Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 111
September 14, 2016
Today in Photo
The best fish thaali in three neighbourhoods right next door at Vinayak. It was closed for a few days during the Ganpati festival, but now it's open and the regulars are flooding it again. Plus us. #monthingoa #traveldiary
via Instagram
September 13, 2016
Today in Photo
Avocado season in Goa. This is dinner last night, from left: sourdough bread, guacamole, blue cheese and local feta. We're living well, I'm several kilos heavier already. #monthingoa #traveldiary
via Instagram
September 12, 2016
Newsletter: The Bhutan Diaries
(This was my newsletter the week I returned from the Mountain Echoes Festival in Thimpu, Bhutan. Subscribe here for regular updates in your inbox every weekend.)
Hello, friends, warriors, fellow earthlings,
Bright and sunny morning after days of waking up to grey skies and rain. Now that I no longer live in Bombay where it rains for days without taking a breath, I've come to appreciate rainy mornings, from the time you're lying under your duvet and looking at the light behind the blinds to see how bright it is, to drinking your coffee while you're watching the clouds move, or just the general ahhhh-how-cozy-I-am feel of being indoors and snug and dry while outside everything is being bathed just for you.
Sorry if you have to commute through it though. Then there's nothing romantic about it at all.
You know where else it was raining? BHUTAN. Where I just returned from. Let me tell you all about it:
The festival: Mountain Echoes is in its sixth year now, and a pretty major part of Thimpu's social calendar. Of course, Thimpu is "the size of Khan Market" as one writer put it, but still. Bhutanese travelled from all over the country to attend. But it was quite small for all that, so really very intimate, which means most of the talks were pretty well attended. (Unlike other things I've done where there's like five people in the room including the organiser, who is giving you pitying glances.)
My own stuff: My panels were quite fun. I moderated Ira Trivedi and a Bhutanese writer called Monu Tamang in a talk about writing about love, and Monu, though he kept "ma'am"-ing me and being very shy, came out of his shell quite a bit to talk about "night hunting" which is apparently how some traditional Bhutanese men date. (At night. Hunting. But in a consensual manner.) I take full credit for his expounding on Bhutanese sex and dating because of my excellent moderation. (He also said there was no gender disparity in Bhutan at all. I turned to the audience and said, "Raise your hand if you agree with him" and there were crickets. CRICKETS. Later, I met the young Bhutanese girl handling the media for the festival and she was like, "Dude OMG he's so wrong." Paraphrasing of course. Better than India anyway.)
My second panel was a little less lively, probably because we were the second last session to speak to a room full of teens who had been listening to talks about literature all day. However, happy to report, fully sold out of Split, and Cold Feet, my beloved neglected darling, did a brisk trade as well.
The food: For the first day, I ate whatever Indian food they had organised at the various buffets, feeling very sorry for self, but then I realised I could actually LEAVE and go get something to eat. Huh. Another writer and I set off, and he was already feeling intrepid, so he suggested we eat at a dive bar. We stopped at the least bleak looking one, where the woman got us some beef, chilli and cheese curry, some daal, some rice and some kimchi. She also produced home made pickles from her own tree. Everything was excellent, even an older man pressing his phone into our hands asking us to video chat with all his relatives. (We waved and smiled, smiled and waved.)
That evening, emboldened by my dive bar meal, I ordered some pork momos at our hotel, and because I was in a rush, only managed to eat them much later at night right before I went to bed. Alas! My stomach could not handle this or perhaps the meal from earlier, because I woke up at 4 am with the most agonising stomach cramps and basically got Delhi belly in Thimpu. Thimpu tummy? It was owchy anyway.
Oh, and I ate at Cloud 9, which is this teeny, very fancy establishment known for its burgers and its homemade ice cream. Run by an Australian woman married to a Bhutanese man, it seems like a place everyone would be at, but no locals seemed to know it. Some of my fellow festival goers had every meal there and after one delicious anti-national beef burger, I wished I had thought of it too. I also had gone on a different day and had cold coffee and homemade Rocky Road and mmm. MMMMM.
The drink: Three words: Bhutanese. Peach. Wine. Actually, the local brands were pretty tasty, from the red wine to the Raven vodka to all the whiskey to the beer. (Less posh is the local EXTREMELY potent saunf-based drink which I could not have more than two sips of, even after diluting) I just rolled along with my peach wine, which tastes sweet and desserty but packs quite the punch as you realise later when you're arguing with Famous Writer. *sigh* (Argument totally warranted though.) The festival did most of its after-hours drinking at a small pub called Mojo Park, which had a live stage, exactly ONE bartender who started handing out post-its when he couldn't handle all the orders and all of Thimpu's trendies hanging about outside in the smoking area. What's that you say? Smoking is banned in Bhutan? Um, that brings me to...
The smoke: (Listen ya, sometimes I smoke because it just makes my good times even better, ok. I don't smoke at home very often and I don't do drugs or drink to excess or pop pills so whyyyy can't I just sit with my cigarettes? WHY? Argh. Very conflicted about this as you can tell.) Disclaimer over, I decided to take some cigs to Bhutan, because all the emails were all, "You won't get cigarettes ANYWHERE" etc etc. It was also very exciting because you have to declare even 14 cigarettes (that's how many I had), pay their exact value, and have a permit made. (I forgot all about my permit after I had it made, but no one asked me.) After day 2, several people ran out of cigarettes, but an Intrepid Reporter friend asked some locals where he could buy some and they took him to a shop and he returned with cigarettes. Also I totally saw Kelly Dorji smoking, so he must get from somewhere.
All told, everything was amazing. I wasn't introduced to the Queen Mother, because I skipped her dinner to watch Indian Ocean, for whom I will mostly cancel all my other engagements, but she seemed really lovely from a distance, attending almost all the sessions, and being engaged and asking questions and everything.
And that was Bhutan. Really quickly, here's what I wrote this week: As Aunty Feminist, how it's hard to be religious and feminist at the same time. ** In my relationship column, bad dates **.
Hello, friends, warriors, fellow earthlings,
Bright and sunny morning after days of waking up to grey skies and rain. Now that I no longer live in Bombay where it rains for days without taking a breath, I've come to appreciate rainy mornings, from the time you're lying under your duvet and looking at the light behind the blinds to see how bright it is, to drinking your coffee while you're watching the clouds move, or just the general ahhhh-how-cozy-I-am feel of being indoors and snug and dry while outside everything is being bathed just for you.
Sorry if you have to commute through it though. Then there's nothing romantic about it at all.
You know where else it was raining? BHUTAN. Where I just returned from. Let me tell you all about it:
The festival: Mountain Echoes is in its sixth year now, and a pretty major part of Thimpu's social calendar. Of course, Thimpu is "the size of Khan Market" as one writer put it, but still. Bhutanese travelled from all over the country to attend. But it was quite small for all that, so really very intimate, which means most of the talks were pretty well attended. (Unlike other things I've done where there's like five people in the room including the organiser, who is giving you pitying glances.)
My own stuff: My panels were quite fun. I moderated Ira Trivedi and a Bhutanese writer called Monu Tamang in a talk about writing about love, and Monu, though he kept "ma'am"-ing me and being very shy, came out of his shell quite a bit to talk about "night hunting" which is apparently how some traditional Bhutanese men date. (At night. Hunting. But in a consensual manner.) I take full credit for his expounding on Bhutanese sex and dating because of my excellent moderation. (He also said there was no gender disparity in Bhutan at all. I turned to the audience and said, "Raise your hand if you agree with him" and there were crickets. CRICKETS. Later, I met the young Bhutanese girl handling the media for the festival and she was like, "Dude OMG he's so wrong." Paraphrasing of course. Better than India anyway.)
My second panel was a little less lively, probably because we were the second last session to speak to a room full of teens who had been listening to talks about literature all day. However, happy to report, fully sold out of Split, and Cold Feet, my beloved neglected darling, did a brisk trade as well.
The food: For the first day, I ate whatever Indian food they had organised at the various buffets, feeling very sorry for self, but then I realised I could actually LEAVE and go get something to eat. Huh. Another writer and I set off, and he was already feeling intrepid, so he suggested we eat at a dive bar. We stopped at the least bleak looking one, where the woman got us some beef, chilli and cheese curry, some daal, some rice and some kimchi. She also produced home made pickles from her own tree. Everything was excellent, even an older man pressing his phone into our hands asking us to video chat with all his relatives. (We waved and smiled, smiled and waved.)
That evening, emboldened by my dive bar meal, I ordered some pork momos at our hotel, and because I was in a rush, only managed to eat them much later at night right before I went to bed. Alas! My stomach could not handle this or perhaps the meal from earlier, because I woke up at 4 am with the most agonising stomach cramps and basically got Delhi belly in Thimpu. Thimpu tummy? It was owchy anyway.
Oh, and I ate at Cloud 9, which is this teeny, very fancy establishment known for its burgers and its homemade ice cream. Run by an Australian woman married to a Bhutanese man, it seems like a place everyone would be at, but no locals seemed to know it. Some of my fellow festival goers had every meal there and after one delicious anti-national beef burger, I wished I had thought of it too. I also had gone on a different day and had cold coffee and homemade Rocky Road and mmm. MMMMM.
The drink: Three words: Bhutanese. Peach. Wine. Actually, the local brands were pretty tasty, from the red wine to the Raven vodka to all the whiskey to the beer. (Less posh is the local EXTREMELY potent saunf-based drink which I could not have more than two sips of, even after diluting) I just rolled along with my peach wine, which tastes sweet and desserty but packs quite the punch as you realise later when you're arguing with Famous Writer. *sigh* (Argument totally warranted though.) The festival did most of its after-hours drinking at a small pub called Mojo Park, which had a live stage, exactly ONE bartender who started handing out post-its when he couldn't handle all the orders and all of Thimpu's trendies hanging about outside in the smoking area. What's that you say? Smoking is banned in Bhutan? Um, that brings me to...
The smoke: (Listen ya, sometimes I smoke because it just makes my good times even better, ok. I don't smoke at home very often and I don't do drugs or drink to excess or pop pills so whyyyy can't I just sit with my cigarettes? WHY? Argh. Very conflicted about this as you can tell.) Disclaimer over, I decided to take some cigs to Bhutan, because all the emails were all, "You won't get cigarettes ANYWHERE" etc etc. It was also very exciting because you have to declare even 14 cigarettes (that's how many I had), pay their exact value, and have a permit made. (I forgot all about my permit after I had it made, but no one asked me.) After day 2, several people ran out of cigarettes, but an Intrepid Reporter friend asked some locals where he could buy some and they took him to a shop and he returned with cigarettes. Also I totally saw Kelly Dorji smoking, so he must get from somewhere.
All told, everything was amazing. I wasn't introduced to the Queen Mother, because I skipped her dinner to watch Indian Ocean, for whom I will mostly cancel all my other engagements, but she seemed really lovely from a distance, attending almost all the sessions, and being engaged and asking questions and everything.
And that was Bhutan. Really quickly, here's what I wrote this week: As Aunty Feminist, how it's hard to be religious and feminist at the same time. ** In my relationship column, bad dates **.
Today in Photo
Can anyone identify this flower? Strange,tropical and lovely, it just burst out of a creeper next to our friends porch. I'm almost afraid to touch it, it looks so...wild. #monthingoa #traveldiary
via Instagram
September 10, 2016
Today in Photo
Beach shack Saturday evenings with a lovely pink sunset. No filters needed for this sort of display. Little Vagator. #monthingoa #traveldiary
via Instagram
On the whole "critic like eunuch" thing
On a recent Twitter Q&A promoting his new novella, author Suketu Mehta referred to critics as “eunuchs.” The full quote was: “a critic is a eunuch in a harem: he observes, he comments, he judges, but he does not practice.”
I only came to this a day late, puzzled by all the “eunuch critic” jokes circulating on my timeline, and so I Googled it to see what had happened. Turns out Mehta was paraphrasing author Brendan Behan (who was born and died many decades before Twitter was even a twinkle in its founder's eye. Or, probably, the founder was even a twinkle in his founder's eye). Behan said (and has been quoted by petulant artists ever since): “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”
Say whaaaat?
I'm not here to talk about Mehta's new book (which I read), but about our peculiar, particular relationship with critics. By “our” I mean both People Like Me, fellow writers, and creators, but also People Who Really Love A Certain Thing And Feel Personally Insulted If You Don't. You see it all the time, admit loving Pearl Jam over the Doors to someone with a Jim Morrison poster over his bed, admit that you can't see the point of Salman Rushdie's latest to a person who has grown up worshipping at his altar, admit that Deepika Padukone leaves you cold to someone who wakes up early on the actor's birthday just to be the first to post “HBD [birthday cake emoji]” on her Instagram post.
Because it's all very well saying art for art's sake, and that people shouldn't take it personally. Art is only art if you are able to take it personally. If the creator is able to slip into your skin and whisper to the back of your brain, if by looking at it or reading it or watching it, you feel transported and also, vitally understood. If not, then you're left a bit cold. You understand what the thing is trying to do, but the efforts of the piece are too obvious, like an eager date. After years of writing books, sometimes I have problems with casual reading—when is a book is trying too hard, I can tell. I can see the strings. A critic can almost always see the strings.
In today's connected world, everyone has a voice. And, what's more, everyone's encouraged to have a voice. Authors beg you for reviews: “find me on Goodreads! On Amazon! Say you've read me!” Filmmakers ask for retweets, musicians ask you to share their page. Critique my art with your thumbs-up, critique it by pressing on all the stars. And yet, despite practically begging for these reviews, anything less than four stars and the creator is crushed. I see restaurant owners “defending” their business almost every day, from internet reviewers, I see people block people who disagree with them. We're begging for opinions but only ones that are great. You can keep your bad opinion to yourself, thanks. And so real critics, that is, people paid to criticise, experts, if you will, are a bit thin on the ground. Why would you want to read one reviewer's opinion when you can read 700 of the masses? So, a eunuch in a harem? Probably not, although it is tempting to dismiss your meanest reviewers as someone who watches all the sex but doesn't have any. Instead it's the harem itself, turning to you, the prince, and watching everything you do, before whipping out their screens to record their opinion of you for everyone to see.
(a version of this appeared as my column on mydigitalfc.com)
I only came to this a day late, puzzled by all the “eunuch critic” jokes circulating on my timeline, and so I Googled it to see what had happened. Turns out Mehta was paraphrasing author Brendan Behan (who was born and died many decades before Twitter was even a twinkle in its founder's eye. Or, probably, the founder was even a twinkle in his founder's eye). Behan said (and has been quoted by petulant artists ever since): “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”
Say whaaaat?I'm not here to talk about Mehta's new book (which I read), but about our peculiar, particular relationship with critics. By “our” I mean both People Like Me, fellow writers, and creators, but also People Who Really Love A Certain Thing And Feel Personally Insulted If You Don't. You see it all the time, admit loving Pearl Jam over the Doors to someone with a Jim Morrison poster over his bed, admit that you can't see the point of Salman Rushdie's latest to a person who has grown up worshipping at his altar, admit that Deepika Padukone leaves you cold to someone who wakes up early on the actor's birthday just to be the first to post “HBD [birthday cake emoji]” on her Instagram post.
Because it's all very well saying art for art's sake, and that people shouldn't take it personally. Art is only art if you are able to take it personally. If the creator is able to slip into your skin and whisper to the back of your brain, if by looking at it or reading it or watching it, you feel transported and also, vitally understood. If not, then you're left a bit cold. You understand what the thing is trying to do, but the efforts of the piece are too obvious, like an eager date. After years of writing books, sometimes I have problems with casual reading—when is a book is trying too hard, I can tell. I can see the strings. A critic can almost always see the strings.
In today's connected world, everyone has a voice. And, what's more, everyone's encouraged to have a voice. Authors beg you for reviews: “find me on Goodreads! On Amazon! Say you've read me!” Filmmakers ask for retweets, musicians ask you to share their page. Critique my art with your thumbs-up, critique it by pressing on all the stars. And yet, despite practically begging for these reviews, anything less than four stars and the creator is crushed. I see restaurant owners “defending” their business almost every day, from internet reviewers, I see people block people who disagree with them. We're begging for opinions but only ones that are great. You can keep your bad opinion to yourself, thanks. And so real critics, that is, people paid to criticise, experts, if you will, are a bit thin on the ground. Why would you want to read one reviewer's opinion when you can read 700 of the masses? So, a eunuch in a harem? Probably not, although it is tempting to dismiss your meanest reviewers as someone who watches all the sex but doesn't have any. Instead it's the harem itself, turning to you, the prince, and watching everything you do, before whipping out their screens to record their opinion of you for everyone to see.
(a version of this appeared as my column on mydigitalfc.com)
September 9, 2016
Today in Photo
Things you see in a Goa kitchen. Amazing Friday night at @madamexmeow, she cocktail samplered and handed out homemade sourdough bread, we discussed shamans, BAKING, India kitsch and whether you could call a medicine man a medicine PERSON. #monthingoa #traveldiary
via Instagram
Today in Photo
About last night: Dali bar is not a Dally bar. Little dive that came highly recommended. Food is bar snacks but it's on till 5 am, and Bira on tap. (which makes no difference to me, since I stuck with G&t but still nice to know.)#monthingoa #traveldiary
via Instagram
September 8, 2016
Today in Photo
Yay, K is here! Drive around Anjuna today, stopped off at this food truck (v crowded which is always a good sign) for Goan sausage and bread. Then a round of grocery shopping where we might have gone a bit nuts, and drinks at a local dive. Since it's now 10.30 pm, New Improved Goa Me is ready for her bed(dy). #monthingoa #traveldiary
via Instagram
September 7, 2016
Today in Photo
The first of many beach photos from my #monthingoa. Park Hyatt, Arrossim. #traveldiary #beach
via Instagram
