Arundhati Basu's Blog

Around the corner cometh spring. There’s this treasure trove of gratitude in my heart as I take to the nature trails around us. For all of it, nature’s offerings seem even more vivid on the cusp between winter and summer. Some days the skies turn leaden, swollen with unspent rain clouds. On others, the lightest of blue skies be littered with cotton candy clouds, the trails around us alive with the cheeping and chittering of many eastern bluebirds, robins and mockingbirds, armies of busy, lit...

I have been away for a year from this space now. Long enough that it feels strange to spill my thoughts into a post. It being a grey morning, a procession of soggy days having preceded it, I can think of no better thing than letting my thoughts run wild as I make my way back (albeit, gingerly) to the blog. In between writing, when I do take a break and step onto our back porch to re-invigorate the senses with the earthy scent of the outdoors, am sent back in with the indignant chittering of the ...

I have words today. Some days your head feels like it is brimful of words, like potent potion stewing in a cauldron, and on others, it is not unlike that stagnant body of water, still and smelly, flies buzzing, to complete the picture of listlessness. As a writer, you feel the relief of the former washing over you so gently, as the caress of your mother’s touch when you were young. What am I to do with these words? Possibly, let them float out of my head and onto this dormant blog of mine. In th...

…I decide to resurface. Why, you may ask, after all this time. Truth be told, I have been missing you lot, a lot. And so here I am, sat by the window, writing and staring out from time to time, taking in the vast swathe of a snow-clad landscape, speckled with the wintery rusts and browns of these withered woods that stand around us.

Adi and I set up house in Upstate NY. A house with room for a couple – and their friends and family when they visit. As it goes for me with most anything, it has...

An early September’s day, four hundred and seventeen years ago, a Frenchman’s curiosity landed him in trouble in the waters around Maine.

Having spotted smoke rising from an encampment of the Native Americans, off a cove in coastal Maine, French explorer Samuel de Champlain brought his ship closer to land but fell prey to the vagaries of the sea. Namely, a rock formation that could not be avoided in time. The hull of the vessel was quite badly off and the French had to disembark and spend ti...

It being Labor Day weekend, the equivalent of what we know as May Day except that the American version takes place at the beginning of September, Adi and I packed our bags on Friday morning and set off for a long drive to New England from New York. Before this, my beloved sprang off to the hot dog stand opposite our apartment (much to his utter delight) and promptly inhaled two frankfurters in quick succession, putting me in mind of the worthily beloved and now deceased Labrador of his, Tuktuk. ...

Once in a while, I disappear from the world of socials. I don’t know what prompts the urge to burrow myself in a vat of my own thoughts, but this involuntary exercise makes me feel whole again. The mind is purged of a thousand distractions, as you can well imagine if you too know that feeling of disappearing down a dark hole every time that you open up your social media feed and emerge from it an hour later, knackered from the effort of updating yourself on the lives of others. While I get a who...

Tuesday is carrying on with the hum of the usual weekday chores. Except, for a while, the skies grows darker with clouds heavy with unspent moisture and the wind is sharp and cold, rushing through the trees in their tender green covers. As the treetops sway under the onslaught of the winds, the ambient white noise putting me in mind of sitting by the ocean somewhere and listening to the sound of the waves, I feel relief. Not travelling anywhere for such a long time now has been a drag on the sen...

How is it going this awfully grey Sunday, my friends? I am back with the promised giveaway of my books. I will keep it short since I have to pop out to get some paintings framed. I have three signed copies to share with you. Yay! Since it is lazy ol’ me, there is no raffle baffle here. The first three people who write in the comment form and say they want to give Ramblers in Cornwall a read, shall be the happy receivers. The giveaway is limited to readers in the US. Do leave your email ids and I...

When I run, everything feels better. It truly does. I write thoughts in my head when I am running, if that makes sense. I make lists. I think of a thousand things I want to paint. I watch the angler stand for hours by the bay, patient in his endeavour of a good catch. I stare at the ducks and wading birds that glide by in the bay and I wipe away dark thoughts if and when they prey upon the mind. When I feel troubled, for the mind is such a cauldron of thoughts bubbling away, I run longer and har...