 Red Room Writer Profile
|
|
Farzana Versey's Blog
November 24, 2009
- Here is my absolutely flat-out adventure. There was a chill in the air as it got dark. We were a group of four. Instead of doing the usual dinner-dance routine - it was New Year’s Eve in Nepal - we decided to start early and walk through Darbar Square and then hit the back-packer hub of Thamel.We kept changing pubs and finally found ourselves at the Rum Doodle. We had no idea about its history. ...
- Continue Reading » 3 Comments
November 23, 2009
- “One of the sexiest women in the Arab world” is in trouble. It clearly shows that within Islamic societies there is a wide range of behaviour and disparities.Haifa Wehbe is a Lebanese pop singer and this time it is not her revealing clothes and sensuous moves that are being questioned. In her latest album, Baba fein (Where is Daddy?) there is stanza that goes, “Where is my teddy bear and my ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
November 22, 2009
- There is something about night streets. Or is it streets at night? I like the term night streets; it gives it an identity and makes it distinct. Although day and night both last for about equal time, twilight scents are temporary. Days assault our senses; nights lie there with open pores and sores that we cannot see.The other night as we drove and I clicked this picture, the rear-view mirror made ...
- Continue Reading » 3 Comments
November 20, 2009
- What exactly is bad sex writing? Is it having bad sex while writing? Or is it bad to write about sex…cluck, cluck? Of course, all of you know about the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Many really good writers have ‘won’ it. No one has ever thought about giving a good sex in fiction award, it must therefore follow that it’s all just bad. The worse and the worst do not count. ...
- Continue Reading » 4 Comments
November 19, 2009
- Happy Toilet Day! When I saw an ad this morning by one of those toilet cleaning companies, I thought it was a joke. One of those happy bogs thing to market the product. Turns out there is, indeed, more to defecation than a super bowel event. Now don’t go screwing up your noses. It’s got big sponsors and volunteers. Quite happening. This event has a history going back to eight years. In 2001, ...
- Continue Reading » 2 Comments
November 19, 2009
- What's all the noise about a bit of leg and Newsweek using her picture from Runners World on their cover? It just gives her a boost. She looks fit, young, and ready to take on any call…two Blackberries in the hand are worth a few thousand in a jam!The sob story-tellers aver, "It’s more like a glamour shot. Sure, she’s in running gear but it’s apparent that she hasn’t begun the ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
November 16, 2009
- One day there were rains. Heavy winds swept through the windows and started hitting at the collage. I thought there was a lot of mystical stuff in it, so I had called it Within and Without. Created on stiff cardboard it rarely moved from its rather stoical position. But as I sat there writing, it was striking against the wall, beating itself in agony. I did not get up to straighten it, hold it, ...
- Continue Reading » 6 Comments
November 15, 2009
- Saturated with Taliban tribal chiefs we found an opportunity to bereave as fashionistas supposedly braved gunfire to strut on the ramp If you believed the Indian media, then not only do Pakistani women possess cleavages and midriffs but their displaying these body parts is considered a fight against militancy. “Bare shoulders, backless gowns and pouting models are wowing Pakistan’s ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
November 13, 2009
- Is a story salacious because of what it is or how it has been portrayed? Is it about the man or other people's perspective? Indian actor Om Puri's wife has written his biography. He publicly lambasted her for revealing his sexual encounter with his 55-year-old maid Santi when he was 14; then followed a long affair with a woman for 14 years.(He is now an internationally-recognised actor with ...
- Continue Reading » 2 Comments
November 12, 2009
- I want to write a poem. I have written some. They sound like sadness. Like happiness. Like deathly smirk. Taunts. Caresses.I want to write a poem now.I can do it.As I poke a sharp nail into anotherAnd wait for pink to turn to red to turn to a squirt.And wait for my toes to curl and sleep like a baby.And wait for the eyes to stop thinking…Wait! Eyes think?Mine do.My eyes think, I can see them ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
November 12, 2009
- We are told that the pheromones released in a man's body smell like heaven. Great. It probably has to do with sweat. Sweating it out conveys hard work, hard fun, activity, fitness. No one has yet sold bottled perspiration, though. Because no woman would buy it. It is one thing to nuzzle into a man’s armpit and take a deep breath, mainly so that you don’t have to listen to him talk, and quite ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
November 11, 2009
- Michelle Obama is out to be quite a social evangelist. She is giving dating tips to young women. Her advice is rather regressive. “Cute’s good. But cute only lasts for so long and then it’s, ‘Who are you as a person?’ That’s the advice I would give to women - don’t look at the bankbook or the title. Look at the heart. Look at the soul.”She assumes that all women are gold-diggers ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
November 10, 2009
- A few days ago they said there would be no water for 24 hours in some parts of the city. We filled buckets and empty vessels and covered them up ever since it was discovered that mosquitoes now prefer clean water. One container was too broad, so I used a newspaper over it and as the hours passed the paper got wet, as though it had been sucked in. Nothing was legible except the patch. The taps did ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
November 9, 2009
- The Brezhnev and Honecker kiss transformed Berlin from a regal enchantress into a hag. I was there five years after they demolished the Wall. Everything seemed grey. It was a grey city even then, trying to get accustomed to no wall. You may not be free to go to the other side but walls help you lean against them.Now they have a ‘Walk the Wall’ tour with touch screen prompts to tell you what ...
- Continue Reading » 2 Comments
November 8, 2009
- I did not choose Claude Levi-Strauss; he was thrust upon me. Structuralism was far from my mind when I was gifted a bunch of his books. A couple of academicians were arguing over the merits of burdening me, a work in progress, with the abstractions of totemism. The argument did not take place across the table. The two individuals did not know each other. I carried the messages to and fro and ...
- Continue Reading » 2 Comments
