Life had been keeping me away from the soul business of reading and writing in the past few weeks, dear shadow (and now, perhaps, really imaginary) readers. And this explains the dearth of any oil spills hitting these waters.

In the past few weeks, I have managed to make a detour to San Francisco (photos here), that city which you enter by the way of the Golden Gate, and fuilfil my fantasy to pay homage to one of the demotic figures in my literary genesis - Vikram Seth, by reading his great Pushkin-ian novel in verse "The Golden Gate" atop the Golden Gate Bridge:

The surface of the cobalt bay Is flecked white. The moister, keener October air has rinsed away The whispering mists with crisp intensity And over the opaque immensity A deliquescent wash of blue Reveals the bridge, long lost to view In summer's quilt of fog: the towers, High-built, red-gold, with their long span -The most majestic spun by man- Whose threads of steel through mists and showers, Wind, spray, and the momentous roar Of ocean storms, link shore to shore.

• this by playing hookie at the conference I was at.

And now I may be getting to move to New York in a few months. So wish me good luck and godspeed. And oh, happy Thanksgiving y'all!

It is evening, early fall as I write this. I was incapacitated by a terrible sense of longing an hour or so ago, so much so that I couldn't make my fingers clutch a pen and write. This was till I dug up Mickey Hart's "Around the World For A Song", and went on a trip.

The beat took me in no particular order to rainforests and the dying music of Kauli tribe of Brazil, high mountain plateaus and the throat chanting of Tibet, the Gangetic plain of India with the madness Zakir Hussain can cox out of two drums, the Ojibway firecircle chants, the folk rythms of Sahara nomads, the massive wall of polyphonic rythm thrown up by a master drummer of Nigeria. What this music did was take me to that drum that beats within myself, and listen to it again closely.

Go listen to this album, and feel the rythm.

Kind Readers,

(I know I might be adressing only myself!)

Moi dream company, McKinsey & Co, is interviewing me, and vice versa next week. So all of you 'kindly be' sending me all of your tremendous 'force' (if you are the praying type, prayers or wishes) as I do this Cirque De Soliel thing (swinging from a high rope with the tip of your nose is fun!), and go over to the dark side.

Ommmm. -S