Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 12

Today in Photo

Swipe for a bunch of great cats. Couldn't even fit all my Istanbul cat photos into one post but here are some. Imagine me going "cat! Caaat. Catttttt. Oh hi dogs. Catttttttttt." through the whole thing. Very friendly, seem well fed and neutered, I'm spending most of my time telling myself that cats are happy in outdoor colonies as well so I don't take them all home to Berlin. (Well, send them with K while I finish visa paperwork ie.) caaaaaat. Cannot promise this will be my last cat post, still here for some time. #catsofistanbul #istanbul #catstagram #traveldiaries

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Today in Photo

Snowstanbul. Quiet in these parts because we got the dreaded c+ (I blame Hungary which just removed their mask mandates, everyone coughing and sneezing all over me). We've been isolating since we got here and finally tested negative over the weekend which is also when there was a massive snow storm. So gorgeous! We went for a walk in it last night, cold and white and still. #istanbul #traveldiaries

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Today in Photo

See ya Budapest! (see ya also being the Hungarian word for hello and goodbye, spelt differently of course.) we are now off to Turkey for two weeks after which I will return to the Motherland so let me make the most of the last winter I'll have for the season. From yesterday's walkabout, coffee and a sandwich in an ancient coffee hall, ferris wheels against the sky and a walk across the bridge to the Buda side of the city. Ending with (not pictured) a nightcap at the city's most famous ruin bar (ie a bar in an abandoned building but in this case turned legit) where every night we saw long crowds of tourists queueing to get in and got around that by going in at 7.30 pm like old boring people. At least we saw the inside! It was cool. #budapest #hungary #traveldiaries

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What I'm Reading

I reallyyyy enjoyed this twisty dark book. We begin when a woman is asked by a researcher to give an account of her aunt's life, an aunt who has been hanged for murder. We go back and forth through time, strange family dynamics, siblings and the parent-child relationship, all unfolding during WWII, so if you've been keeping track of my reading, you know it checks all my boxes. A Dark-Adapted Eye is my first Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell writing under a pseudonym and I read it all in three days (it's very long so will take a while!) Give it a go if you're in the mood for strange people, which should be your forever mood to be honest. It starts slowly but I think that's part of what makes it so brilliant. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #100in2022 #ruthrendell #barbaravine #adarkadaptedeye

Today in Photo

The Hungarian National Museum which we went to just on a whim turned out to be one of the best "history of a country" museums I've ever been to. You walk up through the Paleolithic age (Hungary is the site of a lot of archaeological digs), make your way through various invaders, get to the royal families and then end with just after the Nazis and Communism, early 80s. (when I was born so seems fitting 😁). We've definitely been taking it easy, a little tired from too much Berlin perhaps, so managing to do one thing a day, and last night spent my entire evening in bed with a book. My perfect vacation is lots to do outside but also the option to turn it off and rest whenever you feel like it. No pressure basically. #hungary #hungariannationalmuseum #budapest #traveldiaries

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Today in Photo

Only found out this morning that if you rub the Fat Policeman's stomach, you'll be lucky in life and love. Sadly all I did was stand next to him with an expression of relief because coming across him on a dark evening meant we both thought he was real, standing there as part of a busking act or something. Couldn't therefore take any liberties with such a fine gent. #budapest #hungary #traveldiaries

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Today in Photo

Budapest is a revelation. The food is actually good? The wine is from this region? The people have energy and very little time for tourists? If I didn't live in Berlin, I'd live here I think. Photo from last night, we got off an eight hour long train and made our way into Pest (the city is divided by the river: one side Buda, the other Pest). You must visit, it's an energetic city, lots happening and Eastern Europe is so different from Western Europe while being the same in many ways. #budapest #hungary #traveldiaries

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Today in Photo

Prague is like a cliché of a beautiful European city and I enjoyed all of it despite being slightly under the weather (bad allergies, not cro). Two Kafka statues, lots of pretty buildings, lovely sunny day, the big astrological clock, we walked for like nine kilometres yesterday. Definitely worth coming back to for me, for now it's off to Budapest with us on a day long train to finish off the rest of this winter's Schengen. #traveldiaries #czechrepublic #prague #kafka

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Today in Photo

So long my little fatties. So adjusted to the heat now that when we took them into the enclosed back garden yesterday thinking they'd delight in the fresh air and freedom they spent the entire time shouting at the door to be let inside again. Then we took them back upstairs and they slept for several hours and woke up to demand more designer organic food so yeah. They don't miss Delhi. Will they miss me? I like to think so but at this point it's a toss up. #catsofinstagram #olgadapolga #squishytheblackcat #berlinna #catsofberlin

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The Internet Personified: I scream, you scream, we all scream at the second year of the pandemic

Sparkling speckled guinea pigs,

We’re coming up on our two year anniversary of the pandemic. Griefbacon (a newsletter I enjoy) reminds me, but do I need reminding? March 2020, the month the world suddenly cluttered to a stop, our stupid little human lives suddenly useless in the face of this mysterious plague, like what use was it being powerful, being rich, being famous, being on the other side of the world, being able to escape the planet entirely and go into space, we were all going to get sick, no exceptions, unless you wore a mask and stayed inside and didn’t do anything.

Except. I did that, we all did that for a whole year, urging patience and judging people who went out, and hard judging people who travelled, like “it’s all their fault we’re still sick.” The anti vaxxers who raged and protested, the anti-maskers we rolled our eyes at and hated, they were all Them, the people who wanted the pandemic to go on forever. Except as one month turned into six into eight into a year into two, we had to all leave our houses eventually. We had retired so abruptly that like children set free from curfew we wanted to do everything at the same time: party late and travel everywhere and smoke endless cigarettes and earn lots of money and quit our jobs and see the world and move back home to be closer to our parents and have a child and adopt a dog and buy new shoes that pinch our toes and declare widely that we’ll never wear heels again and turn 34 and have a huge party at a wildlife sanctuary and turn 50 and be so scared of moving that the only celebration we have is a Zoom link and friends from around the world lurking and we think about friends more and more, we write think pieces about friends, we let some go with relief, thanking the excuse of a pandemic but we reach out to others, friendships that somehow floundered because you were both in different cities at different parts of your lives suddenly brought together by this shared experience, you begin by checking in during the worst of it and when, months later, you’re both out and about again, you still send a joke, a link, a note, a life update. Your friends are dearer to you than they ever were and you don’t think you’ll see some of them for a long time because the world used to be small and now it’s very very big and you are on one side of it and they are on the other and the countries you belong to don’t seem to care that you are a living breathing person with a living breathing history, they treat you like a file number. But to be fair, to them, overwhelmed, you must be a file number, otherwise how would they manage, you think to yourself, even if you sort of kind of want them to make an exception for you?

I’m writing this on my Last Berlin Day, it is the last for this season because of those visas. I’m having a hard time getting an appointment to apply for a spouse visa, so here I am on a tourist visa and now it’s over so I must leave again and try again and hope that they see me the person not me the email annoyance (and boy, have we written many emails. A book’s worth of emails!). Before that we travel on the last week of my Schengen to Prague and Budapest, yes, close to where the world is starting to end all over again, but far enough away for now, we hope, that we can just have a pleasant time and then fly to Istanbul for a few weeks. It seems odd to talk about pleasant times when there’s a war on, but I’ve talked about holidays before and there have been wars on before, it’s just that this one is next door and involves white people so are we to change our behaviour? War is terrible and Putin is in the running for being the Worst Man In The World (so is our very own Worst Man but he’s a bit toothless at the moment with the UP elections on) and I hope all the other more powerful countries put their might behind Ukraine and shun Russia, I really do. But I can’t help. No visa, no car, no network of people to use to collect clothes, no spare clothes either since I just moved here, so all I can do is hope, I guess, and then also have my own separate pleasant times by talking about which I hope I do not detract from the very real war/s that are going on across the world.

So one weird thing that’s happened these past two years, and I suppose not weird so much as inevitable is that we have all four—cats, humans—become increasingly dependent on the others being around. Our cats hang around us more, and I hang around them more, and this is the wrench about travelling: leaving them. Before, I remind myself sternly, I left them for like six weeks with the maid coming in to check on them daily, now I can’t sleep unless someone is actually staying in the house with them and even then, I will be a nervous wreck until next week when I know for sure everyone has settled in. (In this case I was lucky enough to make friends who like cats so I asked one of them to come and stay at our house while we’re gone. I think it’ll be okay? We’re also friends with our neighbours which is both lucky and nice, so in an emergency, they’re there.)

(Startled suddenly by spotting someone on the road in tiny shorts and a t-shirt. Berlin is sunny today but also like 1 degree, so it’s not warm, just bright. No one is wearing a mask outside. No one does. In a few days, clubs will open again and Berlin will go “back to normal” because they believe here that the pandemic will come and go and there’s no point stopping lives over it. From India I would disagree, sitting in Berlin I agree. Did I tell you that during my language class my entire table got COVID, sitting right next to me, breathing into my face, and I didn’t? I have a booster shot and a N95 mask and I feel like ok, if I get COVID, I get COVID. Obviously, I don’t want to get seriously ill, but I don’t want to live my life right now as though I am already seriously ill so why not resume?)

This might be a controversial view for some of you, na? But I’ve seen two countries respond to a pandemic, up close so my opinions are in this big soup of ideas, and I keep trying to fish out solid bits and examine them closely. Do I think everyone should take the vaccine? Yes. Do I think the government should have the right to interfere with people’s health decisions? No. Will I get another booster? Yes. And another one after that and after that? I don’t know. But if you fight me on any of these things, if you say, “Oh M, noooo what about blahdiblah?” I’ll agree with you. I’m really very wishy-washy about my pandemic opinions. That’s also a strange thing: to have lived with something for two years and not have a solid opinion about it. It’s like once I got vaccinated I just gave up thinking about it. I think I’m just bored of it, and that’s a luxury too, being bored.

The thing is also I don’t think things are going to “go back to normal.” This is just life now, masks and tests and flare-ups and sickness. We had several solid years of no-pandemic, just human beings touching and coughing and bumping into each other, and those were great years. Do you remember your first flight after 9/11 made airports around the world change their safety protocols? Do you remember how the security queue snaked around the room and everyone sort of half-laughed at this new nonsense and hoped life would return to normal soon? Do you remember the first time your bag was checked at a hotel after 26/11? Do you remember when there were garbage cans on the streets of Delhi and Mumbai and then they were all gone because people kept putting bombs in them? What I’m more worried about than “omg will we have to wear masks forever” is that the rich countries (yes, like Germany) will somehow move forward without us. That they’ll leave us* behind again, struggling. That there will be a post-pandemic world and it’ll only be populated by the West. The thing about the pandemic that made everyone take it seriously was that it happened to everyone, wasn’t just a third-world, brown people problem.

(*including me in “us” because come on, I may live here from time to time (please let the visa gods be on my side soon!) but you know. India.)

As my friend said to me on Saturday, “First there was 2020 I: The Pandemic. Then 2020 II: The Vaccine, and now we’re on 2020 III: The War.” Ugh. But I’ve had a good three months, and I finally have my next project in sight so even though I’m flitting around the world like a mosquito at least I have something to keep me grounded through it all. I’ll be back to Berlin before you know it, and in the meanwhile I’ll write to you soon. Probably from Delhi, but maybe from Istanbul. Send me tips! (I have about 18 hours in Prague including sleeping), four days in Budapest and two and a half weeks in Turkey.

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LINKS!

That think piece about friendships as you age which I love!

About writing in my favourite font! (obviously I have a favourite font.)

Ann Patchett doesn’t shop for a year!

Akhil Sharma becomes a really old parent!

George Bernard Shaw is all of us trying to decline invitations except his rudeness has panache!

My new Voice of Fashion column is about Marian Keyes and the colour pink!

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Have a great week! Speak soon.

xx

m

Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.

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