Eyes wide shut

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Satisfy the voyeur in you by peeping the literary orgy in Manhattan:

 Pankaj Mishra, in puffy shirt and boho beard, was the absolute star with a hilariously barbed passage from Butter Chicken in Ludhiana.
Only two of the authors reading were second-gen: Jhumpa Lahiri and Vijay Seshadri, the O.G. ABCD in his 50s who teaches at Sarah Lawrence. ‘Thelma,’ a love poem from The Long Meadow: baritone wit, a thatch of gray hair and vulnerability.
Read his iconic passage on the Bombay monsoon from Maximum City.
Spying a courgette in his ex-lover’s hand, Shamsie’s protagonist asked, ‘Is that domesticity or a dildo?’
Flip-haired, moddish diplomat with the rich tones of a British lord read aloud about book markets in Baghdad.

Anna, Turbanhead, Prashant Kothari and Deepa represented. We left the authors and their groupies at a dimly-lit bar and gorged on tricorner dosas shaped like pirate hats. Over dinner, one moblogger and one guy checking email. Gay racehorses and fowl necrophilia were on the table, and a tipsy mutineer kept yelling, ‘This is so gonna be blogged!’ The wine was free, oh yes, the wine was free.

Update: DesiLit has more.

5 thoughts on “Eyes wide shut”

  1. You guys are lucky and were spoiled for choice. What was Jhumpa saying? Did she read from any new work?

  3. I was new to the all the author’s works. It was a great event, Park Slope indeed was empty.

  4. What was Jhumpa saying? Did she read from any new work?

    She read from a new short story and, well, I don’t want to shock you, but it’s about Bengalis in America 😉

  5. My personal fave line came from a non-author at the “after-party”:

    “So, yeah, I’m sorta macking on this girl, and I totally forgot.”

    Wisdom for the ages, y’all.

    -D