#250: On nurturing this garden of curiosities 🌺

Here’s to beauty and being alive.

Oct 02, 2023

Hello!

It’s the 250th weekly edition, and I thought of making it an extra loaded newsletter. First, thank you to everyone who has been on this wild journey with me, from sometime between February 2015 to today. I see you, and am grateful for your open invite into your inbox every week. (Can’t believe it was a daily edition for the first three years. Phew.)

I’m just happy that this newsletter is the playground of ideas that is. A garden of curiosities that has grown with me, that has opened me up to the myriad of beauty in the world we live in, manifested through poems, art, words, links, songs.

Here’s to beauty and being alive.

Last chance to pre-order Memories on a Plate

Quick reminder. I’ve spent the past nine months collecting 100 memories from Indian kitchens for the upcoming anthology Memories on a Plate, co-curated by me (The Alipore Post) and Nivaala. Shruti and I have created quite the magnum opus with essays, recipes, poetry, illustrations, photography and comics that talk of nostalgia and food. We also created Voice Notes from the Kitchen, a collection of intimate audio memories that complement the culinary anthology, added as QR codes in the book.

If you’d like a copy of this labour of love, please do pre-order now. We close pre-orders soon, and will use the funds raised to go into print! We’re also donating a meal for every book sold towards Khaana Chahiye’s fight against hunger.

Pre-Order Now!

Poetry Corner

Just a couple of wonderful poems that made me pause.

1. Always Bring a Pencil by Naomi Shihab Nye

There will not be a test.
It does not have to be
a Number 2 pencil.

But there will be certain things—
the quiet flush of waves,
ripe scent of fish,
smooth ripple of the wind’s second name—
that prefer to be written about
in pencil.

It gives them more room
to move around.

2. Considering The Snail by Thom Gunn

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts. I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail’s fury? All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.

3. Enough by David Whyte

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to life
we have refused
again and again
until now.

Until now.

4. How to forget by Susan Denning

Ashes are meant for cigarettes,
for doused campfires.
When I can’t remember how I got
to the middle, I start over.

When I walk by the cemetery
I stare straight ahead. Do I have
a pure heart? It doesn’t matter.

My love of opposites got me this far—
clouds and dirt. They both carry the past,
but clouds do it in a way
that makes me want to follow.

Today my favorite words are glove and live.
Gloves are meant for breathing hands,
for keeping the world at bay. Look at me
on the assembly line, keeping all the parts

straight. The hem of my coat is singed,
but I sing anyway. I haven’t failed at being human,
if being human means breaking
what you mended and mending it again.

I don’t imagine I’ll be carried up
into the sky. Someone will walk
over me. On the soles of someone’s sneakers,
I’ll see the world again. I’ll love it a little harder.

5. A Day Dream by Henry Alford

Leave love, leave life:-our moments are made up
Of fragments of desire: O that with thee
In some tree-shaded vale
I might live out my years;
Listening a lordly river over stones
Trailing its waters, or the leafy sighs
Of wooded hedge-rows; or in flowery paths
Nursing bright blooms; while still and unobserved
The years should draw their train:
Then under sunny rocks
Weave curious tales of love, and look through life
Into the inner springs of human thought;
Presenting to the insight of our souls
Honour, and faith, and old integrity,
And mighty leaps of will
Down the slow course of fate;
And how the ages grand
Tended with mystic chime
Of night-enthralling song
The Time-long sleep of Truth.