INTERLUDE

Abstract

This piece looks back at, and attempts to understand, several journeys made at a crucial point in my life, journeys both physical and metaphorical. There is the journey from the centre of a city, Bombay, to its outskirts, and then further, to Calcutta and London, and the spiritual and symbolic significance these moves comprise, in all kinds of ways, for someone who thinks he’s a writer, but gradually discovers he’s not yet one. Then there is the other journey that’s being made simultaneously, from well‐worn literary convention toward, for the first time, the unknown possibilities of actual lived experience and memory. All this movement, inner and outer, the discovery of new locations and a voice and subject matter, takes place, as many things do in Bombay, within a context that’s entirely worldly and material, involving the acquisition, and then the loss, of property.

Keywords:

• blur
• memories and obscure saints
• Yeats
• St Cyril Road, Bandra
• Oxford
• hepatitis

Notes

1. A lakh is 100,000 rupees.

2. HDFC Bank Ltd is a nationwide network of banks with a strong presence in India’s cities, particularly Bombay.