Anindita Sengupta

I thought this was going to be another ‘linking’ post but it turned into something else. Which is reassuring because it means I’m becoming less lazy as it gets warmer. I’m on the last leg of my stay in Canterbury and feeling a bit reflective. It’s been particularly interesting because it’s my first time living alone. (I moved out of home only when I got married which in any case was relatively early.) There’s a strange and sometimes disquieting freedom to being able to set the rhythms of your own day. In this case, it’s heightened because I have no job, no classes, nobody to answer to. Sometimes the space is overwhelming. Other times, it’s magical.

I spend a lot of time reading or writing in my room. It’s quieter than any place I’ve lived in before. Except on some nights when one of my flatmates decides she must make some noise. On these nights, she sings very loudly, has screaming matches with some unfortunate person on the phone or laughter fests with friends at the doorway. She’s 19 as are my other three flatmates. Apparently, there were some issues with availability of rooms so I ended up in the under-grad area. It’s possible to live very separate lives though, which is a good thing because they’re quite shy around me and (understandably) treat me as if I’m from another planet, to be stepped around gingerly and so on. I remember how I felt about people over 30 when I was 19. So it’s interesting in the ironic ‘your time will come’ kinda way to be on the other side of the fence.

Occasionally, I walk to the centre of campus about 15 minutes away to go to the library or buy something. There’s been the odd social thing and I’ve met some interesting post-grad students. Sometimes I go into Canterbury town and have lunch and walk around. The riverside walk is quite idyllic. There are gardens and little bridges, lost umbrellas, lots of ducks and then suddenly, swans.

I’ve been going to London very often, at least once a week and because I have dear people who invite me over, I’ve spent some weekends there.  There’s little one can add to the reams that have been written and said about London but I do love it. A big city has a different sort of energy about it and I haven’t experienced that since I left Bombay where I grew up. So my liking for London is partly nostalgia. But only partly. The rest is just the fantastic coolth of the city.

I also find it exhausting though. I’m always dreadfully tired by the end of the day. Okay, there is a four-hour commute. But it’s more than that, something to do with the high that comes from collective energy and the subsequent anticlimax, perhaps. This is what makes such cities so addictive, I suppose. Each day packs in more of life’s mania, darkness and exuberance, the gambler’s roller-coaster of emotions. Other places can seem desperately ordinary in comparison.

But it’s a huge sign of progress — or age — that I haven’t started mourning the loss of Bombay as a result or wishing I lived in London. I’m sort of seeing the possibilities contained in living the quieter, more ordinary life and it seems like, finally, I’ve grown to like my life in Bangalore enough to not want to change it. It’s taken a long time for it to feel like home. A little more than a decade. And it’s been very hard at times so I feel a bit like celebrating.

Anyway, now for those links. This is one of the nicest International Women’s Day posts I read (and I’m not saying that just because I’m mentioned in it). Jessica Smith on female bloggers (via Rumpus). And this poem in Writers Connect which I found surprising.

And morning has broken and I must sleep.

My poem ‘The City of Water’ is now up at Unsplendid, an online journal of received and nonce forms. It’s a sestina. Do read if you’re interested in that kind of thing. That kind of thing being poetry, sestinas, etc.

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My computer was down for six days and I suffered. I had to use computers in a common room and write by hand the rest of the time. I survived. But I’m glad it’s over.

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I went to see Ron Arad: Restless at the Barbican. Arad is an industrial designer, artist and architect. I don’t know anything about design or architecture really but I found some of it really fascinating / amusing including a strangely-shaped ping pong table which one could actually try out. Some pictures here.

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Before that, Patience Agbabi came to read at the university. She was warm, vibrant, very lovely. Her next collection is a retelling of the Canterbury Tales in poetry. Quite a challenge, I’m guessing. She’s blogged a little bit about it here. She’s also Canterbury Laureate for the year and the audience was quite large. The questions were similar to the ones asked back home — do you write for the page or the stage? what kind of research are you doing for this book? Patricia Debney who is a poet and writer herself and a senior lecture here asked about the fact that she often uses form and whether she finds this restricting. Agbabi said that using form makes things more interesting / challenging because it sets parameters that she has to work within, makes it less amorphous.

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Somebody read my horoscope and it was full of some troubling stuff. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before and I was all shrugs and smiles about it. But I was surprised at how it played on my mind all the way back in the bus from London to Canterbury. Nothing some wine and sleep couldn’t fix. But still.

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I was only reading poetry (and poetry-related essays / criticism) for the first month simply because there’s so much of it available here that I don’t get back home. I started missing prose though so have picked up a novel, Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Wizard of the Crow. It’s quite gripping and very funny in bits. The protagonist is a conman who pretends to be a healer and diviner. I thought this was interesting:

As a novelist, Ngugi says he is very influenced by the “trickster” tradition. “The trickster character appears in tales all over the world,” he explained. “In West Africa it is Anansi the spider. Elsewhere it is Hare or Tortoise.

“The trickster is very interesting because he is always changing. He always questions the stability of a word or a narrative or an event. He is continually inventing and reinventing himself. He challenges the prevailing wisdom of who is strong and who is weak.”

Among other poets, I’ve been reading Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. Some of her poems here.

Last Monday, I finally went to Whitstable which is only a few miles away. No excuses for not visiting earlier except that I was waiting for it to be less cold. I visited the beachfront first which is so very different from the ones back home. The sea looks serene and in the distance, there is a wind farm in the water, giant windmills that look like pinwheels. The ground is full of shells. People walk their well-behaved dogs.

The harbour is beautiful — fishing nets and rope, blue boats, mossy ramps leading down to the water, huge bags of whelk shells outside the whelk shops. Here’s a picture of whelks being steamed to take off their shells easily. Winter is not the best time to be there because many places are closed during the week. And I had gone on a Monday, which is the day the famous Crab and Winkle is closed. I did go and stare at the offerings in the fish market though. It was a moment of longing. It must have been my Bengali blood singing. Or something like that.

I’m fascinated by fishing nets for some reason. And there were plenty of those around. I won’t inflict all the photos on you but here’s one. Aren’t they pretty?

Some more photos from around the harbour.

Weak with hunger at 5.30 pm after not having eaten all day (having been lost in photographs and seagulls and so on), I wandered into a Mr Fish and Chips. The man behind the counter was from apna Punjab.

It was a bit of a shocker, frankly, especially when he asked me to speak to him in Hindi, why don’t you? I ate my cod and chips while listening to sikh kirtans in the background. It was an odd coincidence because the last time I went traveling in India, it was to Amritsar and the music instantly transported me to the Golden Temple. I had not expected to be reminded of the Golden Temple while eating fish and chips in a seaside town in England.  Anyway next time, I’ll have a more authentic experience eating oysters.