During my 6-week writing hiatus, India has been holding national elections. They spread them out by sections of the country because it gives the national election commission sufficient time to oversee the voting to avoid "irregularities", etc. The results are to be announced this week sometime. It's been so long even the newspapers are getting bored of writing about it. One highlight for me in the campaigning came a few Sundays back when I read the following in the newspaper:
The Headline: Day of Embarrassment for BJP, Congress
On the one side, a Congress candidate threated to chop the
BJP prime ministerial nominee into pieces…
He was arrested on charges of hate speech. Caught on video, he said, “If Modi tries to
turn U.P. (his home state) into Gujurat (Modi’s state), then we will chop him
into tiny pieces….I am not scared of getting killed or attacking someone.” OBVI
On the other side, the BJP announced that party membership of one guy had been
annulled on Saturday. He had joined the
BJP only on Friday…. Hmmmm. Not sure
what is happening on that one, but someone conjectured that they discovered the guy was Muslim.
In other news, the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez died. If you haven't read either Love in the Time of Cholera or 100 Years of Solititude, put them at the top of your list. The man was a genius, and his short stories, along with his novels, are some of my favorite reads. Here is the opening sentence of 100 Years...
“Many years later, as he faced the
firing squad, Col. Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon
when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of
20 adobe houses built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a
bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs.
The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate
them it was necessary to point.”
“One Hundred Years of Solitude”
sold tens of millions of copies. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda called it
“the greatest revelation in the Spanish language since ‘Don Quixote.’ ”
The novelist William Kennedy hailed it as “the first piece of literature since
the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.” I concur.
Below are some pictures I've been saving for various blogs that I have to condense today because of time constraints. They are from a recent trip to the beach, our train ride to Bangalore, and the birds of my neighborhood. I'll let the pictures do the talking...
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| This guy was in the park. Check out the bluish legs. |
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| The view from the rear of a loaded truck |
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| Small load by Indian standards |
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| Standing and watching the tide roll in! |
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| Punk Woodpecker |
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