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Archive for the ‘Melvin Burgess’ Category
Melvin Burgess’ blog: Last Day in India
February 22nd, 2010 | 
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Wednesday 18th February – Kolkata. Last day in India.
There have been two bomb blasts in India since I've been here – 3 days, kinda explains why the cricket team are reluctant to come here – and much hair tearing about relations with "Pak,", which is popularly held to blame for the whole thing. I'm told I have to arrive two hours before my internal flight to Delhi, which is turned into over three by my hosts wanting to make sure everything is all right. As in the UK, this leaves me hanging around for hours and hours with nothing to do I finally get into Delhi at ten, and off to the Shangri la Hotel and a bed as big as a swimming pool. But no one to go diving in it with..
Next morning, Arnab's little yellow pills have worked and I've finally had a good night's sleep, but I'm still tired. I lounge around all morning before setting out on a day of tourism. I have three free days here, according to my schedule – free all day Tuesday (today), one event in the evening on Wednesday and then I leave on Thursday at 3am for Vilnius. From sun to snow. As you can imagine, my packing was murder.
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Melvin Burgess: Blog from Kolkata
Kolkata – Monday 15th FebruaryArnab very nicely stops off to buy me some medicine. I'm being kept awake with indigestion, as well as gripe – I don't know which one to go for, medicine-wise, but we settle on ant-acids. He buys some teeny weenie little yellow pills,quite unlike the great chalky monsters you get at home.
We'll see.
Literary Salon, British Council, New Delhi
Photos from Melvin Burgess and Rob Lewis' visit to the British Council New Delhi this week for an informal Literary Salon with writers including Urvashi Butalia and Mridula Koshy
Melvin Burgess at Kalyani University
Photos from Melvin Burgess' workshop at Kalyani University, West Bengal.
All photos courtesy Arnab Banerjee © British Council
more photos…
Melvin Burgess: First blog from India
Mumbai and KolkataMumbai, Thursday 11th February
Landed at 1.30am, which is 8pm yesterday UK time. In bed by four and up at ten for breakfast with Cardiff crime writer, Rob Lewis, also part of the British Council Lit Sutra programme. We are driven to the Kala Ghoda festival site and shown around – it's an hour in the car. Then back for half an hour's rest, then back to the festival. The traffic is like a river of cars, except it's not much like a river because it doesn't go anywhere.
In the evening, I'm doing a session for the festival with some new Indian writers and an Italian lady who had what must be a great job – roving editor and translator. She's spent the last twenty winters in India, traveling round villages, towns and cities, and translating her finds into Italian. She was at the session with one of the writers she'd translated, Annie Zaide.
It was a lovely session, in the garden of the library in Kala Ghoda, at dusk,with the crows settling down to roost in the tree tops disturbing huge fruit bats, who were just starting their night. Woodsmoke coming in across the lights – I thought for a moment the gels were catching fire.
It so happened that Annie Zaide, had written a piece called, “The Politics of the Unprotected Child.” Since I was talking about my last book, Nicholas Dane, set in an abusive care home in Manchester in the 1980's, we had a theme in common straight away. Read the rest of this entry »
Melvin Burgess in Mumbai
Melvin Burgess is now in India for events at the Kala Ghoda festival in Mumbai, and will then be travelling on to British Council events in Delhi.
Read more here.
Burgess, Lewis join Lit Sutra
Melvin Burgess, and Robert Lewis have joined the Lit Sutra programme for mid February.
More details to follow!
