September 2012
1 post
June 2012
3 posts
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Dastgeer Sahib - an epitaph
The beginning of the day this morning was not one of the lightest. The gray sky above Berlin met with the news of the fire of Dastgeer Sahib, a Sufi shrine in the centre of Srinagar, the summer capital of kashmir.
The shrine is one of the symbolic landmarks of the city: a massive structure made of carved wood, with tall spires, papier mache decoration, large chandeliers hanging over the prayer...
“The singer was singing
And they question him
Why do you sing?
He answers...”
– Mahmoud Darwish
May 2012
2 posts
Termites
Termites have eaten my bamboo bed in Bangalore, the only material possession that physically connected me to India.
An important object that I had it made thinking that it could be a way to anchor my presence in India.
An act of stability, an attempt at stabilisation.
And then today I got the news of the termites.
In a moment when I am seriously thinking of what next and more insistently about...
February 2012
4 posts
A moment in time - Kurdistan, 2
There are moments that surprise me with their surreal and inexplicable beauty.
Such as when, on the mountains, there is a black sky that is heavy with rain and hail.
Cold feet try not to slip on the insidious mud.
The houses all around are built with a mixture of rammed earth and leftovers of weapons: the curled tip of a Katyusha rocket not too far from my left ear.
The panorama opens up in a...
Kurdistan, 20 months later
It is the feeling of a strange homecoming.
The sky turns yellow in preparation to the upcoming sand storm.
The scent of sesame and flour of the samun, the romboide-shaped bread, just taken out of the wood oven by hands that are hardened by the heat.
The taste of mulberry syrup mixed with butter and walnuts and that of the sweet tea that seems to be boiling for a hours.
The prayer beads that run...
Falling in Love with an Idea and Making it a Thing
You run your fingers against your cowlicks
And explain to me what it means to
Love Everything: Corrupted Love
Now your hair vacillates between Nature
And Art: Time, the great bear, will make his
Entry and Exit upon whim and your
Hair and your Argument will rest, constant.
Big Love: of Big Things, Large Ideas
Of Grand Scales and Everything, is Love-
Corrupted: The Great Bear is but made up
of...
Offensive Hand Gestures When Traveling
Nearly everyone all over the globe knows that flashing the middle finger is meant as a huge insult to the recipient. However, many common hand gestures which are perfectly innocent in the US are in fact quite dangerous in other parts of the world. Here are seven of the most hazardous ones:
Pimsleur Approach Language Learning
January 2012
3 posts
White, Berlin 29th January 2012
White
Like the pair of gloves that I met on the third and fifth steps of the stairs of the underground. A pair of cotton gloves, like those that people who work in museums use to handle precious pictures. They, however, made me think about a crime story, about a killer who has just strangled his victim and has abandoned the gloves while running away.
Like the dice that I have found today on the...
U-bahn and invisible friends – Berlin, January...
The trains of the Berlin metro that I take every day to go to work look like old trams. The seats remind me of rickety, uncomfortable couches and are supported by metal bars that are sticky with thousands of fingerprints. The rickety couches face the central aisle and you find yourself sitting across from your fellow travellers, with knees pretty close to one another, and the occasional...
December 2011
2 posts
1 tag
one of those walks
today is one of those days in which i would like to receive an unexpected phone call by someone inviting me for a long walk by the sea.
one of those walks where you don’t need to talk, where you are almost alone, but you know there is someone walking next to you.
one of those walks where the rhythm of your breath mingles with that of the water
one of those walks where the waves and the...
November 2011
2 posts
It is all about the apron...
A conversation with Madhu Menon yesterday made me think…
A man who cooks well….
How can a woman possibly deny the appeal of such an idea?
A man with a shirt with rolled sleeves and maybe a blue apron with white stripes. Maybe one is so lucky as to find a man with a round belly that makes the apron fall in that very special way… Or maybe even a man with beautiful hands;...
who dares say technology kills love?!
Coming from a long history of research and training in the humanities, I developed through time a sort of irrational prejudice towards technology. I’ve always considered it as something instrumental, as a mere means to achieve whatever contingent end. I’ve always imagined the world connected to technology as something inherently, unavoidably cold. Possibly even sterile. For the longest...
October 2011
4 posts
the whispers of the night
3.05 am yet another sleepless nightthe noises from the living-room have finally quietened downeventually there is silencesleep, though, has not come back to visit me i concentrate and listen to the whispers of the night a crow croaks three times, in long intervals, almost in response to the tumultuous questions that accumulate in my headand then the howl of stray dogs, four or maybe six of thema...
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Islands (Dedicated to ZB, R, KJ, SA, RG, SD)
After the quarantine of my escaped malaria, I set off to travel once again and I began a strange and surprising sailing.
A trip through unexpected islands, an exploration of my present that, in its making, takes the shape of an archipelago of multiple islands, where people speak distinct languages, where they share a different sense of community, where they interpret codes formulated in often...
September 2011
3 posts
1 tag
blood test
It is more or less ten days that I swing between days of good health and bouts of very high fever.
Yesterday morning the doctor looks at me and , without hesitation, says: “Malaria”.
“Hmm”, I think, “definitely not the best way to begin the day. Considering that I am barely forty kilos, with malaria I would risk extinction!”
I reluctantly agree to get a blood...
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aloo bonda
They say that with such a weather this is the best thing to do.
The monsoon rain has come back after a long wait. In the past days, waves of heat seemed to announce rainstorms, which instead – lazy – did not seem to materialise. Today it eventually rained. A liberating rain that brought us relief and ruffled the red flowers of the big tree that grows outside my window.
They say that with such...
1 tag
animals
A cow stopped at the traffic-light, next to the rickshaw where I was sitting, calm and composed (the cow), waiting for the light to turn green. The cocker spaniel named Bea that we are now babysitting only pees in the bathroom. A massive bat flew in the big rammed earth house; it came in from the door next to the bamboo growth. We turned the lights off and opened doors and windows. It glided over...
August 2011
3 posts
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July 2011
6 posts
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pause: in times of conflict
PAUSE - IN TIMES OF CONFLICT.
Reading about the Gaza Strip from here is estranging. What is it like there? On some days, Palestine could be just as far as Assam, and on other days, Palestine is too far to think about. How much do we know for sure? How much do we only have an idea of? We encounter war and conflict every day, and it seems to have merged with the...
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June 2011
4 posts
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May 2011
13 posts
3 tags
salaam kabul
it is my last day in kabulthis time i don’t have quite clear whether i am opening or closing a parenthesis.i have had the immense fortune of having wonderful hosts, who opened many doors to me and made this “first time” an unforgettable one. i know for sure that i will be back soon. the city is calling me and i feel like responding.kabul seems like a demanding lady, who needs...
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walking the streets of kabul
the streets of kabul are quiet.eerily quiet.the feeling is a volatile sense of suspension. i have learnt it now, nothing happens until something happens.that’s the only way in which i think i can describe the sense of instability that a place at war, or coming out of a conflict, gives me. and yet war is faraway from kabul. it is in the provinces, on the mountains.not on the streets of...
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afghan may....
preparing for kabul!
can’t wait to be there!
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Osama bin Laden’s Second Death by Dr. Paul Craig...
If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April fool’s joke this morning’s headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans. Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease...
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