Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 133

Today in Photo

Apple Music, shiny new Windows laptop, a sunny day and lunch with two favourite people. La vie c'est bon. #delhidiary

via Instagram

The best of the stuff I wrote this year

I couldn't help but wonder...2015 was a great year for writing for me: not just for the two books I wrote (#bragbrag) but also in terms of the personal essays I did for publications across the web. Interestingly, I found that the people willing to take the most risks with journalism have been online and not offline--and this totally works for me. Was 2015 the year of the personal essay? I'd say totally. 
Ironically, the first essay I'm revisiting is also my most recently published one--offline! Here's me talking about the walk of shame and a weird practice our Bandra garbage guy used to do in BLInk:

In the Bandra house I lived in with two other girls, our garbage man practised a peculiar form of intimidation: he’d pull out a used condom from our trash — usually hidden deep in the recesses of an empty cigarette packet to keep him from seeing it, and leave it on our doorstep. We never knew why he did it, he never made eye contact, and yet, no matter how carefully we hid the fact that we might have had sex the night before, he’d find a way of letting us know he knew.

Then there was this LOOOONG piece I did for The Ladies Finger on being an Indian woman (and why that pisses me off.)

Another story from my twelfth year. I used to walk to school every morning, and it was a quiet residential road. Almost every morning, a man on a bicycle would silently ride up behind me, pinch my breasts and move on. Almost every morning, I tried to anticipate him, and never could; he made his move and was gone before I could do anything. I felt horribly shamed and guilty – this was my fault for wanting a bra, this was my fault for getting breasts in the first place. One winter’s evening, around Diwali, I was walking home with a young male friend, and I heard the swish of bicycle wheels and made him walk on the outside. “Ow!” he said suddenly, “Someone pinched me!” He found a stick and walked the rest of the way home brandishing it, with me, grateful and guilty, by his side. When we got home, obviously everyone heard the story and laughed. A young boy getting mistaken for a girl and pinched was comical. I had never told my parents about my own morning story, because I knew it wouldn’t be funny. But his stick brandishing gave me some courage of my own, and the next time the cyclist whizzed by, I turned my head just in the nick of time and silently began to run after him, reaching for the back carrier of his bike. I don’t know what I would have done if I caught him, but I kept holding this stone above my head, waving it, all this in complete silence, and he was so surprised, he rode off, turning around every now and then to see if I was still there.

I did a bunch of book pieces for Scroll, and this one on how to be an aspiring writer in emerging India was my favourite one to write:

Someone introduces you as their “author friend” for the first time and you feel a thrill, a conviction of rightness when this happens. The person they introduce you to asks politely, “What’s your book about?” You launch into a long summary, by the end of which their eyes are a little glazed. “It’ll be better when it’s a book,” you assure them.

Scroll also published an excerpt from Before And Then After, the story of a cat who belongs to a sex worker and is also a sex worker herself. (Needless to say, one of my favourite stories from the collection.)

The first thing she learned was who was friendly and who wasn’t. Some of the women drew up their feet when they saw her, “Ai hai, a cat, they’re bad luck! Who brought one in here?” Some, remembered old childhood pets, and gave her a stroke if she happened to put her nose in their rooms. The woman they called Madam had good moods and bad ones. In the former, she’d let Noor settle down for a nap on her desk at the front of the house, where she sat, watching the women and the men who came in and out. In the latter, she’d hiss, much like a cat herself, “Not one of you turning a profit, and there’s this cat also in my household! If I could whore her out, I would, but never let me see her again!”

And finally, I started writing a new feminism column for the Week online this year. This one, on aggressive staring and neighbourhoods is my best one--I think.

It’s hard to explain the “aggressive looking” to anyone who isn’t a woman in India. Yes, it’s just staring, and yes, staring isn’t going to kill me, but it’s the way the stares happen, face immobile or sometimes just plain unfriendly, eyes skittering past your clothes, resting on your face for a second or on your butt or your bosom, men continuing to do whatever they were doing before, only this time their eyes never leave you. They’re talking, chewing paan, their arms around each other’s shoulder and they make looking into an almost physical gesture.

 And that's my year in writing! I hope 2016 is more of the same--full of reflection, full of writing, and definitely, DEFINITELY full of new experiences.

Today in Photo

With the weather being so cold and frightful, we have a rather delightful.. Cuddle cat. I love his nose! It's so soft, like velvet. #catsagram #blackcatsofinstagram

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Merry Christmas! I'm wearing my new pinch new coat from Lila in Shahpur Jat to Christmas lunch. I'm madly in love with this and have been waiting for a special occasion. I love new clothes. #ootd #christmas

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Windowed. I know once you go Mac you're not supposed to go back but since my old Air was the victim of a coffee spill three months ago, I've become too familiar with the insides of repair shops. I grew tired of it and of waking up not knowing if laptop would turn on or not. After a LOT of research I picked the Asus Zenbook, thin, fast and light and half the price. Whee! Haven't used Windows since Vista so 10 is quite a revelation. #windows #asus #hopemycatsdontspillcoffeeonthisone

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Winter chic. The second half of K's birthday present was this upgraded pollution mask with a valve. I love the 8 bit space invaders theme! Who says pollution masks can't be a style statement? #ootd #streetstyle #delhidiary

via Instagram

Today in Photo

I truly did intend to do a lot today but then this happened. Sucked in so thoroughly into Uprooted by Naomi Novik, a sort of Beauty and the Beast-esque story if Beauty was sort of a slob and also kick ass and the Beast an "evil" magician and the Woods were villainous. Can you blame me for putting aside everything and reading? #bookstagram #nowreading

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Humbert Humbert and Lolita. Our man Squishy has taken a liking to one of the new foster kittens milling about. He makes a great babysitter. #catsagram #literarycats

via Instagram

Today in Photo

My birthday present from K was a little late arriving but finally got here yesterday! Behold the Smart Air Filter, a good looking little beast that has already sucked up half the polluting air particles in the bedroom. For the first time in ages I woke up without a runny nose. Now to see if my cough also ceases. We love it so much already we're thinking of getting one for each room and they're infinitely more affordable than the fancy ones on Amazon. #smartair #delhidiary

via Instagram

Gratitude

Okay, so I’m not one to hold back on all the things I vent about living in this country. Several things are still so very wrong — every day a news article that makes me question my sanity for choosing to live here. From intolerance to internet trolls, from monitored diets to police who don't seem to know how to do their jobs.

But perhaps because it's the season of good cheer (discounting my seasonal flu which chose to rear its ugly head this week) and because I have a birthday coming up this weekend, which always makes me happy, and because as I’m writing this, one of my cats has given me the honour of curling up his large warm body onto my lap, purring like a vibrating hot water bottle, I’m in a good mood this week. And because when you’re in a good mood, you want the world to be in a good mood with you, I want this week to talk about things that do make me happy to live here. Because we’re nothing if not a country of contradictions. And some contradictions can be very pleasant indeed.

I’ll begin with the one that’s simplest: access to exercise. I know we all in Delhi have been warned to not go outside with pollution levels rising and what not, but the egalitarianism of parks and outdoor spaces is something to be commended. Everyone can go to a park around the country, whether or not you live in a fancy neighbourhood. Open spaces are for everyone. Think of Mumbai’s Hanging Gardens or Delhi’s Lodhi Gardens, all beautiful open tree-filled spaces that are for the common man as much as for you and me. More structured? We — and several people we know — have a yoga teacher come home and teach us in the comfort of our living rooms. Others still can go to several yoga academies around the city and not all very expensive either.

While I’m on the subject of exercise, eating healthy is another thing that comes naturally to being Indian. Despite the number of fatty snacks available, two types of street food vendors are most popular in Delhi during the winter: the roasted peanut guy, who sells you a screw of paper with warm peanuts in it starting from Rs 5 and the sweet potato chaat guy, who slices up roasted yams and sprinkles them with lemon and rock salt. Delicious and low cal. On the train, if you’re not travelling a fancy Rajdhani, you get street food vendors all the time and the ones that get stopped are not the ones selling chips or whatever — nope, it’s the idli guy or the hardboiled egg guy. Every neighbourhood has a veggie vendor selling fresh produce — and all seasonal — so you’re eating right for the environment as well. As for meat, the goats wander about, so the meat is cage-free at any rate. And if you’re not buying chicken from a fancy chain, then you can expect that meat to be steroid free as well.

Talking to an Italian translator recently, I learned that books across Europe were priced at upwards of 12 euros. Something I take for granted living here is that I can always afford books — even if I have to wait for the paperback version every now and then. Have a reading fix and can’t afford a regular bookstore? Go to one of the many secondhand shops across the country. Books and reading material are priced low on purpose, so everyone can read them and I’m grateful for that both as a writer and a reader.

For every person that doesn’t care, there are a zillion that do. Take animal rights for instance, a cause close to my heart. In the absence of shelters, people take in homeless animals into their own homes, nurturing and feeding them at their own expense and even sometimes going for vet visits. Inspired, we too foster animals whenever we can. Pick a cause, any cause, and you’ll find people already organised and chipping in and helping. All you have to do is contribute, sometimes. The whole Chennai floods would have been even more of a disaster, if it wasn’t for people online getting all the information together and sending help. Simply put, if you need help, ours is a country full of people that will usually give it.

All this not to say that there aren’t problems. There are so many problems. But there’s also some bright spots through all that darkness, brightness we don’t talk about because maybe we take it for granted, but it’s there and it’s for you.

(A version of this appeared as my column in mydigitalfc.com)