Urmilla Deshpande's Blog

They say you got empathy. But you’re saying no healthcare, when people have lost their health insurance along with their jobs. People are sick, dying, and you don’t even have healthcare on your party platform. That’s not empathy, Joe. That’s the same old sheit as always.

Say it ain’t so, Joe please

Say it ain’t so

That’s not what I want to hear Joe and I’ve got a right to know

Say it ain’t so, Joe please

Say it ain’t so

I’m sure they’re telling us lies Joe please tell us it ain’t so

They told us that our hero has played his trump card

He doesn’t know how to go on

We’re clinging to his charm and determined smile

But the good old days are gone

The image and the empire may be falling apart

The money has gotten scarce

One man’s word held the country together

But the truth is getting fierce

Say it ain’t so, Joe please

Say it ain’t so

We pinned our hopes on you Joe and they’re ruining our show

(Ooo Babies)

Don’t you think we’re gonna get burned

(Ooo Babies)

Don’t you think we’re gonna get burned

We’re gonna get turned

We’re gonna get learned

Cause we’re gonna get turned

We’re gonna get burned

We’re gonna get learned

Yes, we’re gonna get burned

We’re gonna get turned

We’re gonna get learned

Yes, we’re gonna get turned

We’re gonna get learned

Say it ain’t so, Joe please

Say it ain’t so

That’s not what I want to hear Joe and I’ve got a right to know

Say it ain’t so, Joe please

Say it ain’t so

I’m sure they’re telling us lies Joe please tell us it ain’t so

They told us that our are hero has played his trump card

He doesn’t know how to go on

We’re clinging to his charm and determined smile

But the good old days are gone

Say it ain’t so, Joe please

Say it ain’t so

We pinned our hopes on you Joe and they’re ruining our show

The image and the empire may be falling apart

The money had gotten scarce

One man’s word held the country together

But the truth is getting fierce

Say it ain’t so, Joe please

Say it ain’t so

That’s not what I want to hear Joe and I’ve got a right to know

Say it ain’t so, Joe please

Say it ain’t so

I’m sure they’re telling us lies Joe please tell us it ain’t so

Oooooo

That’s not what I want to hear Joe and I’ve got a right to know

© MURRAY HEAD

I intended to start a novel this year. It is set in Berlin in the 1920s. It is about my grandmother, Irawati Karvé. She studied at the Friedrich Wilhelm University and the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics under the supervision of Dr. Eugen Fischer. It was significant that an Indian woman did her PhD under the man whose ideas inspired Hitler’s belief in racial hygiene and Aryan superiority. Karvé’s research showed race could not be discerned from skull measurement—a now-discredited method that supported colonial and racist policies. The story follows her in a turbulent Germany as she comes to terms with her identity as a woman scientist and the conflicting nature of her work: a colonial subject herself, measuring human skulls obtained during German colonial expeditions. I want to highlight the complexity and entanglement of positionality, race, gender, and colonial subjects and objects through the eyes of an unusual woman in an unusual time.

In 2019 received a grant to research the novel. Of course, I have not been in Berlin to do it. I hope that things will get better. I don’t know where this hope comes from, in spite of the disappointments of this year: The defeat of Bernie Sanders by the usual neo-lib-Dems and their corporate masters. The death of my beloved dog. A forced separation from my partner, who is German, and couldn’t stay any longer in America without a visit from ICE, and I couldn’t go because US citizens are most unwelcome in the sane world. The personal sadness is small, when compared to people who have lost jobs, homes, and so tragically, family and friends to this disease. In the past months, though I have been relatively unaffected, I’ve been unable to write much of anything.

But, there have been a few encouraging moments. I was invited to a conversation with a fellow writer to speak about our work. This was organized by the Literary Colloquium Berlin, who administer the grant I received.

And now, Germany is their citizens to be reunited with foreign partners. So Berlin, and this novel, may be in my near future.

http://thebookreviewindia.org/noir-gone-sour/

This review is really sharp and clear in its interpretation, but I think he (Vaibhav Parel) maybe missed my humor somewhat. Example, a woman who thought the person sleeping with the dead was nicer than her abusive father. And my interest in Judeo-Christian binaries… But, this review does tell me yet again, that every book belongs to the reader, and every reader makes of it what they will. Every reader and therefore reading is totally unique, and relevant.

I do agree with him – the cover! But – that’s totally up to the publisher, especially when one (me) is not a writer with much clout.

Many thanks to Vaibhav Parel, for reading my work, and writing about it so thoughtfully.

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2016/dylan-lecture.html

hugovk @ flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/hugovk/

New book – one of a series – available now on Amazon kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071SH7LLC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1495835251&sr=8-2&keywords=urmilla+deshpande

New book – one of a series – available now on Amazon kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071SH7LLC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1495835251&sr=8-2&keywords=urmilla+deshpande

photo by Ira Rosenberg

I am and have been, since as far back as I can remember, a fan of Mohammad Ali. As a teenager his was the last face I saw before I slept, the first when I woke up: Artistically dotted with sweat like condensation on a cold glass, he stood ringside, unsmiling, gloves one over the other. The poster over my bed was life sized. Imagine my disbelief and delight when a man I dated (for the shortest of times,) who worked at the American consulate in Bombay, said he would get me ringside seats at the exhibition match. I cannot even describe what I felt when I got to shake one those hands from inside those gloves. I didn’t pass out, thankfully.

Before that, In 1976, I was in (then) Yugoslavia, visiting my mother and new-born sister. One of Ali’s fights was to be televised live in Europe. I had never seen anything live on TV before. Then my mother said the landlady had a color TV – I didn’t know such a thing existed! So off we went, and I sat there watching, mouth open, completely enthralled by the whole experience. We are used to this now, but to watch, in color, my hero, in real time when the term real time wasn’t yet invented – it is one of the most memorable events of my life. Still is. While my mother and I were at the landlady’s, we had put my white jeans (it was 1976, people wore white jeans) in a pot on the stove to boil away the grime. When we went back upstairs, the house was full of smoke, the jeans were a small black lump stuck to the pot, my baby sister had not asphyxiated because my mother had put a towel under her bedroom door to prevent the warmth from the space heater seeping out. But that’s another story, nothing to do with Mohammad Ali or my love for him.

Watching him these last years, not floating like a butterfly, not even making a sentence without trouble, was what made me question my great love for football, and why I stopped watching it altogether.

He died too young, and I am aware that what killed him was also what made me love him.

Slither is now freely available for sale:

Digital download at Amazon $ 2.99

Print copy at Amazon $ 7.77 with free shipping for Prime

Digital download Smashwords $ 2.99

You can read the first story free on createspace and add a review if you like.

Slither is now freely available for sale:

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Digital download at Amazon $ 2.99

Print copy at Amazon $ 7.77 with free shipping for Prime

Digital download Smashwords $ 2.99

You can read the first story free on createspace and add a review if you like.