Urmilla Deshpande's Blog, page 10

Propeller!

For those of you who don't know it, I have no degrees, and basically no formal education. In the last ten years, my attempts to "go back to school" have been thwarted by my visa status. Late last year, that obstacle was resolved, so when my son, now a sophomore, said to me that I should "take some classes", I decided to investigate the matter. As it turns out, I will have to fulfill requirements such as English, social sciences, math, and so on. And I will of course, not being a US citizen...

Nilanjana Roy's top 50 for 2009

POL featured in Non-fiction, but, thank you Nilanjana!

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/undertome/379965/

giant steps

 

My mother told me once that Werner Herzog walked from Munich to Paris to heal his friend who was very ill. She told me this when her own publisher and close friend fell ill, and wondered if she should begin to walk to Pune from Hong Kong, where she was, and if he would recover by the time she got to him. He got well by himself, and she did not need to make the journey. But she was quite serious, I believe, when she said it. I remembered this story yesterday as I neared the end of my walk. I ...

pale male

Red Tailed Hawk

There is this hawk in New York City. I became aware him of when his nest was being removed from the building he had built it in. Many people have followed his story. Celebrities living in the building protested the disturbance of his home. Photographers follow him. There are websites about him. Books have been written about him. He is a star. And he is a beautiful hawk. As all hawks are. The funny thing is, he doesn't know he is a star. He would be just as beautiful whether...

From Oran

Albert Camus by Eduardo Pola

I had never read Camus, I'm ashamed to say. But no longer – I just read The Plague, and am reading The Stranger. The Plague made me claustrophobic. I began to wonder if the world didn't begin and end at Oran, the town in which the book is set. If, after the plague had burned out, and the quarantine was lifted, there would even be a world out there. This book easily took me into this town, into the hopes and fears of the people who lived there, and were stuck...

Interstate love song…

10 west

At the end of this decade, I was driving on an American highway – the Interstate 10 to be precise, in dense fog, at 2 am. I started my drive at the east-most point of I-10. If I drove West long enough, this road would take me all the way West to California. I wasn't going West, though, just a few hundred miles away, home. Alone in the eerily beautiful swirling white fog, I thought about the ending year. 2009 brought me a new career, my first published book, a new life. I couldn't see t...

rotten eggs

I will not be going to the movies anymore. I only end up losing hours of the short time I have left in the world, and ruining the enjoyment of friends and family with my bitching. In spite of being told otherwise, my expectations, I feel, are not unreasonable:

- Real action heroes – who really train hard, fight hard, and whom I care about.- Unpredictability - I should not know at the outset, that the "good guys" will win, or even who the good guys are.- Emotional content – if I do take sides, ...

Deccan Herald Review

Painfully ever after

#mce_temp_url#

Tranquebar Times interview

Tranqubar Times

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Pack-Lies-Urmilla-Deshpande/dp/9380032838/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261150630&sr=8-1

POL on Amazon

POL is now "available" on Amazon. But not really. It's Out-Of-Stock. The good part is though, now you can review it, and rate it. So those of you who have read it, and don't need to order it, please do review it and rate it, it would help to put it on the map… thanks!