033 - Letter on a Summer Afternoon
It is strange to look at this skyline of mine.
I write from a Bombay where under a pale sky the bright roofs of tenements have departed. The walls are beige and muddied brown, the windows absent, smudged like kohl. Within them another summer of restraint and isolation. An unwanted stillness.
Yet beneath everything runs a current of seismic quality.
In case you are joining me after a brief interruption, then this is Bombay Daak, a newsletter around reading (mostly).
A library in Mysuru was gutted and with it were lost 11000 books. The good folks of the Internets have setup a fundraiser to help Syed Issac rebuild the toil of his life.
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A writer joins a hedge fund to save enough in two years that he may sit and write his novel. Fourteen years later, Thomas Maloney, still working at the fund, writes on behalf of those with bifurcated lives - people who have a day job and pursue a different passion.
Writing about passions, work-love, moonlighting, Fear of Non Achievement (is it a thing?), people who’ve found meaning and money in their job, people who haven’t, he offers a calming narrative, for them whose ambitions are often at a mismatch with the time they have.
I contend, however, that while our lives need to be meaningful, our work does not; it only has to be honest and useful. And if someone is voluntarily paying you to do something, it’s probably useful at least to them.
...At the most, I might advise them to be wary of career preachers, whether radical or conservative, and that, while they shouldn’t fear commitment and leaps of faith, they also shouldn’t fear compromise.
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A livestream with Arvind Krishna Mehrotra on The Book of Indian Essays starts at 6:30 IST today. I hope you can catch it. Watch it here.
Ruchir Joshi’s review of the book and you can buy the book from Champaca.
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In a season of half watched shows and quarter read books and unread bookmarks, I was hooked by Latif Nasser's Connected on Netflix. It has six episodes, and it released last year (so most of you might have seen it already, in which case I am disappointed you didn’t let me know).
But what a beautiful show and hello Benford's Law! It is incredible and insane.
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You know coffee is fine, but in these summer afternoons you can't make an Arnold Palmer with one. And here is the story of how Arnold Palmer made this cooler a thing.
I wish it was otherwise but there is a restless air around me. Attention is feeble, doubts strong. Such kind of a day, such kind of a week. This a time of deep anguish. But then there is no better time to be kind, to each other and to oneself.
I surrender to it all and take refuge in the words of Jim Moore.
Not to Know How to Live
All modesty is false modesty
when it comes to poems,
or to the silence
in which poems begin
before they are words,
when they are still daisies
at the foot of the dead Christ
in an anonymous painting,
13th century. Not to know how to live
is one thing, and nothing
to be ashamed of.
But not to know
how to sit in front of those daisies
with tears in my eyes:
what a waste that would be.