Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 138

Today in Photo

More autumn photos. Lovely bright afternoon walking through a park. And all the little dogs I totally made friends with! #autumn #berlin #traveldiary

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Today in Photo

From a beautiful three floor hobby shop yesterday, same sex wedding cake toppers. I love this city. #berlin #lgbtq #traveldiary

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eM does the Continent!

Here I am in gorgeous but COLD Berlin and guess whose laptop is acting up again? It seems to be a charger thing this time, the second charger I've bought for this benighted machine, and so I'm once again writing this from my phone. 


Oh well. Life is beautiful, and so I can't sweat the small stuff.  Today was just travelling here and walking around a few shopping districts but I feel you, Berlin! Maybe also because the Good Thing is German and for the first time ever we're on his home turf instead of mine and II am the foreigner who doesn't understand the language.(Although today when the Good Thing was joking with a shopkeeper about a felt rug and cats, I caught the word "katzen" and I totally smiled and nodded so everyone thought I belonged.) (Mine are being house sat by the Good Thing's colleague who came over with a cat of her own who has apparently already seduced Olga and alienated Squishy. Good times!) 


I've been learning a little German on an app and I was looking forward to using my words. Unfortunately no one is using the sentence: I like sausage, or no fish is red or the car is green so I'm at a bit of a loss. . But I've been reading street signs and the like and kinda getting it, at least, a very limited bit of it. 


It's autumn and this is fall,  eh? It's quite quite stunning. The colours appeal to me more than the verdant ones I'm used to,  these are loads of burnt sienna, reds, oranges, greys and a sense of turning, moving forward , end of the yearishness that is quite significant. I don't know. But it's GORGEOUS.


This blog will be updated every day, as long as I can manage it,  so keep reading for more of my adventures. I'd say more if that stupid machine worked, but tomorrow I'm going to try and charge it fully at a Mac store and see if that helps.  Argh. 


Ok off to cook our dinner, along with a promising looking bottle of wine.  Ich mag Berlin! 

Today in Photo

So this is autumn. We just got "home" in Berlin and the colours are blowing me away. Look out for the first part of my two week long travel blog tonight! For now, I'm off for a wander. #traveldiary #berlin

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Today in Photo

Trying to find a good photo editor for my phone since I'll be using it almost exclusively for picture taking, especially when I travel. (big cameras are marvellous but kill my shoulder.) this is a Google app called Snapseed. Playing around with the Drama filter on an old photo of the Dak Bungalow in Peora where we went a few weeks ago and I think it really gets the essence of the thing. #traveldiary #oneplusone #phoneography

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Today in Photo

SQUIRREL! (all three making chittering noises. Ack ack ack ack!) gonna miss these clowns when we leave tonight. #catsagram #circus

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Today in Photo

Sunday, lazy Sunday. Wish I could get his motor-on rumbling purrs in the photo too. (Bru's, that is, not K's) #catsagram

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Why fasting for ANYone or ANYthing is really stupid

It happened to be Karva Chauth this weekend. Normally, this Punjabi festival totally misses my radar—or at least it should be dismissed for the nonsense it is, just one more blow from patriarchy—only since I’ve lived in North India my whole life, it gets hammered home from more places than one.
When I was in school, Karva Chauth mornings would see teachers coming to school with henna’d hands and maybe wearing a new salwar kameez. Even the sternest of my teachers, I remember her well, a woman with a no-nonsense attitude and a startling sense of humour that allowed her to keep her cool in a room full of teenagers, even she arrived in school with a sappy smile on her face, her eyes a little dreamy as she took our classes. (Of course, that could also be hunger.)
While fasting in general is sort of silly—seriously, do you think your god cares if you’re hungry?—I think the whole conceit of Karva Chauth is that it’s a superiority thing. Wives fast for the long lives of their husbands, therefore if your wife doesn’t fast for you, she probably doesn’t love you as much as the neighbour’s wife loves him.

PLOTTING YOUR MURDER

So, why did a little Punjabi festival—brought over from the villages to the city—gain so much popularity across the country? The answer is Bollywood. From the first Hindi movie to show the heroine (faint with hunger, no doubt, on account of being such a delicate creature) gazing up at the moon through a sieve before allowing herself a bite of the feast she’s had to cook all day (all the while starving.) And the look of adoration on her husband’s face! Who wouldn’t want that? It’s like some sort of sadomasochistic Valentine’s Day.
It is sort of romantic, if you consider it from a child’s point of view. You are young, unformed, and callow and you’re learning about marriage, love and life just by looking around you. There’s your mother telling you with every gesture, how to be a good wife. You see how your father looks at your mother as well, such an expression of smug pride. Then you go to school and even your teachers are doe-eyed and giggly. In the movies, your favourite film star is dressed in her best clothes, maybe the hero is singing a song about how lovely she is. No one actually talks about how hungry they are. [If it were me, I’d be complaining the whole time, but then I’m the person the word “hangry” (a combination of hungry + angry) was invented for.]
There’s a Karwa Chauth story I read a while ago. A new bride is keeping her first fast—that slightly awkward phrasing is how it works, you “keep” a fast, like a vow—and she’s very weak and about to pass out with hunger. Her brothers are worried about her, so they pretend the moon is out already, and she eats something. In a distant town, her husband drops dead. It’s a pretty powerful piece of brainwashing. Eventually, she has to do a lot of running around and he gets restored to life, but not without a whole moral lesson being inserted in there about how women who don’t fast are the worst wives in the world, and basically murderers.
This morning, my young maid asked me whether I was fasting. “Uh, no,” I said, “I don’t believe in that stuff.” She smiled and looked down at the floor, and that would have been the end of the discussion, but I really felt the need to make my point.
“I see no point in fasting,” I told her, “In fact, it should be the men who fast, just to show their appreciation of us, don’t you think?”
Her head lifted and she began to perk up a little. I could tell this had never occurred to her before.
“I mean, we do all the work at home,” I said, choosing to ignore the irony of saying this to someone I hired to basically do all the work at home.
“Yes!” she said, “I mean, why should we do all the cooking and cleaning and go hungry as well?”
And so a young feminist was born, where she might have seen romance in the custom before, now she’s thinking of it in a wholly different way. At least, I’ve done my bit. Now in honour of all the women who don’t have a choice about whether or not to go hungry today, I’m going to eat some cake with my partner, and toast to our long and healthy lives. 

Today in Photo

From last night. We were the scariest people in India, and then we got to the bhane costume party where we ran into several other corpses and one other... What K is. Can you guess? #halloween #costumes #corpse

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Today in Photo

Ahhh so many ghosts of Halloween past. Another from Bombay, we had a cross dress costume party one year. I'm Jack Sparrow see? I really got into my drawn on mustache.

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