I fear sadness now,knowing what it can do, turn my head away from it,bow my eyes in the face of it,delicately,at my edges it pecks,but I am covered in layers of tissue,ice on the edge, and yet, yet,at the right moment,in the right breathwith the right sort of eye, I […]

Once in Madison Square, I stopped a woman with a pram and she took a photo of me next to a sculpture and I was wearing my big jacket and I had to put my bag down, behind me and I kept turning back to check on my bag and […]

There’s never quite a summer like a Durban summer. Each November I anticipate the heat with growing dread. I begin preparations by checking that the air-conditioning units are working, that their remotes have batteries and that all stocks of insect repellent are replenished. Next everything gets moved to the fridge; […]

Mulder: I saw things Scully. Powerful things. I saw deep and unconditional love. Scully: I saw things too. I witnessed unqualified hate. That appears to have no end. Mulder: How to reconcile the two? The extremes of our nature. Scully: That’s the question. Maybe the question of our times. (Babylon […]

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The […]

We were sitting around a fire at the top of Srayaan and it was cold, more cold than I ever knew and I was sitting so close to the fire I could feel the flames on my fingers and I didn’t care if I got burnt and my back was […]

Most days in the morning Harish would come and give me a handful of sweets. Sparkles, yellow chappies and if I was lucky green watermelon flavoured chappies. I don’t know why he did it. No I lie, I do. I can still remember the taste of plastic watermelon in my […]

In 2016 I lived in Shanghai I bought a stove and carried it on the subway Gorikhala passed away, I wasn’t there, The last thing she told me, was to take biscuits I learnt that mourning alone is not mourning I travelled alone and told no one I learned a […]

When I was 11, I cried a whole lot. I don’t know why. Hormones. The idea of death. The idea of life. The idea of losing the ones I loved. I would sob and sob. The inner turmoil a landscape in which I buried myself.