Please Help Yuki

This is heart-wrenching. I read her story and am completely gutted for her. She was abandoned by her husband five days before her sex-realignment surgery, and is now unemployed and almost homeless. Please help. Got this from Lainie. Please do pass it on.
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Dear gals and pals,
I would like to bring your attention to a special [...]

The Venus Flytrap: Going There And Going Back

When I tell people that my favourite film is Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También, they do not understand. They do not understand how this coming-of-age story about two Mexican boys could be the film that I love the most; what could I possibly see of myself in it? But it is true. It is [...]

Lavanya Sankaran Fellowship

I am delighted to share that in addition to having been accepted into this year’s residency programme at Sangam House, I have also been given the Lavanya Sankaran Fellowship for 2008-2009.

The Venus Flytrap: Dial M For Misuse

The government of Tamil Nadu launched an “integrated emergency care” scheme last week, which will make getting assistance during any emergency situation just a phone call away. Naturally, this is a welcome measure, especially since our national security has recently come under threat. The only problem is, an emergency is a relative thing.
A woman in [...]

Just Discovered

The Poetess Counts To 100 And Bows Out
The poetess gathers interim herbage,
aged bread, ash right from the knife,
herbs for the outcomes and the first rites.
Maybe she likes the legacy the strong ones claim,
the studious group, hands free, hearts shut.
Who, he or she? oathbound, bound for the future:
Scions of a bitch baying so sweetly for the [...]

The Cover of Witchcraft

If you would like to see the cover of my new book of poems, out next month, please go here. And do consider this a personal invitation to join the group. On that note, please don’t add or message me on Facebook as I prefer to correspond with people I do not know over email.
I [...]

The Venus Flytrap: Just Ask Jeeves

I hired my first secretary last week.
Unlike most other collaborations in this book publishing process, I got exactly the person I wanted. She’s smart, young, confident, and the sort of girl who actually prints out an agenda when her grandfather holds a magic show at his apartment. She is also – fortunately – the kind [...]

The Venus Flytrap: “Domestic” Travel

I don’t have a driving license for any vehicle. Nor do I know how to drive, since the two don’t necessarily go arm in arm (the long arm of the law, that is). I’m always either shotgun rider (a far too cool term for the cowardly, lazy or bourgeois) or paying passenger.
In India, I’m a [...]

The First Two Chapters

I received some wonderful news today — I have been accepted into a writers’ residency, where I intend to work on my novel, Constellation of Scars.
I recently linked to Ghoti Magazine’s publication of the first chapter, and since then I’ve wanted to post up more.
This is especially for Syar, who wrote to say that reading [...]

A Show of Stupidity

When I heard that The Vagina Monologues — most famously banned in 2004 when Eve Ensler herself was touring the country — was going to be performed in Chennai last week, I thought (like anyone with vaguely literary or liberal ideas) that it was a good step in the right direction. The much-celebrated play was [...]