Shakti Bhatt, Jet City Woman

By Ankush Saikia

My first novel Jet City Woman has just been published by Rupa & Co. It’s a short novel set in Delhi and northeast India. The last page has this acknowledgement: “The author would like to acknowledge his debt to Shakti Bhatt (1980–2007) for her role in the editing of this book and in the conceptualisation of its cover design.”

I met Shakti Bhatt in March of 2006. I had finished writing my first novel and was submitting the manuscript to publishing houses. One of them was the newly set up Random House India, where Shakti worked as an editor. The RHI office was on the third floor of the World Trade Tower in the Hotel Intercontinental Complex on Barakhamba Lane, near Connaught Place. The day I visited, I found that the main road had been blocked and narrowed in places due to the Metro Rail project, and the side street was under a thick layer of dust. The receptionist at RHI pressed a button by her desk to open the locked glass door—I entered and asked for someone from editorial. The receptionist called up Shakti, who came and led me in; we sat at a table where we had a short talk and I handed over the floppy which had the manuscript as a PDF file. A wasp hovered outside one of the office windows in the mid-day sun, cars and buses moved on the flyover outside the building, and two young men walked along it carrying the decorative light stands used in wedding baraats. She struck me as someone very different from the other editors I had met so far.

That first meeting was brief. I heard from Shakti a few weeks later: she said she liked the book and was pushing for it to get accepted, but that she might have to drop it as RHI was looking at just a few books that year, with a focus on non-fiction. I waited for responses from other publishers, and those weren’t encouraging. Then I heard from Shakti again: she said that my book might get accepted after all. A short while after that she left RHI. The months passed. I still hadn’t found a publisher. Then in October 2006 there was a mail from Shakti from the Frankfurt Book Fair asking me to mail her a PDF of my manuscript. She was planning to set up an imprint with one of the largest book distribution companies in India, she said, and was looking for manuscripts.

We met about a month later, in a coffee bar in her beloved Khan Market. The imprint was to be called Bracket Books, and she wanted Jet City Woman to be the first book it published. I sensed an ambition and drive in her, along with a sharp intelligence. We started work on the editing: she had me cut out a lot of flab from the book, and got two new scenes added. There were some issues to be ironed out with the distribution company over the contract, so that took some time. By March this year the editing was over, the contract was being drafted, and she had got two options done for the cover by a graphic designer; one of those became the final cover. I spoke to her for the last time on the evening of 3oth March. I remember it was a Friday. She suggested we meet the following Monday at the designer’s studio as there were a few more ideas for the cover she wanted to discuss. That Monday morning I got a call from a mutual friend telling me that Shakti had, suddenly and tragically, passed away on the night of the 31st. I thought it was a sick April Fool’s joke at first. It took a couple of days for the news to really sink in. Shakti’s husband Jeet had already flown down to Bangalore by then.

Whenever I think of Shakti I remember her in one of the coffee bars in Khan Market, sipping her coffee and looking around through her sunglasses as she talked about ways to market Bracket Books, a stylish and elegant woman with a very down-to-earth sense of humour. She was a genuinely nice person, and bought a touch of the glamour and sophistication of the media scene in New York (where she had worked for a while, and had first met Jeet) to Delhi’s growing but still staid and dusty publishing world. I went over a couple of times to Jeet and her flat in Defence Colony, and also met them socially. I found them to be very open and friendly people. By nature I am something of a closed book; I regret now that I didn’t make an effort to know her better.

Shakti was the first person from publishing to take my novel seriously and to say that it was good (and that it also needed quite a bit of work). Unless you’re an unpublished author met with rejections everywhere for a manuscript you know is worth enough to be published and read, unless you’re in that desperate state and start questioning your own worth as a writer, you’ll never know what it feels like to find a person who believes in your book. For that I shall remain eternally grateful to you Shakti. May your soul rest in peace.

The Bracket Books venture was put on hold indefinitely after Shakti passed away. A friend helped me find a new publisher, and a couple of months down the line Jet City Woman has finally been published. How I wish Shakti was here to see the book.

You Are the Butterfly and You Are Gone

by Anjali Wason

Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic, flying
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
—Goethe.

Jeet and Shakti made being in Delhi a little easier. I think they made this city more tolerable for a lot of us.

We first met them at the Habitat Centre two years ago, and discovered that we had all lived in New York recently and were new migrants to Delhi. Hirsh and I left for the summer soon after but upon our return we invited Jeet and Shakti over for a dinner party. The weather was nice by then so we sat on the terrace, smoking 50’s style slim cigarettes between courses and sharing stories.

I remember being impressed that Shakti made it a point to talk to every person at the party and ask them about themselves. You expected something else under that glamorous exterior. But she was warm and friendly, and curious about everything—the opposite of a snob.

Over the next few months, we saw a lot of one another—the evening might start off at a book launch but we would always end up at their house, where Shakti would heat up some of her mum’s undiou or her mother in law’s beef curry.

People flocked to Shakti. Tall, short, foreign, Indian, writer, call centre worker, Shakti was open to everybody—made it a point to talk to everybody in a way that made them feel comfortable, in their own language. She asked about my family, complimented my cooking, the way I’d decorated my flat. And I could always be myself in her company.

She wanted to take a trip to Himachal and I told her we would have to wait till I quit my job. I wish we had gone, just so I could have gotten to know her better. But its amazing how much love she inspired in people in the two years she was here. How much she touched people and influenced their lives.

Her life was short, but it was filled with so much friendship and generosity. You just have to look around the British Council tonight; read one of her stories; or listen to her friends speak about her to know she was a talented, creative and loving human being. And someone we will miss dearly.

The Day I Heard You Were Gone

By Annie Zaidi

The sun poured,
yellow leaves whistled down.
Heaps of seasonal letting-go
stood in my way and gardeners bent
over a late spring,
stuffing it into sacks
of green cloth.
The street struggled with smoking piles
of dry neem.

White and pink flowers stretched their lips
and smiled so much—it was grim.
Sun pouring down,
smoking winds spat in my eye,
yellow leaves skinned the air—why this?
Why in spring?
I slowed down under a neem
and caught a leaf.

What did it mean?

Thanks for the memories, beautiful

by Nipa Sahasrabuddhe

I've been in bad shape for weeks. I just cannot forget Shakti's face. Whenever I close my eyes, I see her smile and I hear her infectious laughter.

Her stay with me here in the US was one of the most important times of my life. Those months with her taught me to be happy with the things I have (she would point them out one by one), and not to whine about the little things. Most of all, she made me believe that raising a child and taking care of your husband were not nominal jobs. She would always tell me what a big and difficult task I was doing. She had more confidence in me than I did in myself.

And I remember her love for food. She would ask me to make simple dishes like bhinda ni kaadhi, and until she finished eating she would be saying, "Sexy food, Nipa, the kaadhi is orgasmic." Just broccoli with a pinch of salt would make her respond in the same way: she would totally enjoy it.

She took long walks with my daughter Aryaa so I could get some time to myself. She always said that they had meaningful conversations, that Aryaa had a philosophical mind and was a very wise kid. I have some great pictures of them together, Aryaa climbing all over her, trying to wake her up in the morning. They had a very special bond. Shakti would put on loud music and she, Aryaa and I would dance crazily. Life was always fun when she was around. Those were days when I did not like living in America. I missed my family and was always lonely. When Shakti moved in, I started enjoying myself. She would share her deepest secrets with me and talk about her emotions and feelings. Rajan, being the conservative one, made rules for her, that she had to be home by 9 P.M.. She tried very hard to respect his wishes, though she wasn't always successful.

I was packing for India when she announced that she had decided to marry Jeet. Shakti's role in my life didn't end with her marriage. When I returned to America with a yoga certification from India, Shakti encouraged me to start teaching yoga. She wrote up a resume so I could apply to various places. And she designed fliers for me. Without her encouragement, I wouldn't have done anything. I think she knew me well, knew how to push me so I would have the courage to do stuff.

I still cannot get over the shock of what happened, but I have decided that I will not cry anymore. I will think of all the beautiful memories she gave our family. I will just think of the difference her presence made to me and my daughter.

Rocket

by Zac O'Yeah

Although weeks and months have passed, I still find that whenever I think of Shakti I must remind myself that I can't just dash off an email to her. Her mails in my inbox sink, day by day, further into the past. When I try to summarise our meetings over the few years that I knew her, I am astonished at the speed with which she rocketed through life.

When we first met in an espresso bar in Bangalore in 2004, she and her husband Jeet had just returned to India, and as I recall, she had plans to go to Kashmir to shoot a documentary on the poet Agha Shahid Ali.

We met again soon for an evening of drinks at one of those old joints from colonial days that still dot the Cantonment area, then there was a gallery opening and dinner at a Goan-style restaurant, followed by more drinks at an Irish pub. A typically Bangalorean mishmash! And I found out that they were moving to Delhi. Once there she started editing a lifestyle magazine and asked for our contributions (my wife, Anjum, did write a piece on Hampi during the year that followed).

Before I had time to think of writing something myself, I ran into her towards the end of 2005, Christmas shopping in Bangalore's Commercial Street. She was excited to tell me that she had chucked up the magazine job and joined Random House as an editor, and she asked if Anjum or I would like to submit manuscripts for her consideration. At our favourite espresso bar, a few days later, Jeet filled us in on the details - the interview process Shakti had gone through, the 32 book ideas she submitted, the Random House executives who flew down from New York and London to interview her over two and a half hours at the Imperial Hotel in Delhi, while Jeet waited outside in the car... Without any previous experience in book publishing, Shakti bagged the job. We were all rather amazed. And to top it off, a few days later she was back in Bangalore, early in the new year, to receive an award for young authors. As a matter of fact, she had written a splendidly well-crafted short story, which made me realise that she was somebody whose literary instinct could always be trusted because she was a writer as well as an editor.

I did ultimately send her my latest novel, after about half a year, when I was done with the editing. This was around the time when Anjum had her book launch in Delhi, and afterwards the party sort of seamlessly shifted to Jeet's and Shakti's Defcol house where we listened to old LPs and ate fruit—what an amazingly healthy cocktail snack!—late into the night. While she did send me an email saying that she'd like to accept my book for publication, she also informed me that she was leaving Random House... to set up her own imprint. The publishing house didn't have a name yet, but she asked me if it was okay to bring the manuscript along with her to the new venture. Already hugely impressed by her, I couldn't but agree.

As her publishing house took firmer shape, she gave it a name—Bracket Books—and asked me to send the latest edit of the book; I noticed that the headquarters of Bracket Books had the same Defcol address as their home in New Delhi. When she acknowledged receiving it, she wrote how great it felt to see, for the first time, the name of her new publishing imprint on a manuscript package. The sheer joy she displayed about being a publisher made me happy at the thought of being published by Bracket Books. She also told me that she had two other novels lined up for Bracket Books' first year—2007—"an edgy urban romance and a thriller based in Pakistan". What she didn't tell me, but I learnt later, was that she was simultaneously penning not one, but three novels of her own.

The last couple of times I met Shakti, in late 2006 and early 2007, she was full of projects. Bracket Books was all set to take off. There was talk of launch campaigns. Shakti said she was interested in acquiring good non-fiction, so I brought along a British writer friend, who happened to be in India doing a stint as a foreign correspondent, to a party at their Defcol house—where I was beginning to feel quite at home. One of Shakti's own short stories had just been selected for the shortlist of a prestigious British competition. Jeet's writing was doing spectacularly well, with several book projects at hand. So much was happening around her.

But March turned to April and she was already somewhere else.

DefCol cycle rickshaw ride

by Tripti Lahiri

I still can't believe you're gone. I can't.

I pass your block all the time and so naturally I think of you and then I think back over this past year and I realize how much I saw of you, how many, many conversations we had, how much of a part of my life here you were.

Most of the people I meet now I feel like I met with you, or through you or at some gathering where you also were. When I see people we both know I feel sad we'll not all be in the same company again.

I think of you a lot. It's been exactly two months. But two months and a day ago you were still here. I thought about calling you that night to see if you were around and wanted a drink, but I didn't. I had worked till late at night and was feeling low-energy. I remember you being amused at how early I could fall asleep.

I first remember meeting you on a rooftop in Nizamuddin and chatting for a really long time, bonding over being ex-New Yorkers. I was so wrapped up in the conversation that I never even had time to notice that there was a shaven-headed man lurking always in the background around you and that you were married.

It suited you so well.

And then we exchanged numbers–as one often does at parties in Delhi. And we met randomly the very next day at brunch in Safdarjung.

I didn't really expect to hear from you–one exchanges so many numbers that sometimes I look through my directory and I don't know who most of those people are–but then you called to make plans to go for coffee, to tell me about a poetry reading, to invite me to hang out when you and Jeet still lived at your mother's. You expanded my life so much in those early days when I didn't know very many people here.

Sometimes I wondered if you weren't too cool for us to be friends. Yes, I know that's a little high school. But I don't think you thought about things like that.

If time went by and I didn't call you, I would hear from you. You were so good at making friends. I think it's because you were a good listener, you were interested in what other people had to say. Sometimes talking to you felt like sharing secrets, even when you weren't, you always had this vaguely conspiratorial air about you.

But I liked that aside from meeting at parties and other things, we met separately and talked. I always came away from those conversations feeling so stimulated, so refreshed. I felt we were both sort of in wonder and awe at where we suddenly were and at our physical surroundings and it was so good to exchange observations with you.

You loved gossip. That's something I'll always remember so fondly about you. You were the nicest gossip ever. You didn't have a mean, "gossipy" way, but you just liked to talk about people and their doings or sometimes their antics. And then you would analyze whether you would do such-and-such a thing yourself if you were in X's place, or what did it mean that so-and-so did that other thing. Sometimes I think it was a way for you to ponder the vagaries of human nature. I'm glad I had a little gossip to share with you the last time we met. I wish I could update you on developments since then.

This is stupid and meaningless but I keep wishing I had treated you to brunch that time.

You had to send back the eggs because they were sweet. The bacon was too salty but we ate it anyway. I complained to the cook that he shouldn't automatically put sugar in the eggs since no one expects it. You said it was very "gujju."

I was late to meet you and you picked me up near the drain in a cycle rickshaw. There was something so funny about that. I just saw you approaching in the cycle rickshaw, telling me to get in, and I remember telling you it was the first time I had ever been picked up in a cycle rickshaw. It seemed so unorthodox. You were wearing a lemon yellow t-shirt and big sunglasses and you looked so well.

I remember one time we were out after you had just been unwell and someone greeted you with, "Shakti! You look so tired!" You weren't impressed.

You gave up dark lipstick and most everyone was pleased. Me too. I didn't really think it suited you, it was just too distracting in your pretty face. But I thought maybe it was a left-over goth thing from earlier days so I didn't comment on it until you dropped it.

You told me in the rickshaw that you had been all around Defence Colony in a cycle rickshaw just to explore it. I liked that.

Once we talked about doing "field trips" in Delhi together. One of the ones I suggested was Darya Ganj. You had already been and you screwed up your nose and said it wasn't all that.

I went later and meant to tell you I agreed but I forgot. We never did go on any field trips together.

I wish I had seen more of you after New Year's. I was a little out-of-touch with most people, distracted by something, which I told you about when we finally had a chance to catch up.

I thought I'd have more time to spend with you.

I'm so sad I'll never get to know you better than I know you now, or to keep knowing you.

One day I was seized with a blind panic that of all the people to fall out of touch with, it couldn't be you, my friend almost from the beginning. I called you up to go for brunch. I thought you'd like the departure from the usual drinks or coffee outing.

A week later you were gone.

Shakti, you are so missed.

Beat Elegy

in memoriam Shakti Bhatt

by Monica Mody

Many times I tried to become a bard for her but found my tongue
                                lost to the screams in the mouth
                                of my last night’s dream —
the dream where I run to catch the sorrows singing on his homely wall
                                & find them black with my own blood,
the dream where things happen without a reason, or logic, or forewarning,
                                & towers fall with no more provocation
                                than a breath of flat air,
the dream where I try again to run after & catch the japing sorrows
                                but they fly straight into the premises
of a noble spirit, guarded by snakes of dust & sweat & fearsome tears,
                                so I can only look at her cradled between the
                                branches of parijat, wearing a band of 7-colour peacock
feathers & a rope of charcoal, & my entreaties to her to remember him
                                go unheard, my summons to our commonalities
                                of age, once love, to no avail,
my conjuring of that tangy summer evening disregarded where
                                perfectly formed couplets were spoken &
                                soared before our collective delighted eyes,
& I give up & think she has returned to her own species,
                                or else the trace of blue
under her eyes will become one day a blue bird resting
                                its head at the tips of the branches,
but the thought hurts so much I wake up in a shrieking silence.

Brief as photos

by Curtis Bauer

It was evening when I heard the news, a phone call from my friend, the poet Elaine Sexton in New York, to me in Seville, Spain, about dear Shakti's death in India. I had just returned to my apartment after wandering the streets, weaving between the Holy Week marches and processions of masked and robed men and somber music, incense and candle wax. It was all surreal, none of it seemed to have actually happened; none of it made sense, but it all made me feel numb. The next morning I walked back downtown, feeling a need to retrace my steps for some reason I couldn't explain at the time. There were wax paths winding through the city center; I followed them from Plaza Pilatos to Plaza Alfalfa, past my favorite church, La Basilica Del San Salvador, which is run down, has grass and weeds growing out of its roof tiles, but in that state of disrepair and quiet beauty that stops me every time I pass it. The streets were deserted except for the previous night's drunks and a few early tourists. Then I saw a South Asian couple wandering in the plaza, away from all the major tourist attractions, pulling a suitcase, deep in their coats and scarves and hats, but they were laughing and holding hands. And they gave me the memory of Jeet and his Shakti on a street in an Italian village as it rains, or as rain threatens and cars squeeze through the narrow streets of Bellagio and Shakti is struck by something in a shop window and steps into traffic absentmindedly and Jeet shouts, pulls her back and holds her arm, pulls her close and scolds her, but before we walk much further we're all smiling again, laughing at something she's said. And then my mind was swimming with memories of that place and the days we were together in New York City. In John Berger's book And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos, he says that history, our past, is never lost, but it spreads around us, and deepens our present experience. And just a moment ago my wife tells me that she's happy she didn't see Shakti in Italy, that there is greater distance in her memory of Shakti's smiling face, her energy and beauty, and that her heart doesn't hurt as much as it would have had she seen her in the fall like I had. I suppose she's right, but I'd not give that up, that last moment looking out the car window as she stood with Jeet at the gate of the palace where they were staying in Bellagio waving to me and Elaine as we drove away, those recent, now distant days we spent together walking to the lake and eating, reading and smoking in their apartment, or our picnic on the roadside or coffee in some mountain cafe where she ordered a whiskey and we all sipped it, four friends reunited in a foreign place, living together briefly, piecing together a friendship that distance had deteriorated. I still have trouble believing that Shakti is gone; I have these memories of her, as well as those of the 7 Carmine readings she filmed in the Pink Pony in New York, dinner with her and Jeet in the East Village, at Elaine's house... I think of Shakti, her energy, her life and laughter, and her absence overwhelms me.

The city of suffering & ambition

by Anjum Hasan

The last time I saw Shakti was on the night of February 20th, on the pavement outside the Delhi pub, DV8. A group of writers had just spent a few animated hours in the pub after two overlapping readings — one at the British Council and another at the Open Mic organised by Nigah. I was on a rare post-reading high (as against the usual post-reading slump). The feeling of being among a fraternity was a precious, cosy feeling. On that cold, pre-dawn street, as I hugged Jeet and Shakti goodbye, I said to Shakti — "We actually live in the same city." When I got back home to Bangalore the following day there was a mail from her waiting for me. After her usual high-spirited salutations, she said, "You left me with a mysterious note. We live in the same city... of writing? suffering? ambition?"

Early the previous evening I'd handed over to Shakti, swaddled in cloth, the gleaming Toto Funds the Arts Award trophy that she had won for two excellent short stories in early 2005. Somehow the trophy had stayed behind in Bangalore and TFA had asked me to carry it for her. Seeing it made her day, she said.

One of Shakti's award-winning stories formed part of a special issue on young writing that I'd put together for the literary journal New Quest in mid-2006. I wrote in my introduction about her "marvellous short stories that bring bourgeois Indians to life — their obsessions with servants, food, religion and relatives." The judges for the TFA award had similarly applauded Shakti's "developed and mature voice" and described her stories as "extremely well-plotted and contextualised." She would, without doubt, have blossomed into an important Indian writer.

Shakti, you are missed in that one city we all live in — of writing, suffering and ambition.

In Praise of Shakti Bhatt

by Elaine Sexton

My earliest impression of Shakti is that of the young beauty who dazzled my friend Jeet Thayil when they met, changing him, and charging their lives, and our lives in New York, with a rare and infectious delight. She stepped into our community of poets and writers in Manhattan with a grace and presence few failed to notice. Shakti was a steady mate to Jeet at readings, parties, events, all the while establishing herself, with an uncommon zeal, as a journalist, art maker, and curator. She filmed and edited a documentary of our poetry collective, 7 Carmine, with the precision of a seasoned professional, though (to my knowledge) this was her first venture in this genre. She impressed me and many among us with her keen knowledge of contemporary American poetry and fiction. When they returned to India, Jeet and Shakti left a void, and in the intervening years it seemed we might lose the thread of what bound us so tightly together. When we learned Jeet, accompanied by Shakti, was granted a fellowship at the Bellagio Center in Italy last fall, the poet Curtis Bauer, living in Spain, and I agreed to meet in Milan and drive north to spend a few days with them. The four of us shared an intense few days sharing and critiquing new work, smoking cigars and drinking Chianti in their comfortable quarters overlooking the lake. Exploring the grounds and the narrow roads from town to town skirting Lake Como, we were enchanted by the place and what drew us there. To say we savored every moment understates how charged and lucky we all felt to be together. We had just discovered Shakti as a writer of fiction. Still a bit shy about putting her own work forward she put our poems ahead of her stories, always enthusiastic, generous and insightful in her remarks. One could see, clearly, she was a fine editor. In a few weeks, upon returning to Delhi, she would begin work on her own imprint after this month-long hiatus with Jeet. When I last saw her she was brimming with talk of several new authors and the prospect of finding new work to usher into print. Her enthusiasm for the heady art and literary world of Delhi was so fierce that she had both Curtis and me convinced we were crazy to not quit our jobs and move there immediately! My last correspondence with Shakti was an email exchange on a beautiful and complex story she drafted at Bellagio. Those of us who knew her in New York are still reeling from the news of her untimely death. The loss of someone so vital and young, just beginning to exercise all that imagination and energy on so many worthy projects is unspeakable. Shakti leaves an indelible mark on me as a fledgling friend, and on so many others as an author, editor, confidant, and devoted partner to Jeet — roles she filled with a magical grace.

Shaktiben, what's happening tonight?

by Bani Abidi

This January when I came to Delhi for Sarnath's book launch, Shakti and I met for coffee one day in DefCol. She and I sat in a little park in the market and spoke about the state of English writing in India, about Bracket Books, about the author from the North East whom she was going to publish, and moved on to a long conversation about North East politics and then, just as easily, we switched to art and what I was working on. Conversation is rarely as engaged, as easy, and as interesting as it was with her. I remember shouting out to her while Sarnath was on the phone with her later that evening, that I had loved talking to her. She was one of the main people I would think of, when, in the following months, I would tell my friends in Lahore that Delhi is socially a fabulous place. I was really looking forward to having her be part of my life in Delhi. I remember her running up to me at Sarnath's book launch and stating that she had instantly developed a crush on my husband with his new haircut! She was such a mad and fun person, so charming...and so beautiful.

I think of her in her striped tights, short sexy skirts, and her black coat. In her spiffy winter outfits...this petite, gorgeous woman with the most striking personality...that's what I thought when I first met her last December. Samit posted on his blog a photo from his birthday and I can't stop thinking of that evening. We hung around freezing, huddled, eating fish tikkas, and finally had to drag Sarnath away from his obsessive socializing to get to Samit's in time. It was really heartening to be able to connect so quickly with a close friend of Sarnath's, who had no problem in joining me in taking the mickey out of him. She and he were such party buddies...he would say, "Let me call Shaktiben and find out what's happening tonight".

Her death has been an awful loss for everyone.

May her memory and her spirit live long and continue to touch the lives of even those who were not fortunate enough to have known her.

Add: this list

by Monica Narula

I remember Shakti, and I remember Shakti and Jeet together. I
remember the times we sat and ate together and I remember the
fact that we didn't manage to get drunk together. I remember the
terrace and her study table and the book shelves and the beautiful
bed and the sound of a live saxophone. I remember a pink drink I only
tasted and tomato sandwiches I put away in quantity. I remember
birthday tea and delicious pastries when passing by on another day. I
remember avocados and beef fry. I remember interview sessions and
real conversations. I remember laughter and photographs. I remember
wit and 'a lack of irony'.

I am so glad that all of this was a part of my life.

Sleep well, sweet sister

by Sajay Samuel & Samar Farage

After some months of their meeting, Shakti and Jeet dropped by for a weekend. This would be the first time we would meet her. Jeet was still courting her and evidently needed to move matters forward. And so, one crisp fall weekend, in a little flat in a little town in Central Pennsylvania, we supped on a dinner prepared by Jeet for Shakti. If food is the music of love, on that clear night we partook of a glorious song.

To us she seemed an improbable gift: beautiful, charming, and wise beyond her years, a sharp intelligence wrapped in a warm wit, a shard of light around which many could gather. She was forgiving—when we could not attend their wedding in New York; she was hospitable to a fault—when we risked a journey to the big city to see them; she sternly prodded and poked as only a motherly editor would—when she heard we might have something to write about. We met her about once a year and each time we parted we left heartened, lifted.

And now we miss her. And now we weep for him she has left behind. And now we take joy in the memory of her.

"Tell me why you love the sea"

by Sonia Nazareth

Shakti, I met in February this year.

24 hours later we are in a bar. As we sip Cosmopolitans, I think how joyful I am to have met this vital girl, with vividly lashed eyes and lips beautifully swollen into doing her bidding. Two waiters hover by, attentive, but we forget to order for we discover that besides being in college at the same time and being the same age, we are happy together. Space opens up around us. And we fly in. Sharing about our lives is as easy as it was buying the identical black dresses that lie beside us. We talk about what makes our summer's winter and our winter's summer. And the honesty in her makes everything a hopeful shade of spring.

As we bypass the squid in favour of conversation, I see how easy it is to love this girl. For the empathy in her eyes is the space in which we are human. And vulnerability in our interaction has become as easy as strength.

But that's not the only reason I love her. I love her for the way she injects me with warmth. And the world with life. And her gender with androgyny.

I love her for the eloquence in her face that has even the pastry sitting between us with its jammy red heart responding.

It is time to go now. As we leave she presses an Indian sweet into my hand. "You must eat it, it is homemade," she says. I nibble. She encourages me to go further. A hunk of sweetness dislocates in my mouth. Crumbs fly everywhere. We laugh. We hold each other. We promise to write. "Tell me why you love the sea," she cries as her black and yellow cab flies past mine. We know we will always be friends.

Immersed in the world

by Keki Daruwalla

I came to know Shakti obviously through Jeet and I knew Jeet Thayil only through his poems. I reviewed a double-decker he had figured in with Vijay Nambisan and liked his poetry (though he thought, I came to know later, that I had not been laudatory enough—a common enough complaint with most of us poets—mea culpa). When he started editing an anthology of Indian poetry in English for Fulcrum magazine, we corresponded. Then he moved to Delhi and came over with his wife, Shakti. The couple was obviously in love. It was the first time I had met her and I couldn't help being impressed. She was warm, outgoing, and thoroughly immersed in books. She was more aware of what was going on in the literary world than I was. In fact, she was with Random House who had just opened a branch in Delhi.

Shakti told me at our first meeting that one of the projects she was toying with was to ask me to write an autobiography—but an unusual one. Link it up with your writing, she said, concentrate on the external event that triggered off a poem or a story. I wouldn't look at a proposal for an autobiography (it would be pretty boring), but the way she put it, it seemed quite an idea and I kept mulling it over.

When Bruce King and Adele came to Delhi and stayed at Nizamuddin with Jeet and Shakti, who were then with Shakti's mother, Sheela Bhatt, I went across. We had a long evening over pepper vodka.

After that we kept meeting at literary events—and in Delhi they are events. I went to a performance poetry function organized by the British Council at the Habitat Centre, where Jeet was reading. It was quite an evening, with a rap session thrown in. There was a big crowd and I was told it was Shakti who had sent as many as 300 emails to people about the event. In a country which puts a premium on mediocrity, if not downright incompetence, such efficiency was almost baffling.

I thought Shakti was a fine judge of poetry, and when she didn't like a poem or a poet, she didn't mince words. (Frankness was one of her endearing qualities.) She had a feel for language and the texture of the narrative that goes to make good literature. I was told later that she had started work on a novel. I would have loved to read it.

Nothing prepared me, or anyone else for that matter, for the tragedy that overtook her. I went to IIT Kharagpur for a talk and when I returned on April 1st, I saw a disturbing email from critic and friend Bruce King, from Paris, talking about the "horrible news about Shakti". I phoned up fellow poets but no one seemed to know anything. The next day the terrible news was confirmed

I carry Shakti's image in my mind—very slim, confident, beautiful in her own way, always warm, and looking forward to what life had to offer. May her soul rest in peace.

Elegy

for Shakti Bhatt

by Michael Creighton

Years from now,
we may smile and sigh at the sight
of a horribly misplaced comma
or a ball badly thrown
by a woman in shoes
the color of sky,

but right now, all we can see
is this paper kite crashing,
smoke rising from a corn-seller's coals,

and beyond, that thing with feathers
hanging high in a mulberry tree,
spread wings brushing
leaves and blood-red fruit.

Terrifying and irrational, it makes no sense

by Bruce King

It was only after Shakti died that I realized how few times I had actually seen her, as she felt like a friend I had known forever. We first met her in Bangalore when we were staying with Jeet's parents. I had known Jeet for many years and Shakti was new to me. I saw a young, very attractive woman with what appeared a large head, large eyes and a tiny body, who managed to dress absolutely differently each day, as if changing her appearance was both an art and a form of self-protection.

Jeet told me that Shakti was a writer, but I had not then seen anything she had written. She did, however, strike me as different from most Indian women I had met in her always changing sense of fashion, which walled in a certain moodiness disguised by a lively enthusiasm.

She was not used to living within a family and was impatient with its expectations. Yet she was not really American, although she had studied and worked in the States. Rather, the separation of her parents and her mother's career had given her a different outlook, an independence and perhaps an accompanying sense of loneliness and selfhood. We often went out to eat together and I felt she would have been happier to always do so.

It was not surprising when Shakti became the editor of a glossy Indian fashion magazine, although the magazine itself and her appointment should have seemed unusual. What was surprising was how good the material was. When a few months later, she was appointed the first editor at Random House India it seemed natural. She was obviously going to the top very quickly, but now that I knew her better I wondered whether she would ever be satisfied, which was a danger of such early success. She no sooner had the job than she seemed bored with it and ready to move on to something grander or more exciting. When she resigned to start her own publishing company, it seemed both dangerous and natural. She expected a lot from life, more perhaps than life could give.

There was Shakti who wanted to go to the best restaurants and the street stalls, who wanted to go to all-night parties and yet edit poorly-written manuscripts in the morning, who seemed to have skipped ahead a few generations of her life with her career and yet was still a girl in her mid‑twenties wanting to experience the craziness of youth. She and Jeet seemed at the centre of a new Indian cultural scene comprising the young, the attractive, those educated abroad; they were clearly different from the designer‑khadi‑clad intelligentsia of the past.

Shakti's early and rapid death was terrifying in its irrationality. Such usual images as meteors and falling stars are inappropriate as they suggest a moral fall from pride. In her case the rocket was still going up and disappeared like that. It made no sense.

Our own daughter was about Shakti's age when she died in a fire. Had the naturalness we felt around Shakti been a substitute?

A rabbit for Shakti

by Adele King

/ ( ~ ~)\
     ` ` `
    (          )o   

Le lapin pleure.

Days of Shakti

by Kathleen McCaul

I met Shakti on my second day in Delhi, unsure why the hell I had moved to the city. In a blur of unfamiliar faces she immediately stood out, stalking into the room in a bright red tight top, black trousers and killer heels. A take-no-prisoners woman who filled the room despite sitting in a corner. She immediately started smoking, unapologetically. I was a bit scared of her actually, but I still asked for a cigarette and we got talking.

She'd been a journalist, she'd been to Kashmir, like me. We drank wine together and she told me about her husband and New York and asked me how old I was. We were practically the same age but she'd been married for four years. How did she do that? How did she manage to be young and grown-up at the same time? So attached and so free? Shakti seemed very romantic to me.

It was December. I filled my days with trying to work out what the hell I was doing in Delhi and wondering how India could be so cold. I visited Khan market to look at heaters and radios to stop our new flat seeming so empty and lonely. There were Shakti and Jeet filling up a car with two extravagantly huge heaters. Shakti had on her black boots and huge purple sunglasses which went with her lilac lipstick and made her look like a movie star. She was unashamedly glamorous.

"Come," she ordered.

We went to have coffee - well, I had a tea and Shakti had, as always, her thick black coffee. We talked about writing and Delhi and Bombay and we talked about her novel.

"God. Everyone in Delhi is writing a novel!" I said.

"I know," she said, with a half-confident half-smile.

I got busy with commissions and Shakti helped me with a story. She helped me with everything -- where to get a haircut, where to buy T-shirts, where to get good food, where to have fun. We met again and talked about everything and we gossiped about everyone. Our coffees spread into lunches, spread into shopping expeditions, spread into lost afternoons laughing in rickshaws; whole days and nights of hanging out with Shakti. Delhi is a big city with big distances between people and places. Shakti strolled around making it seem smaller.

I think my favourite day with Shakti was when I woke up one morning morose and uninspired. I sat on my sofa glum with the idea of a day spent in front of my solitary laptop; tapping, tapping. I thought Shakti would be busy, but I phoned her and asked if she would come to Old Delhi and review a tea shop with me. She agreed straight away; no "ums" or "ahs" or "maybes". I went round to her light and breezy flat. She gave me a midday breakfast of upma and squirted herself with perfume before we went out. Always a little bit of glamour.

Old Delhi was hot and busy and fumy. We found this miracle teashop, a small quiet wooden pilgrimage site for tea connoisseurs, a few yards away from severed goat heads and piles of deep-fried birds. We sat in the shade of the slatted blinds and tasted tea and talked and talked again. She had this great way of opening her eyes really big and arching her eyebrows and saying "No!" She talked about when she was in Florida and she was a hippy who didn't wear bras. She confessed her biggest crime to me which she made me swear not to tell a soul. I'd like to write it here, the crime was hilarious and pretty bad, but I've promised. We talked about children and our futures and food and what we liked to cook and what we were going to cook for each other. I'd just learnt broccoli and tofu stir-fry. Shakti had lived on it for a year.

We could have just gone back home after we'd both bought our earl grey and green tea, but Shakti was easy and free with her time. Being with her was like being back at university, stealing away from lectures or libraries. You knew you should maybe be working but deeper down you knew having fun with a friend was not only far more pleasant, but far more important and beneficial.

We examined oversized steel juicers and coffee-making machines shining on the roadside. One said Shakti. I got overexcited.

"You have to buy it!"

"Maybe," she said. I think she was probably used to her name, one of India's favourite words, written all over the place. I wasn't and I looked it up on the Internet later. It means power, energy, life-force.

We wandered through the market to the Jama Masjid, examining the oil-filled black woks and the fish heads and the chickens in wooden baskets and the Urdu books. Shakti was as entranced as I was, perhaps more so. She had her phone and was taking pictures and making tiny films and crouching down to talk to children. She bantered charmingly with old bearded shopkeepers and narrated overheard snatches of conversation to me.

"Those two men are arguing about who is going to die first," she told me.

We wandered through the mosque, pigeons flew around us and we talked about Islam and India and political correctness. We held onto each other, climbing up the minaret's narrow, black spiral staircase. We emerged high on the Delhi skyline and squashed in with all the dark boys in their flapping pyjamas and white caps, clinging onto the rail in the tiny tower top. Shakti took more photos and played some tunes; inappropriate hip-hop I think. She'd never been to the Jama Masjid before. We were tourists in the city we lived in. We got a cycle rickshaw back. The sun was just glowing and the shadows were long and we smoked.

"It's days like these that make me think I can still live in this city," she said. And I was so happy.

For me, Shakti was unconventional, creative and clever. She was giving up smoking by reading Anna Karenina. Underneath this immediate brightness, I found a thoughtful softness which made her more special.

She has taught me to be friendlier, more open and more spontaneous. She's taught me to phone friends on a whim, invite people I don't know so well over to mine, and be kind to strangers I meet at parties. I feel I'm a better person for knowing Shakti.

How to achieve domestic well-being

by Anand Thakore

The last thing I said to Shakti was: 'Don't worry, I'll brush my teeth.' I was seeing her and Jeet to a cab outside my house where they had been staying for a couple of days. Shakti had spent an hour in the morning dictating to me a list of items that 'needed doing': Cut your hair, use cockroach repellant, brush your teeth (of course...), get rid at once of old old flowers ('dead flowers are a favourable breeding ground for mosquitoes...'), decide which clothes you want to keep, etc. I took her instructions down in a large black notebook. Few people have been able to make me do this sort of thing. Shakti could.

She had a way of disarming people that made even things like instruction-lists and advice sound like fun; though I bet she was dead serious about every one of her numerous commandments, her 'suggestions' towards more evolved forms of domestic well-being. She insisted on tipping the servants, though I had warned her not to spoil them.

Shakti was vibrant, caring and serious about having fun. When she learned that I like flowers and tea she brought me tea and flowers. I sang verses for her from old Gujarati folk-songs, which she seemed to remember better than I did. We danced garba in my living room, spinning with the abandon of dervishes on every fifth beat. We talked about plays and books and, of course, people: primarily how they looked, walked and dressed, but also how they seemed to think, and, if they were writers, how they wrote.

She was my friend. I will miss her.