Here is an anecdote for you. One Xmas evening, I was sitting by Amal Kiran. He asked me whether I had received walnuts and, on hearing me confirm it, he proposed to teach me how to crack them without nut-crackers.

…   more »

There is no island sans girdle of roar of the loud civilisation,
No wayside shrub, no tall lonely palm, silvery gull on the beach,
No skilled rhyme responding from across mortality’s worlds;
But only in vacuity of vision bloom roses of the thoriated eye
And the song is stuck like a wheelless star in grooves of the night.

...   more »