Reason
There aren’t many surprises for me through four hours of screen time as I sit through the documentary ‘Reason’. I imagine this also holds true for all of us who have been watching with great dread how those, following the ideology of the killers of Gandhi have taken upon themselves the task of ‘Hinduising’ India.…
Blue Match
‘We’d like less smoke. We’d like our eyes to burn less when we cook’. These are Vandana Radhakrishnan’s words, repeating what rural women in Hoskote in South India have told her. And there on the screen before me, the huge irony of other words in Dutch come home to me: ‘absolutely a man’s work –…
Little India Big India
My fingers, clutch a piece of dosa, with its aaloo filling just dipped into warm sambhar and cool coconut chutney and do manage to make it into my mouth, and mmmmm, mmmmm. MMMMMMMM. The taste of home. “It’s this stupid; this is the main reason that I, and I suspect many thousands of others have…
Madam Ines
From my vantage point, I can see through the windows on the first and second floors opposite me. Three screens. In each of them, women, single or in the company of other women. I am playing ‘bluff’ with my companions in an Indonesian restaurant on the first floor on the other side of the street.…
I amsterdam
Here is an example of a recent exchange on What’s App with a family member planning to visit me: x : “ I’ll be in Amsterdam from 11th to the 17th” . Me: “You mean in Oegstgeest. I don’t live in Amsterdam”. x: “Same thing”. X has been to visit me before and knows I…