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Nilanjana S Roy

@nilanjanasroy

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Otter of books.
Black River. The Wildings. The Hundred Names of Darkness. The Girl Who Ate Books. And coming soon...

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The other side of protests is a city behind barricades, a city barred and bolted, the heart of Delhi emptied of people, more concrete bollards everywhere, 23,000 assorted forces present to stop protesters from gathering.

From morning onwards, protesters were picked up and detained, driven around in buses, sent to stadiums, and yet impromptu protests kept cropping up everywhere, each one like a little pulse that kept the heartbeat of the Capital going. 💖

The media were detained. Students were detained. Lawyers were detained. Former chief ministers were detained. The youth were detained in such large numbers that we all understood it was now a crime to be young and question... No, just a crime to be young. Buses, stadiums, police, and yet it has not stopped, people seem to be unable to stop going back there, as though the Republic itself is calling them, us, home.

#delhi #october #streets #freedom by @nilanjanasroy

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6 days ago

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"I will do anything to avoid boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough."

~ Anne Carson
Nobel laureate in literature, 2026

You find some authors early; they confuse you, challenge you, they bring Brontë and Bei Dao, Akhmatova and Sappho and Simonides of Keos into the room. They are not apologetic for turning away from the world so as to live more fully in the world, or for taking up space, or for being difficult.

If you haven't read much Carson, her Short Talks are delightful and an easy introduction to her work:

Short Talk on Shelter

You can write on a wall with a fish heart, it’s because of the phosphorous. They eat it, there are shacks like that down along the river. I am writing this to be as wrong as possible to you. Replace the door when you leave, it says, now you tell me how wrong that is. How long it glows. Tell me."

I am feverish today but also uplifted, joyous, celebratory.

#annecarson #poets #celebrations #nobel by @nilanjanasroy

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8 days ago

Rahul Gandhi, fighting for the vote, for the restoration of democracy, dragged and detained at Akashvani Bhawan an hour ago. Proud of our Opposition, and everyone who hit the streets last week to protest from the @incindia and the INDIA bloc.

🔥 🔥 🔥

#delhi #rahulgandhi #democracy #resist by @nilanjanasroy

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10 days ago

A year of everything everywhere all at once, and the joy of feeling so much return to life, including this democracy.

#gratitude #journal #pause by @nilanjanasroy

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13 days ago

📚📚📚📚📚📚

So much fun talking fiction and writing with Amitabh Bagchi and @rishimajumder. I think we agreed that a) there were no rules b) your writing family can live right next door or live two centuries away c) riyaaz can train the hand and the imagination but your voice is there (or not) right from the start.

And that stories were complicated little beasts, and that the good ones tended to be mass disruptors, and that yes, there was a border between fiction and non-fiction, but no, we were damned if we were going to police the LoC for anyone.

Also that the only reason to be a Writer is to have fun with your imaginary friends.

"The literature that hates can never touch people's hearts, only the literature that loves can," a character says in Amitabh Bagchi's Half the Night is Gone, and that is what we took into the CR Park night.

After which we hunted down fish fry and other chop-cutlet, and found a carom centre, and met other riotous writers, and returned fully smitten with the Bhavan Bookfest.

Thank you for the hospitality and for a fantastic evening, @dcms_bookfair.

ᝰ🪶ᝰ🪶ᝰ🪶ᝰ🪶ᝰ🪶ᝰ🪶

#writinglife #fiction #journal #delhiwriters by @nilanjanasroy

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19 days ago

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Some parts of my childhood -- many people's childhoods -- in Delhi were magical. Faraway trees and fresh air. A melting pot of friends. Potluck dinners, not pretentious soirees. We tumbled around like puppies in the local parks.

The city always had rough edges; Delhi has successfully resisted romanticization for centuries, and the literature of Delhi is a long litany of citizens' complaints. But it had swagger and it had soul, and something I'm working on has reminded me of the sweeter side of this old-new, new-old city.

I walked in a favourite park, and the good times came running up to me, glad to be remembered.

🦋🌿🦋🌿🦋🌿🦋🌿🦋🌿

#walks #trees #blueskies #miracles by @nilanjanasroy

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21 days ago

From @khabarlahariya, an essential, gripping journalism memoir by a collective of women reporters in UP. Should be read and taught in journalism schools the world over.

#mustread

𓂃✍︎𓂃✍︎𓂃✍︎𓂃✍︎𓂃✍︎𓂃✍︎𓂃✍︎

“Our writing room became a reinvention of the newsroom we occupied together. We returned physically to the act of writing, with all the pain and pleasure this had given us. Becoming literate, becoming opinion makers, becoming autonomous women in our homes and public spheres, mastering digital technology and a competitive media landscape — all this had enabled us to survive and thrive. It had also hardened us and fatigued us, and made us less sure of what thriving meant.

The collective biography method asked us to leave the narrative arc we thought was expected and allow ourselves to settle at the bottom of what a significant memory had made us feel, and see how this accumulation of individual and collective sensations forms a history worth recording, a very different one from those written about us.  

What was the sensation of biting back a scream or a response to a comment in the field? What was the feeling of the wind in our hair on a motorcycle we owned? What was the feeling of having seen the lifeless body of a colleague and having to go on working? We slowly shared stories that we had never before thought of sharing: memories from our childhood, which, like dreams, brought hidden motifs to the fore. We chipped away at each other’s affective language, cliches, judgements and moralizing. We liberated ourselves from our own stories and let others’ memories inform and flesh them out. What emerged were spiky, entangled, circular interior journeys that showed how we became reporters and women in constant dialogue with each other and our surroundings. Most importnatly, we were determining what jagged, emergent self was forming on the page.”   

~ The Good Reporter: A Memoir of Journalism in the 20th Century

Disha Mullick, Geeta Devi,
Harshita Verma,  Kavita Bundelkhandi, Lakshmi Sharma 
Lalita, Meera Devi,
Nazni Rizvi  ShyamKali, Suneeta Prajapati

#journalism #memoir #womenwriting #readinglife by @nilanjanasroy

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a month ago

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"I could very calmly go wild. I could live two days in the den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses."

~ Annie Dillard, 1945-2026

🐆🐆🐆🍃🍃🍃

#gratitude #writersilove #goodbyes #debts by @nilanjanasroy

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a month ago

The artists of the recent past painted the gods with such familiar love and affection -- especially the beloved elephant-headed Lord Ganesha, often depicted as a child.

Jamini Roy did a series of Ma Durga or Ma Parvati with Shri Ganesha, but also brought in the father-son bond.

And my Thakurma told her sons (four of them, who were the most wonderful of fathers and uncles, indulgent with all of us and tremendous fun) and us, her grandchildren, the story of Lord Ganesha as the scribe who took down the Mahabharata for Ved Vyas.

श्रुत्वैतत्प्राह विघ्नेशो यदि मे लेखनी क्षणम्।
लिखतो नावतिष्ठेत तदा स्यां लेखको ह्यहम्।।

...with the sage setting his own conditions in turn:

"व्यासोऽप्युवाच तं देवमबुद्ध्वा मा लिख क्वचित्।"

The pen would not stop — as long as the writer understood and absorbed the full import of what he was transcribing. (Still an excellent principle to write by.)

Another friend reminded me that Ganesha Chaturthi has arrived this year during a rare conjunction of the moon and Venus — a good time to start, or finish something, with the help of the Great Friend to All Writers.

#artists #ganeshji #scribes #beginnings

Abanindranath Tagore, Ganesha Janani (1890)
Jamini Roy, Lord Shiva and Lord Ganesha
And Lord Ganesha transcribing the Mahabharata (1878-83, unknown artist, from The Met) by @nilanjanasroy

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a month ago

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Such a beautiful representation of the Goddess Vāc, who creates and personifies divine speech, who contains within herself inspiration and the meaning behind language, who inspires and is the invocation, who guards alphabets and who embodies divine revelation. (Another favourite for writers: Enki, the Mesopotamian god of creation, incantations and mischief, always an excellent combo.)

This image is from the National Museum: 19th-century Rajasthani School of Art, painted with gouache on paper, presenting the Goddess as Varneshwari, the Empress of letters, containing a multitude and a universe of gods.

The Goddess Vāc was a force in the time of the Rig Veda, and gradually gave way to other forms of the goddess of learning.

I loved Vāc ever since I realised, as a young writer, that you could choose your own creative muse -- and that you could choose a muse who'd empower you to speak and write more freely. She is, in a key set of hymns, the gatherer-up of treasures, the giver of truths.

Working on something beloved this week, an editing project; a good time to go back to the source.

🌿🍃🍀🌳🌿🍃🍀🌳🌿🍃🍀🌳

#inspirations #goddesses #speech #writinglife by @nilanjanasroy

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a month ago

⛰️⛰️⛰️⛰️⛰️⛰️⛰️☁️☁️☁️🐆

Tiny reminders of old stone and old hills, well-loved places, of freshly washed morning prayers and new trails, of wandering around the summit, guided by Herself's pugmarks, of skies that take you one step closer to either God or Jimi Hendrix; as some say, no difference either way.

⛰️⛰️⛰️⛰️⛰️⛰️⛰️☁️☁️☁️🐆

#throwback #prayer #clearblue #trails by @nilanjanasroy

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a month ago

𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬

The lioness with the Smithereens -- in Delhi, finally! Our conversations always swing around madly, from music and mythology to poetry... So much to catch up on. So much to celebrate. So much to belly laugh about together. 💗

The poems are gorgeous, conjuring up a world where "poems mutate into other creatures", sliding up and down the page, taking shape as a forest, as an arrowhead, sometimes within an inch of leaping off the page entirely.

(Swipe to see Let the Smithereens, by Thayil Editions @thayilesque for @harpercollinsin -- a special salute for the typesetter and designer).

Drop by your favourite indie bookstore and pick up a copy.

#poets #oldfriends #reunion #newbook

@harpercollinsin

𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬𓃬 by @nilanjanasroy

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a month ago