoshthi Shaptami 2014!If you’ve lived in one of the great Indian mega-cities for any length of time, one of the things that you can never forget is the street food. But street food during a festival like Durga Pujo? You have to see it to believe it. I’ve only really lived in…
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Continue reading →: My Writing Process
This post ought to have been left blank because I realized that I have no process. Or perhaps there is no process. Except that process where you have shown perseverance in spending time glued to the chair at your desk, tearing your hair (if you have any left), sighing in despair, pacing…
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Continue reading →: Does writing advice really help?
People vary vastly in their approach to work or play. So when I see a lot of writing advice doing the rounds (including my own), I’m rather skeptical. Unless the advice is really specific, regarding tone, structure, syntax or something else, it serves little purpose for me beyond motivation, which,…
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Continue reading →: Tales by The Boy
Thanks to the exploits of The Boy on the word processor, the nascent blog post I wrote has been deleted. Various experiments were performed by The Boy on a solitary sentence I had churned out after almost half an hour’s worth of staring at the screen when said boy decided…
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Continue reading →: Freshly Pressed! Times 5
I was pleasantly surprised when I opened my email! I’m going to be Freshly Pressed for Writing Memoir on Social Media. I must acknowledge my debt to two people for the post: Cheri Lucas Rowlands (who also happens to be the editor who chose the piece) whose recent post brought…
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Continue reading →: Writing Memoir on Social MediaI’m doing something in the room and The Boy walks in stealthily from behind me and suddenly there is a shower of bubbles in the air and lots of childish laughter. I turn my face and I see a host of bubbles floating up and up and up towards the…
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Continue reading →: From eleven-year-old Bottledworder
You all have been reading Bottledworder for the past two years. Thought you might enjoy something I chanced upon covered in brown paper tied with a jute string this week. They were old exercise books. Peeking out of one of them was an old, yellowed exam sheet with the words Better…
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Continue reading →: The room of my own
When my brother and I were little, we used to play this game in the afternoons sometimes. My brother would sit on one side of the bed and I would sit on the other and we would imagine that the bed was a boat and that we were floating away…
I’m, Bottledworder. Always inhabiting the half-streets, catching paradoxes, thinking in greys, trapping the world in words in my bottle.
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