Pimpage Department Hai Everybody! Did you know that at one point, Nithyananda was trending along with Justin Bieber? Anyway, I want to say that I have one number story called Flying and Falling, which first appeared in the most excellent publication Shimmer and is also in my collection Insects are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them have Wings and is also included in the Best American Fantasy 3 anthology, which just arrived by the awesome postman to my corner of the worl

How can you be poor in India and have an internet connection? Why don’t you sell your internet connection and not be poor? I know, right? This is such a valid question. But for whatever reasons, there are those among us who are poor but they have teh internetz. They have internet connection but it is for an assembled PC which was built from donated parts. This PC is kept on the floor and is of such a nervous and high-strung disposition that it will freeze and shut down freque

I really think it is awesome when people get married or write novels. Some have even managed to do both these things simultaneously at the same time, which is more awesomer. But some of us keep getting molested because we aren’t writing a novel or aren’t married. I think this is very notnice. I mean, I don’t go around molesting people because they ARE married or ARE doing the novel thing. To quote an old classmate of mine ‘what it seems for her, ya? what for her face it seems

Because I could not think of anything to blog about, I thought it would be the most splendid idea ever to post my Facebook 25 Random Things About Me List. I thought about this idea and I thought, wow, that is splendid. That is a splendid idea. But first, I want to mention some other random things also. 1. This Article in Tehelka About Indian Readers And Indian Writers “But reading contemporary Indian writers in English leaves you with a feeling that there remain stubborn laye

1. FRiGG’s eagerly-awaited Law & Order Issue is finally up and live and kicking people in the jaw because it is very awesome. It has creepy dolls in it. This alone ups the awesomeness quotient significantly. I am soveryhappy to have a story in this issue called Notes Made in Connnection with the Disappearance of a Boy Outside the Tropicool Icy-Land Urban Indian Slum as Investigated by the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. 2. The Tehelka Festivus Miracle continues to spread i

Today’s Dave is Ellen Parker who I like to call Allen and who is a writer and also the editor of the amazing zine FRiGG, which began way back in the spring of 2003 and is still here in all its awesomeness. Behold the FRiGG! Dig the bloodshotedness of the pretty eye! Allen is also from the exotic land of America! America is where everyone is rich and happy and the streets are paved with marshmallows and Coca Cola grows on trees! FRiGG was one of the first zines I ever fell in

This post is not about burning Injuns in Australia. It’s about the show. I’m almost finished watching Oz. I think I will shelve this among the shows I can watch once but probably not twice. So before I forget about the show and end up watching it all over again because I forgot I watched it already, here is Oz- Oru Pinnoki Payanam. The Orange Prize- It seemed to me that everyone in Oz is always eating oranges. Adebisi liked to bite them like apples while Schillinger seemed to

Today’s Dave is Rakesh Khanna, the lone male and the lone Rakesh in the Blaft Publications trinity. I asked him to send picture for blog post and this is what he sent. It is an eyefoot. It reminded me of some art I had done myself, which I call The Happy Dolphin. But let us get back to the eyefoot. If you are a good person, you will think that little anklet thing is a little anklet thing representative and celebratory of Indian ethnicity and culture. If you are not a good per

I have a very short piece called firang up at mud luscious. ml press will be publishing a chapbook of one of my pieces called Three Scenarios Leading to the Rape of a Teenage Girl in the Tropicool Icy-land Urban Indian Slum. Interesting Lesson of the New Year- ‘Buenos Nachos Hombre’ apparently does not mean ‘Happy New Year’ in Spanish. Music That I Unintentionally Listened to on Loop – ‘I’m Not an Actor’ by MLTR. There is this one line where I thought he was saying ‘even in m

Are you one of the many people who have been thinking “Hey! I wonder if Shalini Umachandran and Jai Undurti have been kidnapped and are being held for ransom or maybe they are already dead!” Think no more! We have just received Proof of Life pics of these illustrious people, posing with the latest Tehelka issue opened exactly at the Anarch page! Yay! Let’s take a look at them, shall we? This is Shalini Umachandran. She is smiling and happy. Whoever kidnapped her must be super

Today’s Dave is Jai Undurti who is part of the Hyderabad Graphic Novel Project. Jai offered the following bio- Jai is from Vizag and has been known to make things up. I’d like to add that he has also had dengue fever and he likes taking pictures of graveyards. He also claims to have been unbelievably close to the hallowed halls of Delhi’s infamous Haagen Dazs but never made it inside, possibly because he did not have an international passport with him at the time. km- These A

The Second Annual Tehelka Fiction Issue is up and I am very pleased to have my story Anarch included in this issue. Extra very pleased that the word ‘fuck’ was not written as ‘f**k’ and that the unEnglish words were not italicized so they could stand proud and unatrophied like their soEnglish counterparts. Big tanks to Nisha Susan and the rest of Team Tehelka.

Things I Liked In 2009– Some of these things I may have actually liked in 2008. Anyway. Eleanor Wachtel’s Interview with Lynda Barry I Never Liked You by Chester Brown– There is a lot I liked about this graphic novel. One thing was that it reminded me of a really good piece of flash fiction which looks deceptively sparse and simple but carries a lot of layers. The Bad Rhyme Generator on seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful april morning by Haruki Murakami Laurie Lipton

Blaftatronic Halwa is 1) Stale, bus-stand halwa which causes stomach problems exactly 15 minutes into your 7 hour bus journey 2) Halwa that has something in it that is either soft, moldy cashews or partially fossilized raisins and when you eat it (which you do, because you are stupid), it tastes like french fries. 3) Halwa made from broken motherboards and battery acid. 4) The halwa you tried to make once that not only solidified into something much harder than granite, it sw

1. Song I Didn’t Want To Like But I Do I really, really did not want to like Mutya Buena’s cover of Fast Car. For one thing, it’s Fast Car and for one another thing, she was a Sugababe. But I like it. I think it is a good cover and she has a great voice. And the reason why it’s not like the Tracy Chapman version is because the Tracy Chapman version is like the Tracy Chapman version. 2. Song I Thought I Would Like But I Don’t I was totally ready to like this one. If this song

Hai everybody!! Welcome to my blog!! Yay!! First, a big thanks to everyone who helped/gave input on putting this together. I would like to dedicate my very first blog post to something I hope to do on a somewhat regular basis- These Are The Daves I Know I Know. Inspired by a song from my youth, Daves are people I don’t know very well but I know them a little and I think they’re neat. So I ask them questions and they answer, sometimes they lie but what can you do. Our very fir