Saudamini @thesapphirebook Twitter profile

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

7 months

Kafka breaking up with you:

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@thesapphirebook

2 months

This boggled my mind more than I would like to admit.

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@thesapphirebook

28 days

Jhumpa Lahiri, the Bengali-American writer, with her husband Alberto Vourvoulias on their wedding day in Calcutta.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

7 months

Beckett describing what it is like being in love:

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@thesapphirebook

5 months

Tomas Tranströmer wrote, "Time is not a straight line, it’s more of a labyrinth, and if you press close to the wall at the right place you can hear the hurrying steps and the voices, you can hear yourself walking past on the other side."

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@thesapphirebook

1 year

Roland Barthes wrote in Lover's Discourse, "To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power, "age-old pastime of humanity."

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@thesapphirebook

3 years

Pratima visarjan, (immersion of the Durga idol at the end of Durga Pujo), water colour, Gaganendranath Tagore, 1915.

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@thesapphirebook

5 years

"We all have inside ourselves a woman who walks alone on the road. In all women there is something in revolt that is not expressed." - Agnes Varda (1928-2019)

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@thesapphirebook

2 months

Postcard from Delhi which is sometimes a city, sometimes a Japanese scroll painting.

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@thesapphirebook

10 months

Merci to Milan Kundera who wrote, "In existential mathematics that experience takes the form of two basic equations: The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting."

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 month

I return to this poem by Cavafy like one returns to a prayer:

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

8 months

Kafka, the boyfriend we all deserve.

The sunny side of Franz Kafka

@AmschelKavka

8 months

Just you, just as you are, including that terrible paragraph in your letter, that’s the way I want you. Franz Kafka, 1914.

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@thesapphirebook

3 months

Italo Calvino wrote, "There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name ..."

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

6 months

W.G. Sebald wrote, "We learn from history as much as a rabbit learns from an experiment that's performed upon it."

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@thesapphirebook

3 years

Dostoyevsky describing the state of mind of a Twitter user.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

2 months

Four books to get to know me:

Ina Cawl

@inacawl

2 months

Four books to know me

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

Nikos Kazantzakis wrote in Zorba the Greek, “I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.”

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

4 years

Pandemic thoughts.

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@thesapphirebook

3 years

Dostoevsky describing Twitter culture.

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@thesapphirebook

11 months

Marina Tsvetaeva wrote, “For the spell is older than experience. For the tale is older than the record.”

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

2 months

Reading Italo Calvino tonight: “It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way towards madness.”

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@thesapphirebook

1 year

The beginnings of a Bengali egg curry.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

3 years

Italo Calvino describing post-pandemic mood.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

Lawrence Durrell wrote, “Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?”

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@thesapphirebook

3 years

James Joyce describing weeks of the pandemic years.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

"The role of the translator is to madden a language, drive it insane, do unimaginable things with it." For @asymptotejrnl , I recently spoke to Tristan Foster about language, my translation project, and the Hindi writer Rajkamal Chaudhary.

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@thesapphirebook

3 years

Italo Calvino describing a pandemic continuing for a second year.

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@thesapphirebook

4 years

Pandemic conversations. (Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot)

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@thesapphirebook

3 years

In 1936, Amrita Sher-Gil painted an almost melancholic portrait of her cousin, Sumair, dressed in a green-pink saree, her emerald or peridot earrings contrasting against the heavily rouged cheeks. The light, as if, turns her into a demi goddess.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

4 years

Pandemic thoughts. (Anna Akhmatova) (for @lhommielette )

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@thesapphirebook

3 years

Eliot preparing to come out of a lockdown.

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@thesapphirebook

5 years

The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. — Roland Barthes

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@thesapphirebook

3 years

Pandemic thoughts.

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@thesapphirebook

6 months

Anne Carson wrote, “sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.”

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

26 days

Postcard from Jaipur where it is still possible to buy a loaf of melancholy from old bakeries.

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@thesapphirebook

3 years

Pandemic thoughts.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

8 months

Absolutely captivated by this image: Devika Rani, the iconic actor, smoking on the sets of Franz Osten’s Izzat (1937), produced by Bombay Talkies. Photo taken by the German cinematographer Josef Wirsching who worked extensively in Indian cinema.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

10 months

Self disappearing into brick / somewhere in Agra Fort

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@thesapphirebook

1 year

"This is true happiness: to have no ambition & to work like a horse [...] To have the stars above, the land to your left & the sea to your right & to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale."

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

2 years

Pleased to announce my translation of Rajkamal Chaudhary’s short stories will be published this fall by @seagullbooks . The experimental Hindi writer, for the first time in English.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

2 months

W.G. Sebald wrote in Austerlitz, "... the longer I think about it the more it seems to me that we who are still alive are unreal in the eyes of the dead, that only occasionally, in certain lights and atmospheric conditions, do we appear in their field of vision."

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@thesapphirebook

10 months

Self in a black and white city made of chiffon

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@thesapphirebook

4 months

I am Vladimir.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

Postcard from a Jaipur that sometimes turns into an Edward Hopper city.

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@thesapphirebook

4 months

Clarice Lispector wrote, "Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born."

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

Found at home this afternoon a selection of Marina Tsvetaeva’s letters and poems in Hindi. First edition, 1992.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

13 days

"A Kalighat line drawing of a cat with a fish in its mouth illustrating a Bengali proverb of Hindu priests publically abstaining from eating meat or fish but secretly indulging in private. Circa 1920." May the Bengali humour and irreverence continue. Happy Bengali new year!

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

3 months

Anne Carson wrote, "We are only midway through the central verse of our youth when we see ourselves begin to blacken. ... We had been seduced into thinking that we were immortal and suddenly the affair is over."

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

5 months

Self as an ancient sculpture / Delhi

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

2 years

The new year resembles a new city. Italian Calvino wrote, “arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

9 months

In bed with Clarice Lispector tonight while the train, not named Lucknow Express, dreams towards Oudh. It’s dark but not for long. It will soon be darker.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

3 years

This morning I found my grandfather’s diary from 1968 where, in the midst of daily budget calculations, he had jotted down quotes from Horace, Mahadevi Varma, Premchand, Seneca, Confucius, Shakespeare, etc.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

শুভ নব বর্ষ! May we be like these paan eating and hookah smoking women this (Bengali) new year. ( 📷: Women, called Bibis, shown smoking hookah and eating betel leaves. Kalighat style of painting, 1875.)

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

11 months

Sumair, Amrita Sher-gill.

Philippe Charlier

@doctroptard

11 months

Et vous, la plus belle femme (peinte) du monde ?

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@thesapphirebook

7 months

Mahmoud Darwish wrote, “And you became like coffee, in the deliciousness, and the bitterness and the addiction.”

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

3 years

I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars. I prefer to knock on wood. I prefer not to ask how much longer and when. I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being. - Wislawa Szymborska, born on this day.

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@thesapphirebook

1 month

The gauze like, fading dream like beauty of a Dhakai jamdani saree.

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@thesapphirebook

22 days

Postcard from Jaipur where summer is also known by its other name: gin and tonic.

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@thesapphirebook

3 months

Self portrait in books etc.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

Taj Mahal mornings.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

8 years

Thanks to @SushmaSwaraj , I just heard from the Rajasthan CM office. My contact details will be shared with the Police IG.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

9 months

A Matisse kind of mood:

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

Postcards from Jaipur winters: homemade ricotta with jam and strawberries on toast, coffee, Korean instant ramen with stir fried bok choy, a kaleidoscopic fever dream of green, red, yellow, orange, pink, brown. A forest of vegetables. A dome of eggs. Sunlight.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

Saree mood lately. 💫

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@thesapphirebook

3 months

Italo Calvino wrote, “Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveller recognises the little that is his, discovering much he has not had and will never have.”

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

6 months

Two black and white photos of the coolest Hindi poet, who also happens to be my father, who also happens to be celebrating his birthday today.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

4 years

I think traditional marriage vows should be replaced by these lines by Euripides (in Carson's sublime translation).

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

This season’s first alphonso mango reminded me of Wislawa Szymborska who wrote, “Not without its charms is this terrible world, not without its mornings worth our waking.”

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

Agra Fort moods.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

9 months

I just want a humble, murderously simple thing: that a person be glad when I walk into the room. —Marina Tsvetaeva

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@thesapphirebook

3 years

When we can travel again, the first thing I will do is to go see the 12000 years old petroglyphs on the Konkan coast, near Ratnagiri (Maharashtra, India) discovered recently. There are about 1000 petroglyphs dating back to about 10,000 BCE, placing them in the Mesolithic Period.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

5 months

Self as one of the gods / Kolkata, Calcutta

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

3 years

I just remembered that Lawrence Durrell was born on this day in Jalandhar, Punjab (British India). Durrell’s parents were both born in India, too, and spoke Hindi and Urdu. India retained, like perfume, an almost imperceptible presence through much of his writing.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

6 months

Here’s to my mother, who, in this old picture, is enjoying a pint of beer while waiting for a crab curry at a restaurant in Colombo. She also happens to be celebrating her birthday today.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

9 months

After walking all day under a disappearing sun, some red wine and Cavafy who wrote, “From all I did and all I said let no one try to find out who I was.”

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

8 months

@AmschelKavka Kafka, the boyfriend we all deserve.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

My prayer for 2023, as written by Clarice Lispector: "I want the following word: splendor, splendor is fruit in all its succulence, fruit without sadness. I want vast distances. My savage intuition of myself." Happy new year.

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@thesapphirebook

5 years

“I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.” - Roland Barthes

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@thesapphirebook

3 months

I wrote about something very close to my heart for @TheFederal_News : Soviet children's literature and Hindi translations of books like The Adventures of Neznaika, The Adventures of Buratino, and Leo Tolstoy's retelling of a fairy tale:

How Soviet children’s literature translated into Hindi enriched Indian childhoods

The ‘golden age’ of Soviet children’s literature yielded numerous playful and subversive tales, which found their way to India in the 1990s, all thanks to Raduga and People’s Publishing House

thefederal.com

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@thesapphirebook

7 months

My mother's first Hindi novella, Kharij log, or Discarded People, is out now, published by Sambhavana Prakashan! Set in the blue city of Jodhpur, it is about memories in the context of the new citizenship laws of India. You can order a copy here:

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

3 years

Nikos Kazantzakis describing post pandemic mood.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

1 year

Three views of the Taj Mahal under moonlight.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

9 months

Crushing spices for tea this morning, after reading Cavafy who wrote, “Have Ithaka always in your mind. Your arrival there is what you are destined for. But don’t in the least hurry the journey.”

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

11 months

Mangoes eaten this mango season: Alphonso, Gir Kesar, Safeda, Dussehri, Langda, and Gulabkhas. 🥭

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

2 years

A red pause from Jaipur.

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@thesapphirebook

9 months

Summers in Lucknow.

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@thesapphirebook

11 months

Les fleurs de la nuit.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

6 months

Italo Calvino wrote in the Invisible Cities, "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little."

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

2 years

Me thinking about the coronavirus during the third year of the pandemic.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

3 years

"Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed. The Milky Way streams silver through the night. I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams I have no cause to wake or trouble you. And, as they say, the incident is closed. Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind." -Mayakovsky

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

3 years

The lonely landscape of Rajasthan under rains always reminds me a little of Tarkovsky’s Russia.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

2 years

Those in Jaipur: see you tonight at 6:30 pm for the inauguration of the exhibition of Prof. Parmanand Dalwadi’s photos of France from the 1970s. On view till 31st August at the iconic (and now renovated) Art Deco cinema: GEM.

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@thesapphirebook

12 days

Absolute chills - frissons - this morning while translating Alok Dhanwa’s iconic Bruno’s Daughters. Shock, surprise that this has not been translated into English. Absolute honour.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

8 years

Also just heard from the ACP. They're sending someone right now. God. What a day.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

24 days

Roberto Calasso wrote, "Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive."

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

7 months

"There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts." Remembering Mahatma Gandhi on his birth anniversary. 📸: Walter Bosshard, 1930.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

3 years

“The very instant an egg is seen, it becomes the memory of an egg. The only person to see an egg is someone who has seen it before. Like a man who, in order to understand the present, must have had a past.” - Clarice Lispector

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

4 years

Pandemic thoughts.

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Saudamini

@thesapphirebook

4 months

Postcards from the first day of the year (and my birthday): homemade Sephardic orange cake, cold winds, wines red white and sparkling, daal baati, beer, dumplings, sunlight, salt, hot milk, trees, flashes of people, planets, and plights known unknown.

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@thesapphirebook

4 years

Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened. - Lawrence Durrell

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