Provoke Publishing

11/09/2025

拆 [chāi] — to demolish, dismantle, destroy. In Shanghai, the ideogram is a death sentence written on walls: soon this house, this alley, this courtyard will vanish.

Leticia Lampert’s book doesn’t just document the ruins — it stages them. Each pockmarked wall, half-torn curtain, abandoned teacup becomes an invitation to invent. These aren’t ruins as tragedy, they are ruins as stage directions: here, imagine a life.

That’s what I love about books like this: they refuse to let demolition be the last word. Instead, they let memory (and fiction) colonize the wreckage.

Sparseeing works in the same spirit. It’s not an archive that says “look what was.” It’s an invitation: “tell me what could have been.” Because even when the city clears the lot and builds something new, we get to keep walking through the ghost architecture we made up in our heads.

Maybe the real act of preservation isn’t saving the building — it’s refusing to stop telling stories about it.

Courtesy: .lampert

02/09/2025

Autobiography of a Rolliflex:

I was born in Braunschweig, 1953 — twin lenses, square gaze, waist-level charm. Don’t call me vintage, darling, call me timeless. While the Leicas ran around like boys showing off, I stood taller, slower, more deliberate. I don’t chase moments, I seduce them.

I’ve been carried through wars and weddings, stared at generals and grandmothers with the same calm face. I’ve been caressed by artists, dropped by amateurs, and once abandoned in a darkroom like a lover who deserved better.

Twelve frames at a time, I demanded attention. No spray-and-pray, no easy shortcuts. With me, every click was a contract: commit or don’t bother.

Now I rest on a shelf, hips wide, body square, heavy with secrets. But I still smell of leather and fixer, and I still remember every gaze that passed through me.

And if sparseeing is a story about memory, fiction, and the fragile archive of our lives — then maybe I’ve been its ghostwriter all along.

15/07/2025

Posted • I SPEAK IN BIRDSONG: I found a shy little who could whistle. He imitated bird sounds using just his hands placed in complicated ways around his mouth. He wanted to be a bird. Maybe. There’s something about the and soaring birds.

He passed me by pretending as though I hadn’t caught him in on his secret. One that he shared with only the birds. I followed him down the hill to his mother’s tea shop. I went out in desperation to grab a few . Bribing was now the only option.

As I returned, I came back only to find, the boy sitting across the table from me. He wouldn’t meet my eyes-one of his looked past me, the other off to the side, and yet I could feel him watching, somehow.
He gave one more sound, long and stretched -a hawk’s cry, like it had flown far to get here and lost something on the way.

He finally did come along to letting me record his secret on my phone camera , but was extremely hesitant at first. But us now being in his mother’s canteen helped me ease into the situation. It was his safe place he finally sang and it was .

27/09/2024

08/09/2023

Think: the sound of splashing and giggles as the cousins get together for a dip in the makeshift pool behind the garden patch of our childhood home, of a summer rain slanted against some beloved attic's cooling roof, of a childhood photograph rediscovered in a faded frame.
It's the sound of our grandparents' house in Bistupur which would brim with warmth when Mehr and I found respite from our travels, and caught up with her sisters Perin and Kothy. Mamla was always there. Grand-old-man was on his shipping tours around the works.

• Sparsee-ing • The Verb • Doing Word • In process •

With Abhishek Basu Joyona Medhi