Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 156

Feminism: A "Let's Not" Guide

Look, we're all really happy you're part of the club, and we need more people to join, so one day it's not a Thing, it's just a thing, where OBVIOUSLY you're a feminist, like OBVIOUSLY you're against poverty and OBVIOUSLY, Game of Thrones is amazing. But before you join, please take the time to scan these brief pointers. Welcome again! Have a cocktail!


* Let's not be misandryists. Some men are fine. Some men are awesome. I'm sure you know ONE of these guys. Some men are douchebags, you know one of these guys too. Some men are monsters. I hope you don't know any of them. But say someone met me and they were like, "ALL WOMEN HATE KETCHUP!" and ketchup was never served to women again, and every other woman was like, "Listen, I kinda actually really like ketchup," but everyone refused to listen because they met me and I hate ketchup. You see where I'm going with this?

* Let's not pick on other women for their choices, claiming they're letting down the sisterhood. So, you don't agree with your neighbour. She thinks the best way to park her car is on top of yours, and you're just sick and tired of arguing that, in fact, the best way to park cars is next to each other. It doesn't mean she's a disgrace to all people who park their cars. She's not parking the right way, but in a society that claims that everyone gets their choice of parking, she's exercising that right. If you disagree, say, "In my opinion, your method of parking is not great." Your opinion.

* Let's not assume that we're not the elite. Coz, the fact that you're logging on to your computer and reading this using an internet connection = you are not "middle class." God knows who the middle class is that everyone keeps talking about, but they're not you.

* Let's assume everyone has a right to speak up or be silent. Similar to the parking sitch, if a girlfriend has been molested, as many of our girlfriends have, it's up to her whether or not she wants to report it. Someone who doesn't isn't NOT brave.

* Let's not make this about our personal battles. Ladies. We have SO FAR to go. We can't afford to bitch about each other or pull each other down. Ignore the people who you think are out to get you in whatever way, and keep going, one foot in front of the other. Make your voice loud to make YOUR point, not shout down their's. There's no point. Promise.




Fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ride.

Best Apps for Windows Phone 8* (Part One)

(* with an obvious bias towards Nokia Lumia instruments.)

I'm really enjoying my phone since I bought it a few months ago. New apps are constantly being added, and I can honestly say I miss nothing. As an update to my previous post about HERE Maps versus Google, I've been using HERE more and more, and it gets me to the right place. (Except once or twice when it gets a bit confused about what EXACTLY you mean, but they're always updating it.) Anyway, after my initial excitement, I've been able to calm down and figure out which apps I use the most, and which ones people (like you, if you're considering a Lumia) would be more likely to love. These do not include the obvious (Whatsapp, Viber, Skype, Facebook etc), and are basically add-on apps to make your life easier, not necessities.

PHOTOS:

I have a whole collection of photo apps, which I will do a separate blog post about at some point, but if you're just going to get one get the Sophie Lens HD. When I downloaded it, it came with a special offer of five packs of filters free, but I think the filters are worth the money, especially the Fashion one.


DOWNLOAD HERE.

TWITTER:

It's hard to find a useful, good Twitter client that will let you do everything you want: look at lists, switch between accounts, check how many people followed (or unfollowed you) (BONUS!) It's hard especially if you're on a WP, while Android and iOS have a zillion options, Windows doesn't really. I used the native Twitter app for a while, before switching to Tweet It, which you can either get a trial version of (with ads) or buy for Rs 160. (I use the trial version, but I'm thinking of buying it, because then I can use different accounts, and pin all these different accounts to my home screen. The free version is pretty good too, though.

DOWNLOAD HERE.


NEWS

I'm really liking an Android climbover called Zite. It learns from what you post on social media networks, and each article has a like or dislike button, so if you rate enough, the app knows what to toss up next. I like lying in bed in the morning and reading the news on my phone, and after I'm done with the headlines, I switch to my casual news: celebrity gossip and books and writing. Plus it's super easy to share what you're reading, just from the app.

DOWNLOAD HERE.


MUSIC

I never really was one for music on my phone, and perhaps this was because I always had an Android, where battery life is shit if you have a cheaper phone. Nokia MixRadio has changed.my.life. Not only is all this music available for free, FOR FREE! but you can also download mixes uploaded by other people to play offline. My one quibble is that I can't arrange my own music into playlists, but apart from that, WHEEE FREE MUSIC!

DOWNLOAD HERE.

Wishlist and Stuff I Love (1): Putting it out there

First off, I'd like to introduce The Life & Times of Layla The Ordinary. 




 




This used to be Confessions of a Listmaniac, but since it wasn't getting enough play, I gave it to Penguin's new YA imprint, Inked, last year. It's finally back out in stores, and I'm delighted with it. If you like young adult writing, I think you'll enjoy this book. 




Buy here. Kindle option here.  




Here's a link to the Penguin Inked blog, where I did a post on how I became a writer.




Anyway! Sales pitch done, and I hope it worked, because dudes, you will LOVE this book, I move on to the pretty-pretties. This is a new feature I hope to be able to do more regularly on the blog. Because? Because it's fun!




I don't have much time to shop these days (like, who does, right?) so I get most of my window shopping kicks from browsing e-commerce websites, and gazing at pretty things I will probably never buy.  




* Sometimes I succumb, like in the case of this dress by Runaway Bicycle. I love it, I love the way it's loose and sort of casual and yet has this boho vibe to it. Yesterday, I teamed it with tights, slouchy "suede" boots (that I HAVE to upgrade because they're ripping apart, but so comfortable!), a grey shrug and a fedora. The fedora was a bit OTT, I admit, and I took it off soon after, but it was sort of nice pretending to be an OTT kind of person, you know? 




* I spend a lot of time on Koovs. Do you know Koovs? I've never actually bought anything from there, but I have a great time just looking. Currently, I love, love, LOVE this cat jumper by Oasis, look at the dinky little cats on the collar!




* Fashion At Click is a very nice website with very unfortunate photography. I swear, they go out of their way to make the clothes look ugly. It wouldn't hurt to just style the dresses slightly differently, even if they must have an unflattering picture of a model. Regardless [MOVING ON FROM BAD PHOTOGRAPHY!] I really like this embroidered dress.




* I've been exploring my ICICI payback points, you know how your bank gives you points each time you spend? So I got myself a microwave idli maker. Don't laugh--this has basically transformed my life. It's super easy if you buy some instant idli mix, you basically have idlis ready in like 7 minutes tops. If you like South Indian breakfast, ie. Here's a link to one.




* Ending with the answer to the all-important question: what is the number one thing you should be buying this winter?




ANSWER: (and I cannot stress this enough) BLACK LEGGINGS.




No seriously. You should buy two pairs (which I didn't, because I'm obviously not a forward thinker), of a wool/acrylic/cotton mix, and THEN, just slap 'em on under everything: sweaters, dresses, skirts. Leggings, not tights, because you want them to look kinda like pants and kinda formal when you wear them to a fancy party. I bought mine at Forever 21, which is amazeballs, and super cheap, so cheap that you question their production methods, but let's not go behind that curtain.




What have you bought that you love this month?

We need to talk about sexual harassment

It was 2003, and it was my first job. The acting editor (brought in as the editor while the old one quit, and they hadn't yet made a new hire) was a dude who liked nothing more than the sound of his own voice. He wasn't very popular, but he made loud jibes at one member of the office or another, and sometimes, he could be moderately funny.



He turned his attention on me all of a sudden. One minute I was quiet, invisible, the youngest person on an already young team, trying to earn as many bylines as I could, the next I was in focus as soon as I walked in. "Why are you wearing that?" he'd ask, every single day. "Why are you wearing that neckline, those sleeves? This is an office!" Other people wore similar clothes--it was a young office after all--but it was to me he turned fashion critic, moral police of my spaghetti straps.  I grew so uncomfortable, I chose only shirts with collars after that or loose t-shirts. He got bored, but not before I learnt to sneak in past his desk and settle myself in without being spotted.



Years later, I learnt that was sexual harassment. I was only 21, this was the early noughties, and no one thought to speak to us about inappropriate behaviour beyond the obvious grabbing-and-molesting. Behaviour that would make a female employee uncomfortable or afraid of a male one. Behaviour a male employee would not show towards another man.



 I've been thinking a lot about these things lately, because the Good Thing did a story on a young girl, a legal intern who was sexually harassed by a Supreme Court judge. The interview went on to go viral, and suddenly, over the last week, all he's been doing is thinking about it, and as a consequence, talking about it.



What do you do when someone in power takes advantage of your power dynamic? How do you say no without ruining whatever prospects you have for advancement?



Consider the case of David Davidar, who was accused of sexual harassment in Canada. I'm not saying he did or did not do it, but many authors he had worked with in India stood behind him. Many prominent editors too. How would you allege a case of inappropriate behaviour against someone so popular and still "work in that town again?"





Do you separate a person's actions from the work they do? Would you still watch a Woody Allen movie? Knowingly hum along to Nazi-supporter Wagner? Would you defend a friend you loved who you knew could be extremely lecherous, just because you love him?



It's one of the great regrets of my life that I did not report this former editor, this man with his bloated ego and sense of "I can say whatever I like" because I'm older than you, and I'm  a man, and I've been in journalism for 10 years or whatever. I wish I'd had him slapped on the wrist, and not left him to float through journalism making other people uncomfortable. Corporates and MNCs have mandatory workshops, and some of them have an anonymous call-in to report behaviour. It's time for the rest of the country to catch up. It's time for newspaper offices to stop letting editors have their way with fresh young reporters, government bodies knowing that power doesn't mean power over someone else, and all of us in general to stop being scared that this will mean the END for us, the end of our careers or that people will hate us, and just report a horrible act that makes us feel less than professional.



I've worked very hard to be where I am today. I'm sure you have too. Let's not let some dude with an inflated sense of self take that away from us.  Let's support each other, and maybe we'll have the courage to report a person to the authorities the next time it happens.



PS: If you'd like to share your experiences, go ahead and post it in the comments.



PS 2: Here is a link to the Vishaka guidelines against sexual harassment in the workplace.

What are you? And Other Questions From Halloween Parties

 It's just about that time of the year again, when it's cold enough to delight yourself in layers: "This cardigan? No, this cardigan!" knowing that you can't choose wrong, that the wrong choice won't lead to midnight with you outside a bar, shivering so hard your bones are tired, scared of getting into an autorickshaw.



It's the time of year when choices are awesome.







 I had my "annual Halloween extravaganza", and annual it is. The ones I didn't write about still make it to the Hall of Fame, cross dressing on a warm Mumbai night, drinking with a seven foot bride and a dinky little Maharaja.  I always get a little concerned that no one will dress up, that the evening will be a complete bust. Around 7.30 pm, right before a party, when I have whipped myself into Party Throwing Frenzy for the past 24 hours, I suddenly get really tired and really fed up, and tempted to cancel the whole thing. This is the point generally when you have cleaned up your entire flat, and there's nowhere for you to sit without making creases in the cushions.



Halloween became a Thing almost sneakily. One year there was nothing, no surprises, and the next, almost every single bar advertised a "Halloween party." Halloween parties were generally costume parties though, just a reason to get dressed up. I love it because it's a chance for all of us to be fancy dress without being self-concious about it. It's an evening when you stare at a person next to you, and you can make conversation so easily: "What are you?"







 The question of "what are you?" is central to a good Halloween party--or a good any party. What are you? What are you? What are you? etc. What-are-you-meant-to-be? I'm meant to be a Woman, a Nindian, a Writer.



 Literally, what was I? I paid tribute to some of my old-time readers, and went as an Internet Troll Doll. My t-shirt said I'm Blogging This! and I had little notecards pinned to me that said things like "U SUCK!" and "ITS PEOPLE LIKE YOU THAT GIVE HINDUS/MUSLIMS/INDIAN WOMEN A BAD NAME!" I had to keep explaining myself though--maybe the best costume is self explanatory? I did love the wig and the light up glasses.



 Part of the problem of throwing a party for me is that I have so many very different social groups. Ah, the Great Delhi Social Group Dilemma. Never shall People From Work meet People From School. People From School are all right, but a bit inclined to tease, so they will never meet your Young Cousins. Young Cousins are just about wide-eyed enough to NOT introduce them to your New Friends From 5 Years Ago.



 Anyone you didn't go to school or college with becomes  a "new friend." Until you realise it's been seven years, seven years of knowing this person, and it's time you dropped the "new."



But socialising is hard in this city, with people more likely to ask "What are you?" without any context, and so a lot of people are wary of mingling any crew that doesn't know each other.



 I? I've always been an outlier. On the edges of five different groups in school (you got asked to all of the parties, told exactly half of the secrets), I frequently go to parties in Delhi alone, when my Good Thing isn't here. There I get a drink, don't laugh too hard, and slowly edge my way into the nearest conversation.



It's only awkward for the first forty minutes.



I used to get into a panic about going alone, always trying to get one friend or another to come with me, but in the last year, I've begun to enjoy going alone to things, because then you can chat exactly how long you like, and leave quietly.








 Another thing I've started having an opinion about: BYOB. Being in my thirties, making a not-bad sum of money, I feel somewhat cheap asking people to bring their own alcohol. Not to mention, it gets a bit annoying to always be told to bring your own. Once, yes. Twice, okay.  But every time? Please.



A caveat: this only applies to planned parties. For example, if I ask you over a week in advance, I have plenty of time to buy booze. But if we're going to my house after a bar, or we just made the plan that evening, it's likely you'll have to drink either cheap vodka or rum or some brandy that's left over from last year, unless you bring something else. 



The interesting thing about not asking people to bring their own alcohol is that a lot of people do anyway. Like a hostess gift, I assume. It's nice to find yourself drinking a bottle of wine you didn't buy.  It's nice that no one feels pressure to get something to your party if they didn't have time to do it.



But, oh my, I have no money left.



(EDIT: After hitting "publish", I'm feeling a little bad about this bit. A little stupidly entitled. Everyone should be able to have a party, and entertain, whether or not they can afford to water everyone. So, long live the BYOB concept for people who can't afford to b-everyone else's-b and long live the non-BYOBs too.) 







I bought little mustaches for everyone without a costume at Party Hunterz (which is another example of how Halloween has become a Thing). The day before my party, it was packed with young people trying on wigs.



I've begun saying "young people." It makes me sound like a 70 year old grandma, but I feel a bit like a 70 year old. With all the thinking, and reading, and writing I've been doing about gender issues this last year, I feel a great desire to reach across to women in their early 20s or teens and say, "MAKE GOOD CHOICES!"



This is new, this universal need to butt in, and I remember being so embarrassed by my mum when she used to start talking to strange people. I'd kick my shoe on the ground, or start reading immediately, even standing up, my body pulled away from this event.



Eventually, we all become our parents.





We gave up smoking the next day, Good Thing and I. A scary wheeze rattled out of my chest each time I inhaled. We were too hungover to stand straight.



I read Allen Carr's The Easy Way to Stop Smoking and internalised it. My inner "do not smoke that cigarette" voice is Allen Carr. It's been a week, and two days. I don't miss it except when I have my coffee. Then I miss it like an old friend who died suddenly while on holiday and their last words to you were "See you next month!" You still click on their Facebook albums to see the picture of the blue blue sea they posted with the caption: "So happy to be in Paradise!"



You might always miss them at strange moments.

The Shadow People

In keeping with my last post about scary stories, here's a piece of fiction I wrote for a Scholastic anthology. The inspiration for this came from a lonely evening on a London Tube. I like to think it's quite scary--but in a "what about me?" way. 





























The Shadow People










When Yamini stepped out at
Vilasgunj station, she was surprised to see that there was no one there. Even
for a small town—well, perhaps because it was a small town—Vilasgunj had
a surprisingly busy station. There was a magazine man and an oranges woman and
usually Anant Ram, the old, wizened station master, who knew everybody.
But   today it seemed abandoned and all
Yamini could see where the twisting shadows from the trees. She was even more
surprised that for the first time in her life, nobody had come to receive her.
It was her first day back from boarding school, it was the holidays, and
she had a trunk and couldn't be expected to carry it all the way home.




Well, at least she thought
she had a trunk. Yamini watched in astonishment as the train pulled out of the
station leaving absolutely nothing behind. “Hey!” she yelled, running after it,
“hey! My trunk!” Nope. There was no indication of the train stopping or even
anyone listening to her. This was a very bad day, and Yamini set her teeth,
preparing to go home and complain to her mother. Then she would be fed mangoes,
and she would play with the dogs and maybe in the evening, go swimming with her
cousins. Nothing was so bad that it ruined the summer holidays. It was probably
a mix up, she said to herself comfortingly. They probably expect me tomorrow,
and how surprised they'll be to see me walk in and everyone will feel really
bad for me. She smiled to herself at the thought of the adult’s aghast faces.
She could milk this for a while.







The fact that ghosts
come out at night is a myth, just like many other things in this world. They
still retain some of their human traits and like to sleep like the rest of us.
There are scary things that
appear in the middle of the night—monsters and werewolves and things wanting
revenge—but, God preserve us, not ghosts.




Maybe she could get a lift
along the way, thought Yamini. Having lived her entire life in Vilasgunj at
'Chaudhury ka bungalow' people knew her and her family. She was confident that
anyone seeing her trudging along in the heat would stop and offer to drop her
home. The bungalow was about two kilometres away and her shoes hurt as the sun
beat down on her hair. But the rest of the town was as empty as the station.
Was it a festival day? Sometimes people retired to their houses on special
occasions, spending time with their families till the evening when they made
house calls and distributed sweets. Her family was quite involved with all town
happenings, and if it was a festival day, then that would explain why
they had forgotten to pick her up. Yamini tried not to get too frustrated with
the heat and her shoes and her confusion. It would be better soon. She just
wanted her mother.




Walking home, Yamini felt
somehow like she was in a dream. Not a good dream, or even necessarily, a
nightmare, just one of those dreams where you float around and everything seems
sort of surreal. She put it down to the baking heat, and felt her forehead to
see if she was getting a fever. That gesture once again reminded her of her
mother, oh, how surprised they’d all be when she got home, maybe she’d be put to
bed, with the AC roaring and someone to check in on her, feed her mangoes from
a plate. She didn’t feel warm though, despite the sun, she felt cool, as though
she had been indoors all day.




Most ghosts are pretty angry that there is no
heaven. There is no hell either, but no one really thinks they’re going to
hell. Instead they are locked to earth, as much as they were when they were alive
and there’s nowhere else for them to go.




Yamini finally reached the
large bungalow where her family lived. She had described it to a school friend
earlier that term as, “the biggest house in the town.” This was not technically
true. Yamini’s house was not the biggest, but it had the largest spread. Most
houses were built vertically, four or five stories, in a concession to
modernity, but hers sprawled around a courtyard with a well, and each of the
four walls surrounding the courtyard had rooms that served different purposes.
Yamini’s family lived in the side that faced west and she could watch the
sunset every evening from her room. When she had been younger, she asked her
mother why sunsets had to happen. “I want the day to go on and on,” she had said,
her face mutinous.  Her mother had
laughed, a little sadly, and said, “The sun has to go spend time with other
people now, baby.” Later, her father had pulled out his old globe and
demonstrated to her how the earth moved and how the sun shifted locations, but
she had liked her mother’s explanation better. Maybe they had gone to spend
time with other people too. Maybe they had forgotten all about her.




The old gate creaked as
she pushed through it and with one last burst of energy she ran inside the house.
“Ma? Papa? I’m home!” she yelled as she ran from room to room. “Chutki?” she
called for her little sister, “It’s me, Yamini!”  The house was empty, abandoned, but it didn’t
feel abandoned. It felt as though they had just stepped out for a moment and
would be back soon.  The cows mooed from
the cow shed at her voice and she ran there to look for her father, her uncle,
anyone. But there was no one there. The house waited quietly. In a burst of
tears, Yamini ran into her room and wept.




Trouble maker ghosts are the origins of all ghost
stories. Your grandmother wouldn’t come back to haunt you. Sure, she watches
you every now and then, but then like a soap opera you’ve given up on, you lose
track of characters and then you just stop caring.




Yamini had fallen asleep
crying and when she woke up, the sun had already set and she heard some faint
murmurs from the rest of the house. 
Thinking it was her family back again, she got up, a little groggily and
made her way outside. The house was dark, no lights on, but she could feel the
closeness of people. She tried to switch on a light, but it didn’t work. Yamini
was a brave girl, used to frequent power cuts and not afraid of very much,
having grown up with very sensible parents who reasoned her out of any imaginary
frights, and many boy cousins who had tried pranks on her and failed.  No electricity? Just light a candle, which
she did, and began to move to the northward set of rooms. That was where the
kitchen was and the dining room, and where the family gathered at the end of
the day.  The murmurs grew as she
approached the dining room, but when she threw open the door, once more it was
empty.




Or was it?




In front of Yamini’s eyes,
she watched her shadow leap in the candlelight and then she saw four or five
other shadows joining it. There were
people in this room. The wind murmured low in the trees outside, but perhaps it
wasn’t the wind. It was whispering noises, noises that made no sense when you
confronted them, but if you closed your eyes, noises that were conversations.
She gripped tightly onto her candle holder, watching as the shadows moved
independently. One of the shadows noticed her, 
and before she could make a sound, grabbed on to her shadow and dragged
it into the courtyard. And this time, Yamini
was the shadow. She was forced to go along with her dark image, dragged as if
they were sewn together at the feet, her hands shook and she dropped the
candle, and she looked down and felt her body grow weirdly. It was as if she
was looking into one of those “fun” mirrors, she morphed into a creature with
long flapping arms, her shoulder and torso grew very tall and her legs fused
together so she couldn’t walk.




But she didn’t need to
walk anymore, she was being pulled by her shadow into the courtyard and there around
the well, she finally saw people. Dev, a second cousin who had drowned in this
very well, Ayah, who had nursed her and her mother, who died when Yamini was
about ten, Dada, her grandfather she had never met, but whose picture hung in
the kitchen. For the first time in her life, Yamini felt a little flicker of
fear. These were.. go on, say it…but
it was impossible…not impossible if you
can see them..these were…dead people.





The dead people around the well, turned to her and smiled,
and Ayah, who was the one who had grabbed Yamini’s shadow, let it go. Yamini
watched as it bounced towards her and then gasped as it bounced into her. Her
legs separated, then fused, then separated again. Her stomach clenched and she
thought she was going to vomit, and then her body shrunk massively and she was
thrown to the ground. When she stood up a little dazed, she looked down and
noticed she could see the grass and the stones and the moonlight shine through
her body. She was flat, uni-dimensional. She was, in short, her shadow.




“Why are you here?” she squeaked, “Where is my family? What
has happened to me?”




“Dear Yamini,” said Dada, his own shadow self flickering by
the well, “Your family is well. They’re inside.”




“No, they’re not!” she screamed, “They’re not, they’re not,
they’re not! What have you done with
them?”




“Yamini, beta,” Ayah stepped towards her, “You’re a shadow
person now.”




“But I don’t want
to be a shadow person! Let me go!”




“Go then,” said Dev, smiling, “Go run inside and find your
mummy-daddy and they’ll tell you this is all a dream. Go on!”




“Dev!” said Dada, sternly.




“What? If she wants to go, send her. I have other things to
do then sit around and listen to her scream.”




“Dev, it’s not easy for anyone,” said Ayah.




“Well,” said Dev, still looking annoyed, “I’ve been a Shadow
Person longer than you have, and frankly, I’m a little bored at having to go
over the explanations over and over again.”




Yamini didn’t stop to hear anymore. She raced through her
house, going, “Ma! Mumma! Please come out!” until she had been everywhere and
they were nowhere and once more she was facing the three ghosts.




“Not ghosts,” said
Dada, “Shadow people.”




Yamini went over to a bench and sat down. If ghost was the
same as a shadow person, if they had called her a shadow person, it meant
that.. “Am I a ghost?” she asked.




“Shadow person!” said Dev, looking crosser.




“Ayah?” said Yamini, her lower lip beginning to quiver.




“Darling girl,” said Ayah, her wonderful comforting face
making Yamini feel much better, “We are all shadow people. Even your parents.”




Wild hope leaped up in Yamini. “Can I see them?” she asked.




Dev laughed and Dada made his form stretch till in reached
the top floor. “Dev! One more word out of you, and I will have you banished
from the grounds for fifty years.”




“Not like I want to stay anyway,” muttered Dev, but he shut
up.




“There are two kinds of shadow people,” said Dada, “The ones
who breathe and the ones who don’t. We can only see each other. The breathers
can only see each other also. Once in a great while, a non breather and
breather will be able to meet, but these instances are rare.”




“But I breathe,” said Yamini.




Ayah’s eyes were kind as they rested on her face. “Try,” she
said.




Yamini realized she had been holding her breath this entire
time, and oddly, she didn’t feel the funny bursting feeling she normally did.
She exhaled and inhaled and then began to cough. She only regained herself once
she took in a mouthful of air and held her breath. It felt, weirdly, natural.




“What does this mean?” she asked and then she knew.




“Am I dead?”




“Finally!” said
Dev, “I thought you were going to take forever, and we aren’t allowed to tell
you, you have to figure it out for yourself. Yes, you’re dead, you died on your
way to catch a train back home. Run over by a bus.” He made a flattening motion
with his hand. “Shmush. Dead. Like roadkill.”




Dada’s eyes flashed and Dev shrunk, suddenly half his size.
“She had to know!” he squeaked.




Yamini thought back. Funnily, she couldn’t remember getting
on the train, or even the journey. She had assumed she had slept the whole way,
but she would have surely had some
memory of it.




“There is no heaven,” Ayah began and the other two joined
in, speaking low, like they were chanting:




There is no heaven,
there is no hell.

 The world is what it is.

Breathers hear us, we
hear  breathers, but we can never meet.

Shadows live, under
breather’s feet, until the breather is no more.

Shadows wait, dancing
in the light, to take you where they were.

Then shadow and
breather combine, and we are one.

We are Shadow People.




The hair on Yamini’s arms stood straight up. The courtyard
was flooded with light and shadows. The whispers came back. We are Shadow People, said the trees and
the wind. We are Shadow People,
murmured the other figures, suddenly everywhere. I am dead, thought Yamini and
her body began to glow in the moonlight, I am dead and I am a shadow person.







(All rights reserved. Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan)

I ain't fraid of no ghosts

I love, love, LOVE a good scary story.





Growing up, I had exactly ONE encounter, and in retrospect, it wasn't much of an encounter. We lived in a building society, where I was block E and most of the other kids were on the other side, blocks A or B.  So, when it came time for us all to go home after play, I had to walk alone. No big deal, because I was in the same society, right? WRONG. You try being a little girl with an overactive imagination trying to get home at night. I had read too many books to be completely oblivious to things that went bump in the night. PLUS, I had a crew of boy cousins whose sole mission in life was to scare the crap out of me (and each other, but that was less sport, as one was an easy crier.) Anyway,  so there I was, one evening, going home at a faster than normal pace ("what? I'm not running, I'm walking fast.") when I hear a low praying sound coming from right next to me. I freaked the fuck out. That moment is when I understood the motivation that makes people in horror films GO INTO THE HOUSE ALONE because instead of running, I decided to investigate the sound. It sounded like it was coming from behind a car, so I put my head down to peer under the car. There was no one there. AND, ANDDDD, even freakier, as I looked, the praying turned into a cackle. "HAHAHAHAHAHA" said the disembodied voice, and I found my feet and scampered home.



Later I realised, with the clarity of daylight and no spooks, that the voices and the laughter could have very well been coming from the park behind the car, separated from us by one wall. So, there you go. No ghosts.



This year, charmed by the annual Jezebel thread, I'm asking for your stories. Did you have an encounter more inexplicable than mine? Want to scare the pants off the rest of us? Put it in the comments and I'll post them on the blog.

Chronicles Of An Anxious Pooper

Ladies and gentlemen, I am an anxious pooper. I don't feel at home anywhere except my own home, and in consequence, I get backed up for all the days of a vacation. This is not a problem when a vacation is only a weekend away--how much does one person have to poop anyway?--but when you travel for two weeks like I did recently, then you're in a whole *ahem* shitstorm of trouble,



Here's what it looks like to be a person who cannot use the bathroom for two weeks: a big bloated stomach, a feeling of constant, uncomfortable fullness, and, in consequence, a person who can't fully enjoy the simple things that make time away so nice: a good meal, good sex, sleeping without your clothes on. I say "fully", because in my limited capacity, I enjoy all the above--sex, and food, and naked sleeping (and really, is there any sleeping that's better than getting showered and getting all clean under fresh sheets, and feeling the breeze of the ceiling fan against bare shoulder or exposed thigh?)



This is a common problem, I believe. I meet a lot of people with pooping troubles. Some have irritable bowels, so they have to go a few times a day. Some, like me, can't shit for a few days in a row, so they need to take dietary supplements. If you can't poop, you don't ever, truly feel at home. That's the problem. Your body is always waiting, always ready to go home. Which, when you're trying to be a person who lives everywhere and does everything, can be a problem.



It began, ironically enough, because of the Good Thing. Actually, that's not fair. Let's not blame him. It began back in the day, when some activities were ladylike and some weren't. Eating in front of boys = not ladylike. You could brush your hair, or reapply your lip gloss though. There was the boy I dated when I was 19, and spent all evening with, and by dinner time, I'd be starving, like literally, let me chew my arm off and apply salt and pepper starving, but when he asked what I wanted, "I'm ordering in some butter chicken and naan, you want anything?" I'd say, weakly, "I'll have a Coke, I'm not really hungry." Occasionally, I'd allow myself french fries. Peeing is ladylike, pooping isn't. I don't know who made the rules, I just conditioned myself to follow them. This is fine when you're 19, and you go home eventually, but when you're closing in on 32 and the love of your life is in your house and you're at his, and this is your life partner, the one you want to grow old with and all that, it gets damn incovenient to not be able to shit at all when he's there.  In my own home, it takes a few days after he visits for my bowels to stop crossing their legs. At his home? Maybe the last day I'm there, if I'm lucky.



So, for the first time in my life, I began to talk about poop. I told him I couldn't go in his house, and we tried to work out a solution: he'd leave the room, when possible, and when not, he'd play music or put in his headphones or something. Just enough so any untoward bathroom noises would be masked and I could go in peace. Still nothing,



We visited friends who live in Goa. It was closing in on a week for me without going to the bathroom.  I laid it bare before my friends. "I can't shit," I told them, and everyone got involved. Someone recommended Isabgol, I dissolved it in water and drank a whole glass, gagging. No poop, but agonising stomach cramps the whole night. "Just go sit on the pot for a while and play a game on your phone," they suggested. I did. It was boring--it was half an hour, with nothing. "Nope," said my body, "We're not doing that. This isn't ladylike." I feel like I had the same conversation with my body re: the female orgasm. I finally got over not doing that. "Why won't you work with me?" I begged in private. I stopped wearing a bikini.





Finally, right before we left for a wedding and a hotel, I bought a strip of laxatives. I placed it in my bag. Threatened, my bowels complied. It was glorious, but not as glorious as when I got home and two weeks worth decided to leave my system in two days. I've never looked so skinny.



"I can't poop," I told my friend. She recommended a FabIndia drug, Triphala. It's a herbal laxative. I'm going to travel again for a bit this week. It's going in my suitcase, next to the chemical laxatives. Just in case.



I'm reconditioning my body. I'm reconditioning my mind just by discussing this, the least ladylike of subjects, on the internet.



We will poop, fellow anxious poopers. We will have a normal day.

Driving Miss eM (usually round the bend)

Writing is making me so very, very tired lately. I guess when you write for work, and you write for leisure, writing for even more lesuire doesn't always work. Instead, I'm taking lots of photos and reading other people a lot, in the hope that when I emerge from this slump, I'll be a better writer for it.

So today, I'm recycling. Here's a version of a piece I did for Business Standard last weekend.

 




























People inundated me with advice (most extremely useful)
before I moved to Bombay many years ago. One, in particular, stands out. “If
you’re travelling late at night in the local train, get into the last coach,”
said the advice giver, an older woman, “That’s where all the prostitutes sit on
their way home, and they’ll look out for you. Better than sitting in an empty
compartment.” Out of laziness, I never did take the last train, but I always
wondered at the possibility of a coach full of strong women, ready to protect
their own. 






In all of India’s states, public transport is something you
are cautioned about from the very beginning. Travelling alone in Bangalore is a
bit of a sport, you are told it isn’t safe, despite the belying gentle faces of
the rickshaw drivers. “Take a cab,” you’re urged, even if you have to pre-book
one before you leave for your engagement. It seems as though you are always
juggling how you will get home—that’s the first question you get asked before
you leave the house in New Delhi—“how will you get home?” is what concerned
friends and relatives will ask. A woman can’t step out without a back-up plan,
a phone call to a friend who lives nearby, an extra wad of cash in your purse
for a radio taxi ride. 






I can very vividly remember the last time I took a local
bus, for the fifteen kilometres to college. If you missed the AC “chartered”
bus, you had to take the 534, all the way from East Delhi to the heart of the
South, where, the ladies’ seats were taken by women who woke up earlier and went
to a stop earlier. I stood and was jostled by men, it was too crowded for major
fondling, but I learnt to wear my backpack on my front and keep my bottom away
from pinchers, not even resting it against the metal pillars. I learnt to drive
soon after, if it hadn’t been for those buses, I would probably be taking
public transport to this day. 






Public transport in India is about the men. Even in the
hallowed Delhi Metro, held up as a shining example, the women are shunted into
the zenana, while the “general”
compartment is basically the “men’s” section. Women are treated as the other,
whether it’s their allocated seats on buses right next to the handicapped seats
or in the trains of India—the long distance coaches have now done away with the
ladies coupe, but you can’t get kicked off a train on a RAC (reserved against
cancellation) seat, if you’re a single woman travelling alone. In Bombay, the
ladies coach is often next to the handicapped one, illustrated with an image of
a crab (for cancer), and once, I got on that one by mistake and was shouted at
in Marathi, by a man in a white kurta pajama, who, in retrospect, looked
perfectly healthy to me. 






Even on semi-private transport—the auto, the cab and so
on—you’re at the mercy of the male drivers. A little illustration made the
rounds on Facebook, what you should do if your auto driver misbehaves. “Wrap
your scarf around his neck and pull,” said one point and another, “Call
someone, or pretend you are, and give them his registration number in a
language he’s sure to understand.” I notice that when you are a single female
traveller in an auto, at traffic lights the men around you start to hone in,
like so many mosquitoes towards a light. Like mosquitoes too, you can’t swat
them all away. More often than not, my auto driver is pulled into the role of
my defender, he has to drive faster than them or slow down so they overtake,
and it must be so exhausting to be him, to be responsible for someone he
probably believes shouldn’t be travelling alone at all.  A leading radio taxi company hired a driver
in Bangalore who refused to play the role. “I’m not going any further,” he
said, annoyed that I didn’t know directions to the friend’s house I was staying
at. “I don’t live here,” I said, but his mind was made up, I was not his
responsibility. When I called the company to complain, they said they would
send him a letter of warning. And that’s where they abdicated their
responsibility as well. How I wish I had the confidence to just step out of the
cab and not pay him for the journey! But it was late at night and I needed him
more than he needed me. 






My aim is to be an independent woman, regardless of what
country I live in. I can never fully be that in India, where even waiting for a
bus is flirting with danger, where even the men who ferry us around this
teeming country are not on your side.

Phone Review: Nokia Lumia 720 (with inputs from The Good Thing)

Truth be told, I wanted to post this review the very first week I got my new phone. The Good Thing suggested I exercise caution. "Is there anything you don't like about it?" "NO!" was my emphatic reply. I loved it, I love it, but two weeks into using it, I can come up with a list of cons too. So, this will be a balanced review.



FOR the Nokia Lumia 720:



1) It's cheaper than an iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy or the Google Nexus or whatever your current covetous choice is.



2) At the price range it's at, it's far better looking than all its contemporaries. If this matters to you, no one can ever accurately guess how much my phone cost. "30k?" "Try half of that."



3) The camera is amazing.



4) It's fast--I mean, really fast. After years of laggy Androids, it's a pleasure to type out a contact name, without Android doing that thing where it doesn't register and goes back to the A's, after you've spent a couple of minutes trying to get a text to your friend Priyanka. Similarly, for apps and whatnot, you press the tile that indicates in and in seconds, you can see your message. I guess iPhone users won't identify with this, but it's a pleasure for Android-ers.



Good Thing: "I don't think it's faster, it's just more responsive."

Me: "..."

GT: "Like, when the screen loads, it shows you the phone doing something, not just a blank screen like Android. ACTUALLY,  the new Android is faster."



5) The battery just goes on and on and on. I need to charge my phone for an hour a day. That's about it. If I don't charge and just let it run, it'll flash the "battery critically low" sign, and THEN, after about 45 minutes, it turns off. Since I bought it, it did that for the first time today. And that's only because I slept another two hours and couldn't be bothered to get up and plug it in. There's an in-built battery saver, which you can turn on if you're on the road and can't get to a charger.



6) Speaking of apps, I know the main problem with Windows Phones is that there aren't enough apps on it. You know how many apps I miss? Exactly one. Ola Cabs has not come up with a WP app yet, and their mobile version kind of sucks (look into this, Ola Cabs!) but apart from this, everything else works like a charm. I have 5 different kinds of Nokia-specific camera apps, which are fantastic, and I have Instagram and Whatsapp, a word game I love called Wordament, and a Windows Phone-specific app called Divvy Up, which basically lets you input an entire bill and then calculates how much each person owns.



GT: "How many times have you used Divvy Up? Like once?"

Me: "How many times do you have to eat at a new restaurant before you recommend it?"

GT: "It takes 15 minutes for you to do all the calculation. That seems like a long time."

Me: "But this way I don't have to pay for other people's drinks."

GT: "It's like plugging Angry Birds on the WP."





7) Live tiles. You can make them any colour you like--mine is a glorious magenta--and they update with information on your home screen very attractively. The 'Me' tile is basically a place for all my notifications--Facebook, Twitter etc--and I can also post from there to whatever social networking site I prefer. 



8) Fast tethering, as long as your data lasts. It doesn't cut you off halfway.



AGAINST the Nokia Lumia 720:



1) I'm not crazy about HERE Maps. I know it's meant to be EVEN BETTER than Google Maps and whatnot, but if I didn't vaguely know my way somewhere, I wouldn't have realised that it was taking me in completely the wrong direction. There are a few things in it that need ironing out, I think. I like that it speaks in an Indian-English accent, very endearing, but I think I'm going to get Google Maps on this phone after all. The plus features for HERE Drive is that it marks out petrol pumps, parking lots and ATMs in your area, which is very useful.



* The Good Thing has recommended that I use Google Maps before I publish this review. *downloads*



So, we compared the two side-by-side. HERE Drive has turn by turn navigation, even though it might be a bit wobbly, I entered a few other locations and it gave me accurate directions. Google Maps doesn't have an official WP client, so no voice navigation, but it IS a bit more updated than HERE for Delhi. For example: searching for Starbucks on HERE threw up nothing, while G Maps had five different locations I could go to. On the other hand, searching for Starbucks on Google Maps also showed me Olive in Mehrauli and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.



HERE has the advantage in that you can download it and access it offline, BUT, you have to keep an eye on the address. G Maps used side-by-side might give you an address you can then input into HERE to use the voice navigation for.



More details on this feature when I use it in Goa/Mumbai, the other maps I've downloaded, just to see what it's like in a city I'm not sure of my way around.



2) Again, this is an Android-specific thing, but I don't like that I can't pop out the battery if the phone hangs. You can however hold down two keys to reboot.



3) Facebook messaging doesn't show up as a notification. (There might be an app for this, I haven't yet checked.)



4) Pictures save as each copy you do. So, if I edit a picture using three different apps, I have three copies of the same picture and then have to delete. Android saves them in different app folders, so you don't have to wade through three thousand copies.

 

5) Because there aren't that many WP owners, there aren't that many tips and tricks available online. You have to muddle along with everyone else.



6) The default search (with the built-in magnifying glass button) is Bing. You can't change this. What you CAN do is get a Google search tile on your home screen and just use that.



7) You also can't change the default keyboard. The Nokia keyboard is nice and big, and learns your responses quite quickly, but SwiftKey was magic. 



Verdict: Buy, if you use your phone for a lot of photography, social networking and messages.



And now, on to the photos!





A new series I'm doing on traffic light portraits, this man had the whole world with him.





Nokia's Glam Me app is like crack for selfie addicts. You can even make your eyes bigger or your face thinner. This photo just has a filter however.   









Look closely at this picture. Taken with Nokia Cinemagraph, you can choose to animate certain parts of a picture. The leaves move, the sunshine glints. It's very addictive.





Playing with colour pop and Instagramming a plate of Chicken Kiev at the IIC