So when I saw the same painting grace Rosalind Miles' The Women's History of the World, I let out a rather sudden"what!", startling my father who was struggling with the first line of The Jacques Derrida Reader. Father and daughter sitting in the same study reading very different books is a familiar scene at our home on Saturday mornings. When I am not in London. Anyway, I am a great one at lateral thinking. Often with hilarious results. I concocted a mental image of ol' Pablo sitting on the pot in my box toilet back in London, reading Miles' book approvingly.

I have spent the last many days and nights suffering permutations of elements, personal and strange, contemporary and historical, real and imagined. All I can say is, it is a familiar suffering, and one that usually unfolds before I make a journey. And sometimes like I am doing now, I try to disengage one element from the other, which needless to add is arduous.

It was a lavishly yellow sari that I wore. Like the ones that brides wear in morning weddings here. For an audition for a film, it was an obviously inappropriate outfit, and veryuncharacteristic of me. I rarely wear saris and I hate yellow. As much as I love black. Every other figure in that august room seems inchoate now. And there was Satyajit Ray.

And Ray it was. Sitting on a tin chair with wornout arms, he was wearing a sparkling white dhoti and kurta. Reminiscent of a school dramatics teacher, patiently trying out reams of excited would-be stageplayers, he was calling out names. Except, he was authoritative and very arrogant. He called out for me gruffly. As I walked up demurely, he motioned me to sit down. I could hear my own panic. Panic didn't sound very good. All the lines that had been distributed on badly photocopied pieces of paper an hour before were reeling past my eyes like a television presenter's nightmare come true.

But he didn't ask me to utter even a sound. Just pulled out a thick black rimmed pair of spectacles and placed it on my face. And handed a book to me which I remember was upside down, so he surely didn't intend me to read from it. And thank goodnesshe didn't, as I cannot read Bengali. Before I could evaporate, Ray smiled, and said, "Call it off. She's the one." It was official. I was the select actress for his next film. And in the lead role. The last film I saw in London at that adorable south bank was Bergman's The Seventh Seal. I remember they had screened a Ray retrospective days earlier and I had missed it for some obscure reason. And I recall my trepidation because I had managed to miss Ray's famous trilogy all over again. Pather Panchali, Apur Sansar, Aparajita. I have never seen these films. Only heard of them from my father, a loyal Rayist. And just like he disapproves of my hairstyle, one of his sorest points with me is this inexplicable act. Missing Ray? For him, I could only be sub-human.

So I am the last person who should have been selected for his next film. Not even in a dream. Why Ray's actress in a yellow sari, and not a female death for Bergman? Yellow over black. Ray over Bergman. Quiet loquacity of my audition likethat of a TV presenter deserted by his autocue. My mind is full of catacombs. I told you. Analysing is a fecund business. And fecundity the only element synchronous with Ray.