Smitha Vishwanath's Blog, page 30

SoCs 230923: Weekend vibes

This week’s SocS prompt is given by Dan Antion. “Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is ‘Last/Lest/List/Lost.’ Use them in any form you like. Use one, use two or use them all. Bonus points if you use all four. I’ll chip in extra bonus points if you use the word formed from the […]

Art: Girls on the Bridge, Tanka Tuesday Seasonal poetry challenge

This painting is part of my attempt to create a diary of my visit to Norway (you can read about my travel here) by painting pictures of things I saw there. It could be the landscape or a structure or flowers or by replicating a painting done by a famous artist. ‘Three girls on the […]

Calcutta Diaries 3: Dakshineshwar Mandir, Calcutta Diaries: Ramakrishna Math, in and around new town, Thursday doors, Cee’s Photo challenge,

This post brings an end to our stay in Kolkata. We were happy to leave the city because we were eager to return home and had had enough of living out of a suitcase after traveling for 5 weeks. To be fair, Kolkata new town, with its laid back life, restaurants serving tasty food, easy […]

Book Review: Locker by Michelle Ayon Navajas

Photo by Leeloo Thefirst: https://www.pexels.com/photo/open-on-... Locker is a collection of 52 poetic flash fiction stories by Michelle Ayon Navajas. Flash fiction refers to a story of 1500 words or lesser. It’s challenging to write it as one needs to be able to evoke emotions in the reader within the word limit and be able to […]

CWWC: Stairs

Cee’s photochallenge prompt is ‘Any type of stairs’. The challenge led me scrambling through my gallery looking for pictures of steps. I had no idea I had so many of them until I began looking. These are some of the stair pictures I’ve taken in the last 4 and a half years except the one […]

Calcutta Diaries 2: Park Street, Trincas, Mother House, Indian Museum,Thursday Doors

The Indian Museum in Kolkata is located in downtown Calcutta, on Park street. In Bengali, it is called Shaheb -er Para which translates to ‘neighborhood of the Englishmen’. The street runs through what used to be the deer park (hence the name, Park street) of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Calcutta between […]

Art: The Urn of Memories,Tanka Tuesday poetry challenge 337-9-12-23/, Cee’s fun photo challenge, ‘You’re in good hands’

Last week I did a watercolor painting. Having done a number of acrylic paintings, I figured it was time to do a watercolor so I didn’t lose touch. I love the transparency of watercolors, the way a drop of water makes the color spread on paper and how much can be done with a little […]

Art/Tanka Tuesday#336: The Old Shed

This week’s Tanka Tuesday challenge is to write a syllabic poem using synonyms for the words ‘Quiet’ and ‘Seek’. I wrote a Crapsey Cinquain. As per the Wordcraft poetry site, ‘The Crapsey Cinquain is a five-line, non-rhyming poem featuring a syllable structure of 2-4-6-8-2. Choose words that create drama that builds into the fourth line. The […]

Calcutta diaries 1: Victoria Memorial, St. Paul’s cathedral, Thursday Doors

Calcutta had been on my bucket list ever since we moved to India in 2018. But one thing and another (with 2 years of Covid) and with so many places competing for attention, it was not until July 2023 that I got to visit the city. Who knew moving out of India would not only […]

Book Review by Barbara Leonhard of my debut novel, Coming Home

‘Tis a beautiful Sunday. I’ve been rendered speechless after reading this stunningly elaborate review of ‘Coming Home’ by Barbara Harris Leonhard, the editor of MasticadoresUSA, Pushcart prize nominee and author of ‘Three penny Memories’, a book of poetry. I love that Barbara saw the epilogue poem represent the story of ‘Coming Home’. I love that […]