Death has left its nasty imprint on the meadows of the mind, and the soul awaits its judgement; it keeps itself busy in the libraries of the purgatory. In there, one reads the book of death, one page long. Life, it says, shapeless ascends to the sky, and enters a cloud where its fate will be decided. Seven times it goes around the earth raising a storm, a lightning rolls, sending it back to earth, burning with new life, and then thunder, its judgment passed.
News, stories and music, all carried whiffs of death this week. Middle age is the border of life and death, there is no escaping its views, your own shadow creeping past the fences, into the no man’s land between. And so in its realm Bombay Daak continues to remain.
However, a dispatch from the purgatory also carries hope for the faithful, a promise of life after. Keep the faith while art, music and poems keep it beautiful.
Dirges
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves Waited for rain, while the black clouds Gathered far distant, over Himavant. The jungle crouched, humped in silence. Then spoke the thunder DA
— T.S. Elliot’s The Waste Land
Adventure works in any strand—it calls to those who care more for living than for their lives.
— Amal El-Mohtar, This is How You Lose the Time War
I got caught in the story of Bigolas Dickolas and this book, and downloaded the Audiobook, then proceeded to understand nothing yet feel everything.
It fits right in with this edition, as you will see (or hear) if you do.
Hugh Laurie visits the St. James Infirmary!
Does not Eternity appear dreadful to you . . . I often get thinking of it and it seems so dark to me that I almost wish there was no Eternity. To think that we must forever live and never cease to be. It seems as if Death which all so dread because it launches us upon an unknown world would be a relief to so endless a state of existense."
Emily Dickinson In a letter to Abiah Root on her poem Because I could not stop for Death
Further - Emily Dickinson and Death:
Although some find the preoccupation morbid, hers was not an unusual mindset for a time and place where religious attention focused on being prepared to die and where people died of illness and accident more readily than they do today.
Why do you fry bread when you remember your son, Spasoula? Why do you eat the bread all alone in your yard? Because I used to fry bread for my son when he was little. When my son was little, I would heat the oil and cut tiny strips. I would fry the bread and sprinkle it with lots of sugar. That’s what I did for my son when he was little. That’s what Spasoula did for her son when he was little. But she doesn’t want to talk to me about it, she just sits alone in her yard and sprinkles sugar over the bread and cries.
Death Customs was one of the first short stories I read during a season of reading them during the pandemic. I was struck by its structure and form, its rhythm and its unsparing use of repetitions gave a home to one’s own inclination with words. Spare some time for this one.
How the Cult of Mary Magdalene influenced Cezanne - One of my favourite pieces on the web on Paul Cezanne
Suburban Obituary
The march of Indigo Deli, that began half a decade or so ago, towards irrelevance is now complete. In 2005 it changed the food landscape with some of the best burgers, and sandwiches in the city (and the secret home to some of the best ice cream). Indigo defined a comfort that was very rarely available when you step out for a meal, a place that won’t go wrong. While falling rodents and crumbly buns pointed to its inevitable demise, the recent shift from its iconic location came as the pronouncement of death. The journey is truly complete. Fare thee well old haunt, not everyone can claim to have redefined the scene in Bombay.
Da Da Da — The fable of the Thunder