Authors Electric

“The Awesome Adventures of Poppy and Amelia” would never have happened if it hadn’t been for lockdown. In those first couple of months, like so many writers, I found working on my current book very slow going.   A day’s work felt like ploughing through porridge. Very little got done and what I did write had somehow lost its flow. The impetus to write had also faded and most days I found it almost impossible to get going. Nothing much seemed to matter. While other people re-decorated, caught up with DIY or re-modelled their gardens I let the time slip past. Except for my four times a week Skype lessons with granddaughter Maddy. At the start of lockdown all grandparents had been roped in to help with home schooling and my brief was to deliver her English lessons. Having been a teacher in a middle school as well as in secondary education, this wasn’t going to be too hard. Or so I thought. Working through what the school had sent, however, was far from simple. No blame here t...

Photo from 'The Telegraph', Kolkata - 20 May 2020 Corona + Amphan is the worst double whammy one can think of - and we are facing that at the moment. By “we”, I mean Bangladesh and two eastern states of India – Orissa and West Bengal. Cyclone Amphan hit us on 20 th May. Last year, a similar cyclone - Fani - had hit the coastal belt lining the Bay of Bengal in early May. It coincided with my daughter Srishti’s Birthday - so, the small party I’d arranged at home for her had to be cancelled. This year, a day after Amphan, with no internet, we could barely wish our niece in Hyderabad on her Birthday. While the ISD call did connect, all that could be heard from the other side were garbled voices… but at least, we could shout out a “Happy Birthday”!  Privileged kids Birthday celebrations are luxuries that can be done without for a year or two (though for children it can be a bitter disappointment; eagerly wait as they do for months for their BIG day). But even for them,...