Category: Writing
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Twinkle for Gents—A Close Shave
I ask around about haircuts. Authoritative Mumbai sources say: Twinkle for Gents. Five weeks into our stay, haircuts are essential. But am I to test Twinkle for Gents? I take a 2 and 3 across the sides and top. My sons buzz down to 4 and 5. Not haircuts, so much as a few quick strokes…
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing
Writers write. This simple premise covers everything I need to know about our craft. The axiom provides all the cover I need to shut out the world and pretend I fulfill my purpose merely by sitting down with a few trusty instruments. A Parker Jotter. A Moleskine Cahier. A keyboard, perhaps. But the platitude, it…
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Always
Puzzled that I’d spend my time doing this, people will ask, ‘How long have you been writing?’ Part accusation, part sincere inquiry, it deserves consideration. The truest answer I have—and it’s not a wise guy answer—is always. I say ‘truest’ because of the stages leading up to my present output: two published novels; two mid-grade…
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Another One Bites the Dust
All in one Mumbai day we enjoyed these musical interludes. At Malabar Hill we toured the Hanging Garden (The Cure, Pornography, 1982). It doesn’t hang so much as stand upon a series of reservoirs that hold—depending on who you ask—30 or 90 or 300 million gallons of water. The garden’s benches and clocks and topiary fill the paths,…
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Fiction Review—Napawaupee County Blues
From the start, we know what crime lands ‘Cool Hand’ Luke on the county chain gang: cutting the heads off parking meters. He’s sent up for decapitation of authority, and all that follows bears the symbolic weight of his crime. Ted Prokash gives it to us another way. Napawaupee County Blues (Expat Press, 2018) describes life…
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The Sunday Straphanger
We hopped a train at Bandra Junction toward the old Victoria Station, now called Shivaji Terminus, ten stops away. The tidy compartment carried just a handful of passengers scattered about on a few padded benches. Overhead the silver handles shook as the train departed. I offered the window seat to my boys. Turns out it…
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Elevatorwala
Mumbai has a wallah for everything, no task too big or small. Outside my 14th-story flat, one of four elevatorwalas pushes the button that takes us to the street and back again. The other night we ate our first dinner at a Parsi restaurant called—this is all one word—Sodabottleopenerwala. It’s a chain. Derived in part…
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Transit Post—Frankfurt
Just so I have a post from Germany. We have a decent layover in Frankfurt, and although it’s zero three hundred at my point of origin—hence the cobwebs in my head—it’s 9:35 here and past noon at our final destination. Normal workaday hours to write and post! Marginally related to all this, I’ve been tracking…
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Posting from a New Home
After five years posting from DC, BenEastBooks moves on to Mumbai. Expect the same focus on craft and reviewing serious books by independent authors. Expect new writing invigorated by travel and adventure. Expect postings flavored with the exotic, the ancient, the extraordinary, and the very new. I welcome contributions, requests for reviews, and sensible observations. When…
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Early Monsoon
We always knew the monsoon would greet our arrival in Mumbai this Thursday. We never expected heavy rains to be part of our departure from DC. Yesterday the area received 4 inches of rain, equal to about 40 days of wet weather for this time of year for DC. July commonly sees 3.75″. What better…
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