Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 3

The Internet Personified: Cooking, driving and early noughties feminism

Beloved bendy straws,

I am SO COLD that it’s surprising I’m able to type at all. In Delhi, we’ve had what the newspapers have described excitedly as a “cold wave” only a “wave” implies a sudden dropping of temperature and I haven’t really noticed it rising. It’s a bit better than it was week before last, where I was wearing two pairs of socks inside the house. Now I’m down to one pair—toes still cold—but wearing a massive amount of layers on top. No one looks sexy in Delhi’s winter, but I look like the Michelin Man. I went to a house party this weekend, and the guests were divided into those that made an effort (my friend, the host, looked particularly sexy and I guess she’s immune to the cold because there was not a single piece of Heattech on her. Not even a jacket!) and those who stayed properly bundled up the entire evening. Ugh, I hate winter, as soon as my birthday is over I’m ready for it to be summer again. Compensating by eating my body weight in snacks so I’m truly a Michelin Man, inside and out.

My timing is also not great, because Delhi gets warmer next week and off I go, back to Berlin, to plunge into their cold wave, a thrilling MINUS FIVE. More fattening snacks for me! This is me putting a ring on Berlin, so I’m not expecting my honeymoon period to last forever, however, I’m pretty excited about returning. The cats, after one startled look at K, have resumed their winter cuddles as though no time had passed at all. He suspects they did forget about us when we left, and as soon as they smelt him, they said, “Oh yeahhhh, this guy” and the love fest begun.

I sent him back with one stainless steel masala dabba and one works-on-electric-stoves tadka pan so my Indian-in-Germany kitchen is coming together nicely. I keep thinking about my kitchen—I got so into cooking the last year or so that it’s really nice to have all this equipment and all these spices (for Indian cooking, I bring most from home like a good desi housewife) and this year I’m expanding to get better at “conti” stuff, mainly Italian and French (inspired by the TV show Julia, I’ve decided to also do a little Julia Child stuff in the kitchen), and our stint in Bangkok has made me very curious about cooking Thai food as well. (Ingredients a little hard to find, but there’s this large Asian market not far from us).

Back when I first started living alone, say age 21-22-ish? I had just found a job with a city tabloid which paid me the grand sum of Rs 7,500, and I had been itching to leave home and set up on my own anyway, so I decided this financial independence was the sign I needed. No matter that my new job’s office was closer to my mum’s flat in East Delhi than the tiny railway compartment style flat I shared with two others in Malviya Nagar, I was still going to strike out on my own! (Until I realised after I paid for rent and fuel, I was basically left with zero money and reluctantly returned to the parental home until I got a new job and a dramatic 50% raise and a flat close to the office in a most definitely illegal construction fourth floor walk-up that swayed whenever anything heavier than a scooter drove past.) Anyway, this was the time where our feminism made us declare proudly that we couldn’t cook. “Can’t even boil water,” we’d say, smugly, looking over at other women who cooked with a certain amount of patronage. We were meant for grander things than the kitchen! We would never need to learn how to chop an onion or, god forbid, roll out a roti because our lot was Higher Things. I remember the first week we moved in, we didn’t have any way to boil water so I made instant coffee with the water from the geyser, god, it was awful and probably not very hygienic either. What did it matter, we hired a cook, who deep fried everything and it all looked so unappetising that we ate out most days, but I was always never very house proud, so I poked at unappetising meals after unappetising meals, from Delhi to Bombay, and thought this was just my lot. I didn’t know what was wrong with the food, just that I didn’t like it. Only once, several years later, I stumbled by pure chance upon an excellent cook in Bombay who happened to be looking for a new job and her meals were just elevated. I still had no words of instruction to give her, but she made everything really well. (She ruined me for future bad cooks who were delighted by my lack of agency, but also, now I knew it could be done in my kitchen on my budget, I started to take a little more of an interest in how to make things the way I liked.)

This painting (Young Woman Drawing) was bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1922. In 1977, they FINALLY took a male artist’s name off it. The true artist (Marie Denise Villers) was only attributed in 1996.

It was a wonky sort of feminism, my first book You Are Here, contains a recipe of the kind I’d make in those days, “potato pickle surprise” which was just fried potato with a green chilli pickle garnish. I described Arshi’s roommate Topsy’s cocktails in far more detail, because we took pride in our drinks—see, post-feminism, women drinking like men!—but I skipped over the food. In my newest book, Soft Animal, I’ve flipped that, now my protagonist Mallika is frequently to be found in the kitchen, finding some sort of order in her days through cooking, because she doesn’t have much else. People took you less seriously as an author if you wore nice clothes or lipstick, for the longest time, you attempted to dress down for book events so everyone wouldn’t talk to you like you were a complete idiot. Well… some people dressed down, and I dressed up and grumbled that I had just as much right to be taken seriously as everyone else, and probably paid the price for my clothes because they patronised the hell out of me, but who cares, right? I’m forty one and I’m still here, many books later.

Cooking took a while longer to reach me as a feminist act. I was rejecting it because I didn’t want to be like the generation of women before me who seemed to learn how to cook whether they wanted to or not, it was just one of their skills. Even my mother who was a journalist at the time cooked a lot for a working woman. A lot of us wanted to be free and easy, like, well, like the men, never lifting a finger, never learning to do anything. And then things like Masterchef Australia started airing and people started getting snobby about food and suddenly everyone was a home chef and talking about their ingredients and their ovens and their knives, and women of my generation who had always cooked, always enjoyed cooking, were raising an eyebrow at all this but the rest of us just jumped into it. And it was fun. (How privileged can you get, right? Only dabbling in the kitchen as a hobby while your cook did all the scud work?) Of course, it is an essential life skill—feeding yourself, but you can do that with toast and eggs just as well. You don’t need to be a cook-cook. But what I learned consequently over these past few years is how creative it is, how soothing. I work from home, I work in my pajamas, I’m not much of a cleaner-upper unless the place is truly a mess and it takes a while to get there, so what adds order to my days? Cooking. I may not get pages done that day or go out for a walk, but I can make something out of raw ingredients, something appetising and interesting. Sometimes I wonder: is this turning back into being the kind of woman I rejected? Am I, in the end, as fond of nourishing others as my ancestors were before me? No one likes to admit they’re getting older, and I think this is an age thing for me, not a feminism thing. I need to eat, I’m a picky eater, I cook well, I cook our meals. (K does most—if not all—of the cleaning. I feel like I’ve gotten the better part of the bargain so I’m actively trying to get less lazy about vacuuming and so on.)

Which reminds me, please send recs for cookbooks you personally use and love. [Nothing with a zillion ingredients each of which I will only use once, thank you, which is why most of Ottam (I’ve forgotten how to spell his name and I’m too lazy to look it up) is out.]

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I’m in the process of selling my car. It’s only the second car I’ve ever owned, and the first I could afford to buy myself. Over the years, my friends got fancy new models, but I was always somewhat attached to my little white Alto—especially because a) I never drove much anyway and b) it was really easy to park, being so small, I could squeeze into any space.

I gave up driving some time ago, a crippling phobia suddenly overtook me. It’s surprising to even describe, it snuck up on me. One day I was driving over a flyover and traffic stood still and I couldn’t stop imagining all of us collapsing to our deaths, because the bridge could surely not hold all our weight. This fear mixed with another one I had, what if someone knocked into my car as I was driving and shot me off the edge? So I had to avoid flyovers. After that it became slopes: what if my car slid slowly backward and I hit the car behind me? After that, highways. Once again, what if a truck just sort of drifted off its lane and squeezed my car, smashing us both into a pulp? I couldn’t—can’t, still—differentiate the what-ifs my brain was coming up with from actual fact, I just started feeling like every time I was behind the wheel of my car, I was going to die horrifically and painfully. My palms would sweat, my heart would start racing, I spent the entire drive gripping the steering wheel. It wasn’t pleasant, and so I started avoiding driving more and more. If K and I weren’t going together somewhere (he usually drove us), I’d take a taxi, it was so easy. I tried to fix it with mindfulness meditation, and affirmation stuff when I was driving (“you are a calm and comfident [sic] driver,” said the English accent to me, soothingly.) But it never did get fixed, so in a calm and comfident way, I declared that I was just giving it up. Fuck driving. There are many other ways to get around.

But we hung on to the car, we thought my mother might like the use of it, but getting someone to drive her around was more hassle than just getting into an auto, so after much procrastination, I finally got around to selling it. I tried the first of two websites that pop up when you search “sell car in Delhi” and when their home inspection guy didn’t turn up twice I’ve called a second, who should be here soon, but I’ve learned from experience these car website people are notorious flakes. It doesn’t really matter because when I called a mechanic in to replace the battery—dead from not having being used for six months—he offered to buy it himself. Turns out a single owner driven car with less than 30,000 kilometres on the thingie is a valuable asset. Good thing I didn’t drive it much, I’m hoping to now get back most of what I spent on it, minus 50,000, which is great value for a car that is 10 years old.

Thinking of my car and driving, made me think of the song Short Skirt/Long Jacket by Cake, which I used to listen to ALL. THE. TIME. Somehow, my early noughties feminism got tied up with this song—which if you know it is about a man singing about the only kind of woman he wants, an independent one.

I want a girl with the right allocations
Who is fast, and thorough, and sharp as a tack
She's playing with her jewelry
She's putting up her hair
She's touring the facility
And picking up slack
I want a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket

Early noughties feminism was very much about “not being like other girls.” You didn’t believe in a sisterhood, you believed that you alone, out of all the rest of your gender, were this perfect unique little specimen who deserved to sit with the men.

This is a painting by Leonor Fini (1907-1996) who was openly bisexual and polyamorous. From her Wikipedia page: “In an attempt to subvert the roles imposed by society, she abandoned representations of fragile, innocent or fatal women in favor of goddesses inspired by Greek mythology. She applied herself to painting female figures who could not be categorized, judged or morally or sexually defined.”

She wants a car (hey) with a cup holder armrest (ho)
She wants a car (hey) that will get her there (ho)
She's changing her name (hey)
From Kitty to Karen (ho)
She's trading her MG (hey) for a white Chrysler LeBaron
I want a girl with a short skirt and a long, jacket

I blasted this song while I was driving. I too wanted a car that would get me there.So what if I was in “soft” or “lifestyle” journalism, so what if ignorant critics called me a “chick lit” writer? I knew who I wanted to be as I wobbled around in my high heels, flicking my straightened hair out of my face or just tying it back in a tight bun, neat and precise with none of the untamed danger that curly hair implies. I wanted to be that girl—girl! he never says woman!—with a short skirt and a long jacket.

There are many things to criticise still about 2023 feminism (let’s start with how it’s still not as inclusive as we’d like, how powerful men are still getting away with shit despite all the hand wringing about woke mobs and cancel culture) but at least, at least we have grown from where we were and are able to acknowledge our internalised misogyny and see how it was perhaps a little fucked up.

Meanwhile, I opened my car the other day for the first time in ages and I smelt, underneath the musty odour of a car that’s been closed too long, just a whiff of my old life. It almost made my eyes misty. Saying goodbye is hard and new beginnings are never easy, but you know I’m stepping into it with flat shoes, a flowy dress and my hair standing up like a lion’s mane around my face, which is a much more comfortable way to be than a short skirt and a long jacket, if you ask me.

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Currently reading:

I’m book-hopping in my re-reads so I’ve got Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years by Sue Townsend (just the most perfect hilarious series) and Doctors by Erich Segal (who I had completely forgotten about but then K was supposed to take a trip to Tel Aviv and I suddenly started remembering Acts of Faith, which I then re-read and now I’m on Doctors and I will probably read his entire oeuvre, which is cheesy but expansive. Doctors is the medical deep-dive, Acts of Faith is the religion one, The Class is academia, Prizes is science. All meticulously researched pot boilers, but I don’t need to tell you, you probably also read all his stuff in your teens along with Sidney Sheldon.) I also re-read all of James Herriot, having watched the latest series of All Creatures Great And Small. Then I’m also re-reading with intention A Dark Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine because it is my book club pick for this month and I’m meeting them for a discussion on Friday.

Plus a new to me book: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce which I came across browsing the Booker Prize website, a useful place to check out every single book that’s ever been longlisted. I like books about long walks, perhaps because even though I’m a fairly sedentary person, a long walk seems like a thing I can do, much like Harold.

Currently watching:

My mum and I are watching all of Ted Lasso, which I had abandoned after four episodes, and now have gotten back into. It’s a nice palate cleanser after Trial By Fire which was just DARK but also really good.

Side-by-side I’m watching Southland which is this excellent cop drama shot like a documentary and well, ok, Friends. What? It’s cold and I need mental cuddles.

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My mid-January link recommendations!

Speaking of cooking, here’s what the new show Julia (which, for the record, I enjoyed) gets wrong about Julia Child’s extraordinary editor Judith Jones.

How the YA dystopia fad ended.

Firstly, Margaret Atwood has a Substack. Secondly, she sometimes writes about chickens she has known.

Have not seen Fleishman Is In Trouble, but you don’t have to see it to enjoy this piece about the feminism of it.

Trying not to touch plastic for an entire day is HARD.

What 30 years of having pets have taught me about life.

Have a great week! I will probably write you next from my Berlin life.

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.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. (Plus my book recommendation Instagram!)

Forward to your friends if you liked this and to women who STILL say, “I’m not like other girls” if you didn’t.

Also, write back to me! I love to hear from you.

The Internet Personified: The Best Books I Read In 2022

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My spicy little pad thais,

I always hate best books lists that come out early on in December or even November because it’s as good as saying you won’t be reading any more for the rest of the year. I try to put my own list off as long as I can, because I am always filled with FOMO. What if, I think, what if the book I read on December 23rd is absolutely the best book I’ve read all year? This year, I went to a second hand bookstore only two days ago and bought a huge pile of books which I am making my way through. This year, I started Crime and Punishment only last week. I have a lot of reading left to do, but now, on the 27th, I realise that I probably won’t finish any of these by the end of the week and so, here we are.

All graphics from Storygraph which I use instead of Goodreads to keep track of what I’m reading

I had a shorter reading goal this year than normal. I pledged to read 100 books—normally I pick 150 or 120 or whatever, but this year I’ve been so busy—we counted and we’ve been in seven different countries in 2022 thanks to my visa problems. I’m delighted to announce that that is a thing of the past. Yes, friends, one and a half years, many many emails to the German embassy and many many hours of agonising about my uncertain future later, my visa has finally been approved! This means your girl is going to be a full time Berlin resident come February (the passport might take as long as a month to be stamped, they warned me). And not a moment too soon, because I see rumblings about a new COVID wave that’s happening, so please be careful, and hopefully we won’t have to have another full on lockdown. (In Thailand, masks are no longer mandatory, but the locals wear them all the time, even outdoors, so actually we’re pretty safe—and also following suit, to fit in.)

I love fat big books that you can just keep reading endlessly. This is why I mostly read on my Kindle.

Although seven countries was fun. I’ll sort of miss my vagabond life, but I’m so ready to start nesting.

The nice thing about travelling is that you get to read a lot. The bad thing is that you get absolutely no writing done, unless you have tremendous will power, which we all know I don’t. Still, these five weeks in Bangkok have been ideal for my book which is chugging along nicely, and I managed to read 106 new books (I don’t count re-reads unless I’ve completely forgotten the book, I’m always re-reading the same thing over and over.) This is also the year I discovered libraries, proper libraries, and while Berlin’s libraries don’t have a large English language collection, they do have variety. Plus, you’re a member of all of them at the same time, so you can borrow books from whichever branch you like. When I think about Berlin, I think most about the libraries, nothing else, maybe occasionally walking down an empty cobblestoned road with the trees high and green above my head.

As you can see, I’m a middle of the road rater. I very rarely give books 4.5 stars or 2.25 stars. I’m fondest of 3 stars, which I interpret as “nice but not outstanding.” The books I’ve picked on this list all come from my 4.5-5 star section.

Of these one hundred and six books though, when I made my list today, I could only come up with thirteen that I would absolutely recommend to you. I do mini-recommendations all year on my bookish Instagram page, but this is a best books list, not a decent-reads-you-might-enjoy list, and so, here we are. As always, these are the best books I’ve read this year, but published any year.

I needed soothing books all year, and there’s nothing like crime fiction for that.

Wherever possible, I’ve tried to link to an independent bookstore (Midlands and Champaca) where you can order online no matter where you are, but sometimes it has to be Amazon, alas.

I would have thought I’d have the biggest spike over the summer heatwave I spent in Delhi but it turns out I was a very negligent hostess and read the most when friends were visiting.

The most exciting book I read all year:

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski: I wish I’d saved this for Thailand, but I didn’t know, way back in March that I would be in Thailand this winter, so the timing was slightly unfortunate. Then again, I did read this in a fancy Istanbul hotel where we were sadly quarantining with COVID, so I had plenty of time to devote to it between poking sticks into my nose and waiting hopefully for the results. The book is a solid romp, a journalist goes to Thailand hoping to uncover the story of an anthropologist who was jailed and later committed suicide. Along the way, there’s the heavy involvement of a missionary church. It doesn’t sound exciting written down, but trust me, by the end of it, you’ll be like, “Ooh how can I be an anthropologist too?”

The best novel about the psychology of crime:

A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine: I don’t mean a psychological crime novel here, those are quite different. This was the year I discovered Ruth Rendell and promptly decided to read as much of her backlist as I could. I love here because she talks about why people do crimes instead of just the puzzle. It’s what I wanted to do as well, so she served as inspiration in a sense. This book begins with the murderer dying and then goes back in time, unravelling a story. A why-dunnit instead of a who-dunnit. So beautifully written, a story about family and sisters and parenthood.

The best graphic novel I’ve read in a long time, let alone 2022:

Berlin by Jason Lutes: A massive book, twenty years in the making, which spans the history of the city from the very beginning of the fall of the Weimar Republic till the start of the rise of the Nazis. Large panels, so much happening in each section that you can’t take in all of it at one go so your eyes go all over the page, like a child reading a picture book. Berlin was dense, full of various random characters inhabiting the city, and beautiful. I borrowed this from the public library, which made me very happy, because I had been planning on buying it in Delhi and lugging it back to Germany with me and the thing weighs like a zillion kilos. I see there’s a nice Kindle version so treat yourself.

The best romance novel that ended up as a treatise on working women in the 50s:

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus: I read a lot of “trendy” books this year, by which I mean books everyone was talking about, and for the most part I was pleasantly surprised by how good they were, which makes me sound like the most appalling snob, but really, every year people dangle books in front of one and are like, “This is the greatest thing since the Iliad!” or whatever and they never are. I realised tempering my expectations was key, like they were a giant cast iron pan. I liked this more than I expected to, and that sounds like faint praise, but it was just sweet. It starts out romantic, very smart woman and very smart man fall in love and get a dog, and then the man dies, so that’s sad, but the woman has to now bring up their child alone, and then she (the woman that is) gets a job teaching cooking at a local TV studio, except she’s teaching it in a chemistry-oriented way. It was fun! And charming! Sometimes you need fun and charming. The dog character was great too.

The best soft character-oriented books about people’s long lives:

Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout and French Braid by Anne Tyler: This is one of my absolute favourite genres, and I find Americans do it so well. I think it’s the idea of clannishness and family in small towns. Elizabeth Strout and Anne Tyler are experts in this regard, and if I like Tyler a little more than Elizabeth, it’s probably because I’ve read more of her (since she’s published more books.) French Braid is excellent, a long family saga in vignettes, chapters set over the years. Anything Is Possible is a continuation of Strout’s Lucy Barton series, and as always, you don’t need to read one book to get fully into the next. Stories of different people who live in a small town in Maine and how their lives intersect.

The best book about a very specific sports topic:

The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis: I haven’t seen the TV show! And when I posted this on my Instagram, everyone said I must, so that is a treat for another time. But the novel the show is based on: young genius orphan girl is heavily into chess and becomes a world champion was so exciting, I couldn’t stop reading, and I don’t even like chess. Then too, it’s a short novel, so perfect for your next weekend break or flight.

The best cosy crime slash epistolary novel:

The Appeal by Janice Hallet: This book tickled two of my reading soft spots: it’s done entirely in notes and emails and, and it’s all against the background of an amateur theatre group. Having been in many amateur groups myself, I’ve always thought they were a great place to observe human intrigue, and see, here I am proven right. Then too, it was funny and mysterious, with a twist you won’t see coming.

The best fantasy novel:

Fairy Tale by Stephen King: King is usually horror and creepy don’t-read-in-the-dark books, but this one is both a deviation and a delight. It’s about a young boy who discovers through his neighbour, a portal into a fairy tale world, which of course, he enters, and where he, of course, has to battle many strange things and come out a hero in the end. It’s still creepy, but fairy tales tend to be creepy, unless they’re Disney versions. I especially liked finding references to all sorts of Grimms’ tales I had forgotten.

The best book about friendship:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: This made a LOT of best books lists so you’ll forgive me for squeezing it into mine as well. I didn’t think I’d like it, because it’s about two gamers, and I’m not really much for video games, but much like Fieldwork made me think, “Ooh anthropology!” and The Queen’s Gambit made me think, “Ooh, chess!” this sent me down the “Ooh, video games!” rabbithole as well. But mostly it’s about love and friendship, two very real people and their very real relationship with all its ups and downs. The relationships are real, is what I’m trying to tell you, not just a nice friendship lalala over the years but it felt true and authentic, the fights, the bitching, the resentment and love too, lots of love or it wouldn’t have endured. You’ll find yourself thinking a lot about your own friends after you read this.

The best book about Indian crime:

Villainy by Upamanyu Chatterjee: I confess, I haven’t read as many Indian authors this year as I would have liked to, and I do like to. But Upamanyu Chatterjee has always been a favourite, I’m forever recommending English, August to other people who want to know “what Indian books to read.” I didn’t like his ones in the middle so much, but this one returned him true to form. The crime of it all is a bit hand-wavy, but I liked the people very much, all the various characters coming through so clearly, like I had met them all. I liked the police procedural aspect as well (something I’m working on in my own new novel) and generally enjoyed the Rich Delhi/class wars flavours of the whole thing. (Just before I left Delhi, my friend Nilanjana Roy released Black River, her crime novel, so that’s something to look forward to as well.)

The best book about small scale politics:

Search by Michelle Huneven: Again, a subject I didn’t know very much about: church committees! Dana, the narrator, is also a food writer and is hunting for the subject of her next book. At the same time, she’s elected to join a church committee to hunt for a replacement for the minister. There’s a whole lot of Boomer vs Gen Z energy (Dana is in her 50s), plus the every day fights and quibbles of people who suddenly have a small amount of power. I tore through it, it was so good. And so unusual.

The best collection of essays:

May You Be The Mother of A Hundred Sons by Elizabeth Bumiller: I did not read a lot of non-fiction this year, but whatever I did tended to be memoir. This very old collection of essays is about women in India, whether they’re rich in Delhi or Bollywood stars or health workers or women in the village, Elizabeth Bumiller went everywhere and talked to everyone to get some sort of an idea about what it means to be a woman in India. It was published in 1991 so it’s been a while, but sadly, a lot of it still holds true.

And that’s my list! Your turn, what were the best books you read this year off the top of your head?

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If you liked this newsletter—a true labour of love!—then please buy me a book so I can go on reading and telling you what to read as well.

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Books I’m currently reading:

Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me which is the true story of how the writer was besties of a sort with serial killer Ted Bundy.

John Irving’s A Son Of The Circus which is the only book of his to be set in Bombay. I’ve read a lot of his books and actually owned this in hardback for a while and never read it, but then came across it at this second hand bookstore in Bangkok and it felt like the right time. It’s very good. Potboiler-y.

Crime and Punishment which will probably take me a while to finish, so it’s just going to go with me wherever I go.

Gone by Mo Hayder which is described as both “lacerating” and “stomach churning” in the blurbs.

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A wrap on the 2022 season of The Internet Personified! Have a great New Year’s Eve, however you celebrate (leaning towards staying in with a movie this year, too much excitement already) and I will see you in 2023.

Thank you for reading The Internet: Personified . This post is public so feel free to share it.

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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.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. (Plus my book recommendation Instagram!)

Forward to your friends if you liked this and to that book you’re really never going to finish why pretend if you didn’t.

Also, write back to me! I love to hear from you.

The Internet Personified: The view from forty one

My marvellous muskrats,

Hello from Bangkok! I’ve been here for a little over two weeks now, and it already feels comfortable and settled in. The city that is. My mind, having now had more idle time than it has all year (low grade stress about this visa situation has made me not want to be alone with my thoughts for longer than the five minutes it takes between putting my book down and falling asleep), is running at a mile a minute and events and thoughts I’d completely forgotten about are resurfacing at the oddest moments. Luckily I’m still speaking to my therapist twice a week so we go through what it all means while I’m also all, “Oh, I have nothing to say to you this time” which is what I say every time and then wind up blabbing for the whole fifty minutes anyway.

In all this, I also just had a birthday. I’m a birthday party person—or so I thought. Every year I do something large and fun for my birthday, and it always brought me great pleasure to look around the room at that magic hour when everyone’s arrived and no one’s left yet and see people talking to each other, and think, “I did all this!” It was a ritual, it got me ready for the rest of December’s festivities, and I always loved it. But I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ve left that ritual behind. Last year, of course, we were in Berlin, having just moved in. Our cat was very sick (RIP Bruno) and we had no friends (in town, anyway). I could’ve probably mustered a few from language class and whatnot, but I didn’t feel like it, so it wound up being a quiet birthday, just me and K all day and in the evening, a visiting friend joined us for pizza and a walk around the wintery streets, ending with gluhwein at a cozy bar. I thought it was quieter than I would’ve liked for my fortieth, but that I’d make up for it this year with a big party for forty one which would also be my anniversary with the city in a sense. But here’s the thing I’ve since realised: we left Delhi on December 7th for absolutely no reason. My birthday is December 13th. There was no deadline, nothing pushing us to go a week before rather than wait till the 14th, for example. I could have had my big birthday party, it just seemed like I chose not to? This year as well, we left Delhi on the 28th of November, which okay, we got two weeks more in Bangkok which we wanted, but I could have still had a party right before we left. Again with the choosing not to. It’s been very puzzling for me. Have I outgrown birthday parties? Surely not.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that maybe this past year, birthday to birthday, what I’ve wanted most from the day itself is a no stress, zero expectation kind of day. I think it’s because this year has been on in a way that I haven’t had in years, I am exhausted and feeling every single one of my forty one years on this planet. I didn’t really feel like putting together a party (sorry friends! I will have parties again soon!) and calling people and buying booze and figuring out food and so on. I just wanted to relax.

This wasn’t as zen as it sounds now. Right up until my birthday I had pangs of FOMO, missing parties and people coming together for me, for me, but I don’t know, as the years went by, it seemed like having a party was the only way to celebrate a birthday and I think I wanted a change. I wanted to wake up in a new country and have a strange and wonderful new experience, and indulge myself in many small ways and take stock, as I always do, of the year gone by and figure out what I want to do with my next.

Here’s what we did for my birthday instead: K booked us a lovely room in a fancy hotel. (Back story: our Airbnb is cute, but a) on the outskirts of Bangkok and b) not even remotely fancy, it’s sort of squatty to tell the truth. We like it because there’s not much to do except walk outside and get food which keeps us distraction free, we’re both writing books so a zero distraction life helps. There’s a pool downstairs where we go for morning swims, and a sky train station a ten minute walk away which connects us to the rest of the city but mostly, we’re here, being quiet and writing, and working through occasional patches of boredom by either leaning into it or taking the train somewhere fun with laptops and working outside. But not very birthday-y.) Also, I wanted a hotel because I wanted all the fun stuff hotels offer: maid services and lavish breakfasts and huge bathrooms and all of it. Airbnbs are how we normally travel because they wind up cheaper, but hotels are just so luxurious. We went out on day one, just to the electronics mall (where K made me hide so he could buy my presents: a gorgeous ergonomic mouse to fix some elbow trouble I’ve been having and a set of replacement keyboard stickers because my laptop is second hand and Danish so all the keys were weird, I could never find what I wanted.) (My other presents were a pair of Adidas Stan Smith sneakers that I picked out and to which I added rainbow laces for a little personal touch and this cotton blue and grey Japanese inspired top with a hood which also I selected and which he hid to give to me on my birthday.) (My mum, dad, and aunt sent me money which I will use—partly, because this city is cheap and I love a bargain—on a few clothes from the massive fashion mall I plan to go to this weekend) and then to a bar, but it was a long walk and I was glad to get back to the hotel and relax. All of my actual birthday we spent in the hotel, my birthday present hotel, only venturing out for lunch to a small but popular som tam place down the road. We got massages and napped and then in the evening went to Moon Bar, also down the road, which is this sky bar on the 61st floor of a hotel. I’ve always wanted to go to a sky bar, and K’s always said they were kind of poncy, which ok, I can see that, but since it was a special occasion, we had a lovely time drinking very pricey cocktails and chatting to two Thais who sweetly sent cake to our table. After a few drinks, we wandered off to a small French bar where we had a nightcap and dinner and then ended my birthday at a nice, civilised 11.30 so everyone could be asleep by 12.30. Perfect.

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OH YEAH, I started a Substack chat which is just their fancy way of saying “threads.” You can only access it via the app, which = boo, but it’s a free app and quite nice for all that. Easy to use and all your newsletters in one place. We had a great time discussing books on the first chat thread, with a sub-thread on Jerry Pinto and I plan to kick start conversation every week on a Tuesday, because Tuesdays are kinda boring, the paneer of the week. Join us!

I guess maybe it was the Grand Birthday Reflection Time or whatever, but this time in Delhi, I began thinking about something no one really warned us about getting older.

I started thinking about all those friends I used to have, used to love in fact. Colleagues I sat up late at night with, or housemates, people whose lives you knew so well. Or even just friends-because-you’re-friends, how some people keep vanishing from your life.

I even have theories about this now! In one sense, it’s people in their mid-to-late thirties getting married, having children and all of that. So already the Venn diagram of your lives have very little reason to intersect.

Then there’s geography, you may really like some people, but when they move away, your friendship is over, as simple as that. Sure, you can try and stay and touch, but eh, it’s probably never going to happen. The most you can look forward to is a fun evening when one of you is in the other’s city, but what usually happens is that their big life things happen to them somewhere else and yours too, so you sort of… forget they exist. These are not the long distance friends, of those I have several, people who you like just as much as when you first met, whose spare rooms in you stay in, who check in every now and then, whose lives you are invested in and so on. Those are not friendships bound by geography, but some are.

And then—and this one you have to be Super Mature about—there’s needs. Sometimes what you need from a person is not the same as what they need from you. When this happens, often either of you move away to different people, who can give them/you what you need at that moment. Often one of you will do this before the other, which makes for a very puzzling and depressing time because you’ll keep scrambling to keep up the friendship but it’s just not working the way it used to. Maybe your bestie suddenly got very into fitness and now she has all these friends from the gym who seem to get her more than you did. Or you had a baby and you like hanging out with other parents, they know what you need from them, you don’t have to keep apologising for it! Or he doesn’t want to party all the time any more and you still do. There are so many ways this can happen, and remember, unless there’s an actual literal betrayal, the love you have for each other still exists at some level, so go off, do your own thing. Sometimes the friendship returns after a break, which yay! Best case scenario! And sometimes that’s it, it’s done. You both had a nice time.

Obviously it’s hard. We wouldn’t be human if these things weren’t soul destroying when they were actually happening. But then you get to take all your little thoughts on friendship and sort them out and be like that one Bible verse which got turned into a song.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;  

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;  

a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;  

a time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate;

a time for war, and a time for peace.

Some notes on craft

“Some notes on craft” says the little note I left to myself in this newsletter, which I suppose means I wanted to talk to you about writing my book which is the Biggest Event in my life right now.

It’s a crime novel as some of you know. I finished the first draft in 2019, sat on it for a bit, and then 2020 happened and I wrote my bad-marriage claustrophobia lockdown novel (Soft Animal, out in March) and then I started to move to Berlin and I thought, well, may as well look at this crime novel again, and I did and it was awful so I decided to rewrite it. (Okay not awful, I’m being hyperbolic, but it wasn’t what I wanted it to be.) See, the best part of any book is right before you begin to write it, it’s this glorious thing in your head, a masterpiece, the best thing you’ve ever written, the best thing anyone’s ever written. And then you begin the process of moving it from your brain to the page, and that ephemeral beautiful fever dream of a book just pops like a bubble. It’s never exactly as you picture it, and new writers, beware, it’s so easy to give up at this point, but I always tell myself that the day I write a perfect book, no mistakes, nothing I wish was slightly different, is the day I will retire. You’ve got to settle for I did the best work I could. Writing is a lot of settling.

With all the homelessness of this year, I never actually got into my book for a concerted period of time. I kept having new ideas which I added but this time in Bangkok is the first time in ages I’ve had proper time to spend with my fiction. My writing muscles are a bit rusty (not completely in disuse thanks to this newsletter) but it’s coming together. What I realised was that I had these two threads of story running through the book. One was the conventional murder mystery-suspect-detective police procedural, and the other was a rambling narrative which looped through the book, sometimes having nothing to do with the murder at all, just stories about Delhi and Delhi people. I picked the ramble. The long way round. The novel has already swelled by 20,000 words and I’m only halfway through. I started jokingly calling it my magnum opus, but sometimes I look at it and maybe it is?

Luckily, because I already had a first draft, I know who did it and I know why. I’m just taking my time getting there. Literary murder mysteries have always been my thing, where you get into the psychology of people not just the thrill of the puzzle. I love writing about people, so I’m having a good time with this one.

Just write it all down and you can delete it later.

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The party just keeps going with these amazing links!

on those novels that just describe actions with nothing else behind them.

on competing with other authors and the signing line.

So over Harry and Meghan so this review of their new Netflix doc made me laugh.

A fab article by Ellen Barry in NYT about a man who couldn’t stop lying.

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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This is just a template email, dear kittens, so don’t get too excited. I’ll send you out another PROPER letter soon. I’ve been v busy in Bangkok with book writing etc, and it’s also my BIRTHDAY on Tuesday (which I have to mention, since I’m a very birthday-y person, but I have at least two letter ideas to send out in December alone.)

Today I’m announcing a brand new addition to my Substack publication: The Internet: Personified subscriber chat.

Thanks for reading The Internet: Personified ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a conversation space in the Substack app that I set up exclusively for my subscribers — kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion. (I’ve already started with one thread, so come and have a look. We’re discussing—well, right now it’s just me but I hope you’ll join in—what we’re currently reading.)

To join our chat, you’ll need to download the Substack app, now available for both iOS and Android. Chats are sent via the app, not email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. (yes this part isn’t great, who needs another app? but i tried it out for you and it’s quite nice. much better than just endlessly looking at Instagram or something when you’re commuting.)

How to get started

Download the app by clicking this link or the button below. Substack Chat is now available on both iOS and Android.

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Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

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The Internet Personified: Things I Really Like This Month

Glorious marigolds,

I thought for about five seconds last week that I should maybe make an OFFSET of this newsletter where I send you RECOMMENDATIONS ONCE A WEEK and maybe that could be a SUBSCRIBER TIER THING! But then I realised it was a foolish idea for many reasons: 1) would I have enough recs to give you week after week? 2) how many people realistically would be into that sort of thing? And “into” in the sense of “let me give you some money for this,” and 3) does anyone even CARE about my recommendations? so I said nah, and fuck it, and that’s how ideas die in this house.

But I still had a list of things I enjoyed both experiencing and purchasing, so that’s how this edition came to be. Sometimes recommendation newsletters fill me with doom and gloom, all those people buying all those useless things until we collapse under the weight of it all, so I’m only suggesting a few purchases which are in the category of “if you need a new one of X, this is what I’ve replaced mine with.”

Shall we jump in? Ooh I love giving unsolicited advice! It’s SO GREAT. Here, have these things! TAKE MY WORD FOR IT!

A new backpack: I started using a backpack not that long ago, I think 2017-ish? I bought a basic one off Amazon, 50 litres, which means, I guess, you can stuff 50 one litre bottles in there, but since I am an inefficient packer, I could get maybe ten items of clothing in the same space. But I liked that I didn’t have to wheel something around or carry a suitcase up flights of stairs. I love my new strolley suitcase (also bought earlier this year) but that is very specifically for shorter trips or trips where I’ll be staying in one place, say. I took it to London with me, and we did really well, me and my suitcase, although I also took K and his much larger bag to London as well so I had back up. The problem was London with its changeable weather, I had to pack for two eventualities, so I wished I had something slightly more capacious.

Anyway, my old backpack sort of started falling apart, it was quite cheap, and the straps broke off, nothing I couldn’t fix, of course, but by this time, I had used her enough (Elvira, her name is Elvira, and sometimes because of the nonsense German words on her label—sometimes Indian manufacturors like to slap German words on things because of, I don’t know, quality assurance?—her nonsense German words read “da tasche” which is SO CLOSE. “Tasche” means “bag” but “da” means nothing at all, anyway, because of this, I call her also Natasha Da Tasche, and those of you who know that our cat’s full name is actually Olga da Polga will know of my previous love of this particular nobiliary particle) as I was saying, I had used her enough to know what I didn’t like about this particular bag design. Elvira was built specifically for camping, which means she’s pretty waterproof and has a reach in design, so you open the top and sort of rummage around till you find what you want. This is not very useful for your urban backpacker, such as I, who found herself unpacking and repacking every few days whilst on this long around India trip recently. What I wanted was a better bag, one that organised stuff, one that had a laptop compartment so that when I’m taking it along as cabin baggage I don’t have to take two things, and one that held a few more things. I checked Decathlon, as a sports speciality shop (I like their reasonable sports equipment: bought very nice ski pants and jacket here when I first went skiing and these are still useful and flattering city pants that I sometimes wear just to walk around Berlin for instance, or one very cold winter, to wear inside our house in Delhi), I figured they’d have a bit more range and quality assurance than Amazon. Immediately, I found this one, while I was leaning towards the 70 litre one, I picked this because a) I sometimes need to travel cabin baggage only and b) if you buy a big bag, you’re tempted to load it fully, and I am only 5’2” tall and my curves are strictly for show, not for hefting more than my body weight. (If you can manage 70, it’s weirdly cheaper than the 50l version.)

What I like about it is that it has SO MANY POCKETS so my toiletries and shoes can go into separate compartments from the main clothes bit, it has a detachable shoulder bag for city walks once you dump your bag at your hotel and it opens like a clamshell which means you can see all your things at once and don’t have to pull out everything in search of one thing. Other cool things: a side zip for passport and phone, a laptop sleeve at the back and a waterproof cover (heavy, so ditch this if you’re not checking in your bag) to tuck away the straps when you’re checking it in so the straps don’t break in transit. This is coming with me to Bangkok, Elvira has been retired for Freja Roopwati Forclaz.

I joined these two subreddits called r/onebag and even better r/heronebag which is the same philosophy, except for women, who obviously need to pack and take different things than men. I’m a fan of minimalist packing, but I’m also a fan of fashion, so it’s hard sometimes to make those two the same, but I’m working on it! Nothing as liberating as travelling light, I can tell you. (And also once you switch to a menstrual cup, you’re packing fewer things, so give it a go. I also swear by these washable panty liners which I’ve had for about seven or eight years, use them on your light days, chuck in the machine and they’re not stained or torn at all, just a little grey from so many years of use.)

A new lipstick: Perhaps you’ve heard of the Lipstick Index? Apparently lipstick sales go up during recessions, because women substitute lipsticks for more expensive things. A little indulgence. Anyway, the Lipstick Index is soaring right now, and I have added myself to the long list of numbers with a new crayon from Maybelline which I bought on a whim and have grown to LOVE. (Out of stock most places so I have to link to Amazon here, see if you can find it at your local make up store though.) Because of my skin tone, I find wine or maroon reds suit me the most (also very into MAC Diva) and this one is gorgeous. Does it stay on? AND HOW. Have to use large amounts of coconut oil to shift it, and this after dinner parties and glasses of wine and salt rimmed margaritas and wearing a mask and smoking and so on and so forth.

Social smoking: Smoking is back, which is not surprising considering the end times we live in plus how generally nihilistic we’ve all gotten thanks to people dying by the thousand, so why not start socially again? It makes you look cool and everyone knows the best part of a party is outside on the balcony with everyone else trying to kill themselves. Which reminds me: there’s apparently a new rolling tobacco brand launched in Goa called Fuko which a lot of hipsters in Goa swear by and some hipsters in Delhi as well.

Ignoring the AQI: Speaking of trying to kill yourself, I’ve been venturing out more than before into this terrible air, and while my head is full of snot every morning, I’m having a nice time. Look, the politicians are never going to fix Delhi’s air problem, like, it’s going to be a good twenty or thirty years before that happens and are you going to stay at home every year during the nicest weather we have because you may as well live while you’re young (and die ten years before you normally would but no one cares about the future). So I’ve stopped even looking at the bad pollution headlines because I already have a sinus headache, why add a stress migraine to the whole thing?

Sunday book market: One of the Ignoring AQI activities I did was go to the Daryagunj Sunday Book Market. It’s kind of tradition for me and my mum, we used to go all the time when I was a child (at the time we lived in Nizamuddin and I remember we took a tonga ride home, this is pre-flyover, pre-thinking about animal rights, so when we got home, I was delighted to be able to feed the poor broken down horse an apple) and several times as a grown up too. I was jonesing for some good second hand books, so we made a trip for the first time to the new location which is at a big ground called Mahila Haat. Which means you walk in a circle from stall to stall, all very nice, but I think it’s sort of lost the essence of Daryagunj. It used to be down one long road, you checked out the pavements and then you left when you were tired, but this arrangement means you feel obliged to look at every single shop. I don’t know, I liked how natural it felt, books and people and random passersby just trying to get through. But still an incredible arrangement of books, fulllllll of people, mostly students browsing, and we had a great time. After which we went to Karim’s, another tradition, and got seekh kebabs and mutton korma and pillowy soft rotis. Worth it! Do it before the weather gets worse. (We also went to Sarojini Nagar later in the week where all the American and UK export labels have been replaced by Korean ones.)

A lovely beach resort: I wanted to tell you guys all about the nicest beach resort we stayed at while in Goa this time. It’s called Duck N Chill, and it literally had rooms ON THE BEACH, which meant we opened our door and ta-dah, there’s the sea. We’d never actually spent so much time in South Goa before (Duck n Chill is in Agonda) and it was a lovely surprise. Of course, you need to like your beach resort, because unlike the North, there’s nowhere else to go once you’re there. This place was reasonably priced with excellent service, pretty decent food and made me a fan of daiquiris for life. The rooms are basic but large, comfy bed, good bathroom, romantic mosquito net. No AC, but the sea breeze kept it cool enough by day and by night we were quite chilly. You need to get one of the rooms on the beach though, the others are not so nice.

Looking pleased because I’ve just been for a swim. Also if you zoom in, you can admire my shorts: camo print with Indian embroidery patchwork. This is on the balcony of our room.

Mrs Harris Goes To Paris: A fun movie I went to watch with my mum and K. A sweet cleaning lady with a good heart has an adventure in Paris where she’s gone to buy herself a dress from Dior. Like, not earth shattering cinema or anything, but a nice feel good movie and fun to watch all the clothes on the big screen. I have no doubt it’ll come to a streaming service soon, so you can wait also. I liked being At The Movies though.

A new yoga mat: I needed a new mat, because I’m about to turn 41 in exactly 29 days, and one of my goals for my forties was to just be slightly less sedentary. (My biggest goal was to live abroad in this decade, which I’m doing so now I’m checking off the rest of the list.) I wanted one that folded up so I could pack it to take to Bangkok with me (and beyond) so I got this one, currently on sale for 55% off. It has good reviews, soft enough to not hurt my knees too much and has a bunch of yoga poses printed on it if you need inspiration. (I’ve been using the Down Dog app which is free and has this one set of yoga poses called Yin Yoga which is basically stretches and meditation and which works out all the kinks from my back like magic.) Moving to a European city means I walk a lot, so at least I move my body twice a week, but I also wanted to supplement it with something at home, just so I stay flexible and bits of me don’t start like suddenly falling off.

Reading books set in the place you’re going: HUGE fan of this practice, and since we’ll be in Bangkok for 45 days, which is a long time (and for which you need an actual visa not a landing visa which I normally get because that’s only valid for 15 days. So it was me and the travel agents at the VFS Thailand counter. Thailand has some funny visa requirements: hotel bookings and flight details IN COLOUR. Your bank statement, but the last transaction has to be from like, yesterday. K does not need a visa because he is German and everyone likes the Germans.)

So I bought three books, and the weird thing is two of those three books are by non-Thai authors. I looked, and apparently a lot of Thai language books just don’t have English translations or there aren’t that many Thai authors writing in English. Here’s what I bought though, and will be taking with me:

Bangkok Wakes To Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad which is very Cloud Atlas-y from what I can tell, lots of different stories and then they come together in a giant loop.

Bangkok 8 by John Burdett: Apparently a very well known thriller set in Bangkok? Backpackers carry this book along for atmosphere. Featuring a Thai cop written by a farang. (Thai for foreigner, our “firang.”)

Bangkok Days by Lawrence Osborne: Non-fiction travellogue about the city by a writer who wanders and writes about the places he washes up in, which is really the ideal life, and one I’ll be living, but I won’t be a white man, so there’s that.

I’ve already read the BEST BOOK about Thailand earlier this year, and in fact, one of the best books I’ve read all year which is Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski and so I’m super jealous that K gets to read it for the first time while in Thailand, but it can’t be helped. Maybe I’ll re-read it. (My best book newsletter usually goes out in late December.)

The Americans: My mum and I are watching this spy drama set in the 80s, and we’re really into it. It’s unlikely mother-daughter viewing, but somehow it really works. The action, the small domesticities. I’m so into it I’m carrying Crime and Punishment to read on my retreat, just for a little more old timey Russian flavour. Current Russia is a shitshow, but olden times (including when I was an infant) was sort of fascinating.

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I think I’ve run out of steam! Oh well, probably for the best, how many more things can I throw at you? Anyway, your usual reminder that if you liked this post or any of my others, please buy me a coffee! Your tips are encouragement!

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Do I have links for you after all those recommendations? HELL YES.

The mysterious case of Swamp Boy—the ending will shock you. (Now This)

I wrote a piece about Delhi’s Diwali parties which is funny, I think. (Conde Nast Traveller)

I just had my first Negroni sbagliato in Goa so I was interested in the origins of this drink. (Slate)

This is a really scary story with no conclusive ending about a woman who was stalked for EIGHT YEARS. (And how the police treat women who are being stalked.) (Esquire)

And now Twitter is dying, behold the Tweet Museum!

Last issue’s most clicked link was the origin story of Weleda skin food. (NYT)

Thank you for reading The Internet: Personified . This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Phew! I am WORN OUT. 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.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. (Plus my book recommendation Instagram!)

Forward to your friends if you liked this and to your favourite lipstick shade being out of stock FOREVER if you didn’t.

Also, write back to me! I love to hear from you.

The Internet Personified: Where everybody knows your name

My celestial clams,

Hello from Pollution Season in Delhi! The skies are grey, the dust is thick and the newspapers are full of politicians blaming each other. *sings* It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

And I’m still here and not back in Berlin so you might have to listen to me complain about it all over again. (Before we romanticise Berlin: right now the weather is a balmy 6 degrees with a high of 13, and wet weather lies ahead this week which also means grey skies and general gloom and doom.) I have applied for my long-term national visa at fucking last, but am told that it could take a minimum of three months, so expect me to hang around this side of the world for a bit while I wait and twiddle my thumbs.

I was at Toto’s just last week. Yes, that Toto’s, Toto’s Garage Bar, Toto’s in Pali Naka, Bandra West. Toto’s where there used to be a really good pirated DVD stall just opposite (piracy is bad, but we had no streaming services back then, and he sold all these great movies that weren’t being released in India.) Down the road, an Indigo Deli, is Indigo still a thing? Remember when you walked down the road in Kala Ghoda, and someone was treating you to a meal, and there was lobster risotto on the menu which you didn’t order because you didn’t like shellfish? Or was no one treating you but asked you to meet them there anyway, and that explains the vague sinking feeling you have when you think about it, all of Bombay a city laid over a trapdoor that holds your deepest financial insecurities?

I’ve written about Bombay nostalgia before in this essay that periodically crops up and gets shared a lot every couple of years. That still holds true. I do miss Bombay from 2007, Bombay when I was young and selfish and the city was full of secrets waiting for me to discover. Toto’s was part of that era, it wasn’t mine in the way that Zenzi was. (A common fallacy: that Toto’s was somehow a dive bar, it never was. Prices were only slightly cheaper than Zenzi, even though it had a dive bar vibe.)

Toto’s is smaller than it used to be, and there’s no indoor smoking any more (you know how old you are by how many bars have turned non-smoking in your absence) and the tandoori pork sausages, a snack I’ve lain awake at night dreaming of, were less good than I remembered, but the memorabilia was the same, license plates on the wall, a window AC unit which was now just for show as a fancy new split did all the work, and a small car hanging over the bar. I took a cropped photo of two license plates against the chain link wire fence and sent them to an old Bombay friend now living in Berlin. “Guess where I am?” the message said and he replied with a smiley face, “Toto’s.”

We haven’t spoken in months, this old friend and me, but somehow I was conjuring up an old image of us, crowded around a small table, him with his two flatmates, me with two other friends, all of us one big gang for a bit. I’ve lost touch with practically everyone else around that table who I used to see so often, and one of the flatmates, who started out as my friend originally, my friend who I introduced to everyone else and who swiftly became their friend in a way that made me want to—I don’t know—remind everyone where that origin story had started, even though everyone knew and they were all better friends with each other, but you still feel a little proprietary tug, no, when you bring people together and they don’t acknowledge your part in it? Don’t tell me it’s only me. Anyway, he died. That was the end of that previous sentence, a sad ending, he was too young to die, and we had already lost touch ages ago at this point so news of his death reached me much later and after he’d already been out of this world for some time.

Toto’s was full of my ghosts, not real ghosts though, just like vivid echoes of the past, like when you look at a really brightly coloured image and it burns into your retina so you can see it even when you close your eyes. I thought I could see myself singing along to one of the old songs at a corner table, always amongst a crowd, it wasn’t the kind of place you went on a date or with someone you wanted to have deep long chats with. It was never really my local, I didn’t go there as often as my friends did, so whenever I did go, it was to join someone else. My friend, the one in Berlin, the one I texted, had a drink unofficially named after him, you didn’t see it on the menu, but you could ask the bartender for it, and if he didn’t remember, you’d remind him and he’d be like, “Oh yes, of course.” Something with half soda and half Limca. Bacardi? I don’t remember, it wasn’t for me.

In Berlin, I have a small joke when I take people to my favourite bars. “This is one of my locals,” I say, “Except they don’t know it.” I have three—living in a lively neighbourhood, I’m spoilt for choice, but my most favourite one is on a quiet street, no busy main roads to cross. It’s named after a Jules Verne character, it’s not the cheapest place on my list, but it’s cozy and the chairs are comfortable, and I don’t know—it has an atmosphere that’s lacking in so many places no matter how hard they try. You can’t buy a vibe, yes, Social, I’m talking to you. I’m not naming this place, it’s too personal, but if you’re in Berlin, I’m happy to meet you for a drink there. (After February 2023 that is, BIG SIGH.) It’s also the place we had our farewell drinks at the first time we left Berlin to go back to India (me, that is, this last summer) and I’m pretty sure the entire table caught COVID from someone there.

My second favourite bar is also not in the super trendy area a ten minute walk from our house, but it’s adjacent. This one I can tell you the name of: Hermann Schulz. It’s very cute, and they let you sit down with a coffee and a laptop all day inside. Nice cake, nice alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, and at the end of summer, they give you blankets if you’re sitting outside. The second last time I was there, I was introducing three women I knew to each other. My neighbour brought along her chihuahua puppy, who sat sweetly on her lap for the whole evening. The last time was with another new friend, who had discovered the place when she was cat-sitting for us. The bartenders still don’t recognise us though.

And sometimes when I’m taking guests through Boxhagner Platz, Berlin’s Hauz Khas Village, I guess, Berlin’s Bandra, we call it Boxi, I’ll take them to Dachkammer. The word “kammer” means “chamber” and the bar is on Simon Dach Strasse, named after an old fashioned German poet, but the bar is nothing like a poet’s vision, it’s dingy and loud and trendy, but the outside in the summer is very nice and the drinks are cheap. None of the Berlin bars serve food, so you always have to eat before 10 pm when the restaurants close, if you remember, and I’ve taken to eating like the Germans: dinner at 6.30 pm followed by drinks after, because the bars never close unless it’s a Monday.

I’ve been thinking about locals ever since I met Ameya in Bangalore last month. Ameya finds locals wherever she goes, she just moved to Bangalore and already has a neighbourhood bar, a very cute place I am forbidden to tell you about. It has a rooftop and nice snacks and drinks. Another was a smaller Mangalorean hole-in-the-wall with a smoking section built in to the restaurant, in the centre. At both places, the waiters knew her, and she waved to one or two before she sat down. I’ve never had a wave-y situation with a waiter or a bartender, in fact, every time I sit down at a restaurant I think I’ve visited very often, they explain the menu to me all over again. Maybe it’s just my face—I don’t think I’ve ever been a very local person. I’m always slightly embarrassed if the waiters know who I am, as if they’re saying “don’t you have any place else to go?” and while I envied Ameya the nice familiarity of having people greet you as you go in, I’ve always been the kind of person who can’t wait for the waiter to leave when he comes round to see how your food is, and invariably you have to answer mid-chew. I’m not much for banter—in Bandra, we went to see a late night comedy show and Mansha insisted we sit up front so the comedians could make us part of their act, but while K got into it (and got some of the best laughs all evening), I just couldn’t. I smiled weakly when she called me “chasme waali ma’am” and asked me to stop making eye contact with her, but really, where else was I supposed to look? I tried to look at her knees instead, but she was wearing shorts so I was afraid she’d think I was ogling her or something. High pressure banter situations are not for me. (Anyway, she wasn’t very funny. A bit more cruel than funny, not with my hey speccy remark, I like my glasses, but she called one guy “forever alone” or “stalker” and asked K if he was white or if he had vitiligo which…. um. Not very funny or appropriate for crowd work where you’re supposed to get the audience all loved up and amused.)

In London, my cousin had a local. K went out one evening with old friends and she took me to her favourite bar down the road. It looked fancy and I was prepared for an expensive night out, but because she went there so much and because they loved her, they comped our drinks all evening, even bringing her free cocktails and our total bill at the end of it was even cheaper than it would’ve been in Delhi, so hurrah for locals, all in all, I’d say, and I wish I had one too, well, had one that they’d notice I went there a lot but I think you need to be a Local Bar Kind of Person. Also I’m a lightweight, and there’s a plateau of drinking I reach pretty early in the night when the world ceases to be fun and I want to go to bed so I stop talking to people. Social wall I think they call it. Abruptly running out of battery like an old cellphone.

All great television and detective novels have a local spot to revolve around. This newsletter takes its title from Cheers, which I’ve never seen but know enough about to quote the credit song to you. There’s How I Met Your Mother, there’s smoky bars where cops drink after hours in all those American TV shows, there’s Kinsley Milhone from Sue Grafton’s books at a grouchy Hungarian woman’s dive, drinking cheap sour white wine, there’s Alicia Florrick in the bar underneath her law firm’s offices, putting away tequila like she doesn’t have to wake up clear headed the next day. I’m only thinking of American examples, but didn’t all those old PG Wodehouses begin with someone or the other at their club, drinking?

No, I don’t think I’ll ever be a Regular. I am fickle. I like to shop around, often going to far away neighbourhoods to see what they’ve got going on. My own “local” down the road in Berlin has seen me three times in three months. That’s hardly enough time for anyone to recognise you. I might’ve had a greater shot of having a Personal Favourite in Delhi but the bars here don’t really appeal to me much. Very pretty some of them, but I’m bored of gin, and never drink Old Fashioneds (the two main cocktails at Delhi bars), and they’re so expensive that I much prefer drinking at someone’s house, at least my friends remember what I’d like to drink and greet me in familiar loving tones.

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Some personal news since I couldn’t find a place to jam it in in the newsletter. Because the visa waits are taking so long, I’m actually not just sitting here in Delhi, we’re both taking a month in Bangkok for our writing projects. I’m finally going to finish rewriting a book I’ve been fiddling with since 2019. Have rented a cute small Airbnb and I’m very much looking forward to it. Self imposed writing retreat ahoy!

LINKS! (AND I FINALLY MET SOMEONE WHO SAID THEY LIKED THE LINKS BEST BECAUSE THERE WAS SO MUCH ON THE INTERNET TO READ AND THIS MADE IT EASIER FOR THEM, SO NOW THIS SECTION IS ENDORSED LINKS)

The Gone Girl-themed cruise sounds nuts. (Slate)

Beautiful piece by a veteran author on stopping writing. (Griffith Review)

The rise of far right Hindu nationalism… in Australia. (The Saturday Paper)

Oldie, but I just came across it: being in the queue to view Queen Elizabeth’s body. (GQ)

The story behind Germany’s cult favourite skin cream. (New York Times)

Last week’s most read story was this one about Colleen Hoover’s meteoric rise to fame.

Goodbye! I’ll write to you again 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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The Internet Personified: Excuse me, do you have change for the climate?

My beautiful barn owls,

Now that I’m the Grand Old Age that I am (after September 13, I start saying “almost the next year’s age” as opposed to “just turned..” but I’m struggling with that this year, not because I’m scared of ageing, because eh, why be scared of the inevitable, but because I guess I still haven’t fully wrapped my head around being forty. In my head I’m somewhere between twenty nine and thirty two, all others ages are a complete surprise) I realise I have a few things that I care about. I mean Big Picture Things, your ethics, your “would I save this from a burning building but make it socialism” kind of thing.

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IN WHICH I COME TO THE REALISATION (AGAIN) THAT SLOW TRAVEL IS MY FAVOURITE KIND OF TRAVEL

I’m currently travelling around India, I know you know this if you follow me on Instagram but I also know some of you only read this newsletter so if you’re in Group One, scroll down past this recap and if you’re in Group Two, hi! K and I are Making the Long Wait for the Visa process fun by doing what we’ve always wanted to do and taking trains across South India, a big loop all the way back to Delhi.

We did this once before, as absolute babies, in the year 2014, and because we were such absolute babies (well, okay, 32, but I felt so old and wise then!) we booked trains across North India for deep December, the time when fog is at its worst, and all the trains were delayed and it was SO COLD, and we were in various small towns just waiting for our train to finally roll in and we spent Christmas Eve in the Varanasi waiting room and memorably, we shared a compartment on one of these trains with a family with about a thousand children, a man who just looked out of the window was the father, a woman with a baby in arms and the rest scattered around her body was the mother, and a shifting group of small girls, all under five from what I could tell, made up the rest of the family. The mother took the older children and the baby to the bathroom, the father stared out of the window, the middle child squatted in the middle of the compartment and pooped on the floor. He didn’t even notice, I had to point it out, so he shuffled off, retrieved his wife and she bent and cleaned it up but not before I was so scarred by this experience I said, “Never again!” to K, as if all train journeys were inevitably someone pooping on the floor.

But, I don’t know. My love for being on the road is as great as my love for being at home, curled up on my sofa, with a book and a cat. (If you believe in astrology, which it seems like everyone does these days, you’ll be interested to know that I am a Sagittarius sun with a Cancer moon. The call to the open road is very typical of Sagittarians, I’m told, and the need to nest and home make is equally true of Cancerians…. until you start to nitpick and figure out that your partner, a Cancer sun, has almost no Cancerian characteristics, so astrology is not really something you should put your entire identity into, even though it’s fun, right? It’s super fun.) (I know many friends read this who do believe fully in astrology, and no offence, you guys, you do you, as long as it makes sense to you, who am I to say what should resonate and what shouldn’t?) And the more I want to wander, the more I think about the world and how it’s going to end in dust and flames and massive weather events, because that’s the news I’m consuming, and I can’t stop thinking, “Oh this might be the last time I do this.” Shit happens. War. Famine. Pestilence. And all those things the Bible warned you about. I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but I’m actually quite relieved we don’t have children because I feel somewhat absolved? Like, it’s easier for me to care less because I have no stakes beyond my own lifetime. After a while of being served news about how bad everything else, how we’re all going to die horrible lingering deaths someday (I was going to say not our generation, but what was COVID if not hubris that humans could do everything with zero consequences?) you start to think of flights not as ways to get from A to B but also leaking massive amounts of gas and exhaust fumes into the air, your carbon footprint getting heavier and heavier each time you take one. Flying is just so damn convenient though. There’s the flip side. I mean, from Delhi to Bangalore, we flew, because it would have been a 26 hour journey and I wanted more time in Bangalore, not just a train in and a train out. I wish I felt stronger about things. I haven’t even given up meat, so this is not a lecture. We’re fucked, so make good choices, I guess?

All this blargh blargh Gloom ‘n’ Doom to explain why we’re taking trains:

Guilt about our carbon footprints, dashing back and forth between Berlin and Delhi constantly.

Slow luxurious travel: a bed? a blanket? food brought to your seat? an endless baggage allowance and no security lines? An easy-to-get-to departure terminal where you can literally reach ten minutes before your train leaves? I’m just amazed more of us aren’t doing this.

We had the time and better than the time, we made this plan in August so we booked our tickets in September, once we decided the routes which meant confirmed tickets (cheaper than flying, did I mention?) on AC two tier/chair car and tomorrow, our anniversary, a first class coupe overnight to ourselves from Kochi to Goa.

Our train from Bangalore to Kochi (Kanyakumari Express which goes all the way down the tip of the country, where I’m told you can see the sunset and the moonrise together, which sounds kind of magic and next time I’m totally scheduling a trip) was lovely. We got the side berths, a curtain to pull for privacy, a pretty good reading light fixed into the wall and clean sheets and blankets which I’d been a little worried they wouldn’t give post pandemic. The food was not as good as it usually is on this stretch, a somewhat boring chicken biryani from Bangalore for dinner, and since they were picking up breakfast trays in Kochi, we only got to eat the one thing.

Next, we take the Duronto Express from Kochi to Madgaon, chill in Goa for about ten days and then take the Mandovi Express, a day train, through the Western Ghats to Mumbai. This route is frequently on the “best Indian rail journeys” lists, and it is gorgeous, I know, because we’ve done it once before, but we were younger so we took a regular class, no seat reservations, hard seats, but man, I’m pushing 41, I need cushioning for my butt if I’m going to be sitting on it for twelve hours. After which, we spend a few nights in Bombay with beloved old friends, and then catch the trusty Rajdhani back to Delhi, a route I’ve taken so many times, I think I know it by heart. When K and I were first dating, and long distance, I took a bunch of trains to Bombay to see him every now and then (the worst of which was the Garib Rath, please, for the love of god, never take it, you’re sitting up overnight and they never turn off the very bright fluorescent lighting). Trains are so great in India, a little daunting if you don’t like people or smells or people-y smells, but if you try and push that from your mind (it’s me, I’m talking about myself and how my years living in a cocoon have spoilt me for any kind of people-in-my-bubble experience, so now I have to figuratively slap myself and say, “Meenakshi, stop being so fucking precious” because, friends, you cannot be a writer unless you’re willing to take it all in, so learn from me, and engage with the world, smells and all, before you too are suddenly having harsh conversations with yourself in the middle of the night) (WHERE does it END, one minute you’re packing sunblock, the next thing it’s five years later and you can’t travel without a whole suitcase full of skin care and your own pillow, it’s bad enough that my hair products mean I have to check in my bag whenever I travel by plane. And that I have to make sure to carry some kind of coffee maker with me when I travel outside of coffee drinking places. This time I bought a cute little steel pour-over machine which is light and practical and has a washable filter, so no need for paper!)

PAUL THEROUX IS KINDA RACIST THOUGH

I bought The Great Railway Bazaar at Blossom’s in Bangalore (still India’s best second hand bookshop!) and posted about it on my bookstagram account with great excitement, except after I posted I got to the India bits, and eek. Ook. I had to read most of it with a restraining hand on my own shoulder, petting when it got too rough (“there there, it was the 70s, he thought he was only writing for white people who would nod thoughtfully”). It’s still a greatly inspirational book for anyone who wants to do a super long rail journey (his goes from Paris, through Asia, and ends in the former USSR) but it’s mostly Paul rolling his eyes at his fellow passengers. The Indians he meets are particularly dehumanised, so read at your own risk. I liked when he talked about sitting in his cabin, trying to read and trying to write, but getting lost in the journey itself, so he didn’t know his days from his nights and the landscape outside became just like a fever dream.

WILL YOU REALLY WEAR IT

Here’s what I’ve started doing more of: not buying clothes online or off fast fashion retailers. Second hand, export surplus (factory discards or donated), or having my tailor make something with fabric I’ve bought (not this time because he takes ages and time is limited, plus I’m returning to full winter, so all my fashion soon will just be Uniqlo, which is fast fashion, so I contradict myself while I wear my Heattech leggings and undershirt and down jacket five days in a row). Another thing: using my own cupboard as a shop, rotating clothes so I pull out one batch for summer 2022, and then I’ll retire them and use another batch for summer 2023, alternating so it always feels fresh. It’s also nice because I have no cupboard space, so I store the clothes I’m not using in a bag in the basement.

Here’s something I know just from being alive for almost 41 years: trends are dumb. Gen Z, age 17, are wearing the same clothes I wore, age 17, your Avril Lavigne hair, your panda eye make up, tank tops and baggy jeans. Hold on to something long enough and it will come back, that is, assuming you still fit after years of sedentary living. That’s why I often size up when I’m shopping, lots of room to “grow.” Don’t skimp on shoes or underwear, you only need one convenient bag (she says buying all the bags), events give away free cool tote bags all the time, no one will remember you wore the same dress the last time you met them unless it’s a particularly eye-catching pattern, and then it’s your dress, your pattern, so that’s cool too.

I have to say though. I have friends who are real climate activists, not just doing stuff when it’s convenient and skipping over the hard parts. It’s a tough life, realising that most of your soft comforts come from industries that are actively killing this beautiful world we live on. So if I’m sounding like I’m giving you a lecture, it’s because I’m giving myself a lecture too. These things are important to me, but how much is anything important to me? Make a small change or don’t, we’re all going to die eventually anyway, she says morbidly, but also with a certain amount of relief. The one cool thing about environmentalism, if you want my extremely cynical take, is that it’s really good for bragging rights on the internet. Post about your menstrual cup or your bamboo toothbrush, ignore the AC you leave on all night every night, you’ll still get loads of likes. You can posture on the internet, and no one realises you’re standing on a podium made entirely out of plastic bags.

This time in Kerala, I was very keen to go to Thekkady, a place I remember from the 80s, when I used to live here. I remember seeing lots of elephants on a boat ride and getting leeches stuck to my bare legs, and generally wildlife coming out of my ears. It was great. Thekkady is still green and lovely, but it is three decades later, and there are more people and fewer animals, and the boat ride revealed nothing, neither did my walk (though the leeches still swarmed, but now they’ve invented something called leech socks which go over your regular socks and your pants and tie up at the knee) and I suddenly realised that maybe I’d never see elephants in the wild again. Maybe that part of my life is just… over.

I sound sad, but I’m more resigned than anything else. I had a really good time in the 80s and 90s and you can’t expect the party to go on forever. They’re called non-renewable resources, you know. I feel a little sorry for kids today, but eh, they have the internet, they’ll be fine.

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Phew, that was a lot of ranting at you, poor reader. I’ll make it up to you, my links are really really good this week, so here, please read some good stories that are not mine. If you hit a paywall, disable javascript in your browser or use 12ft.io:

Disabled people create lifehacks to be able to live independent full lives, which I think is very cool. (The Baffler)

The curious afterlife of a brain trauma survivor—also cool. (Wired)

Excellent article (and related to my newsletter theme!) about landslides and construction and MURRDERRRR in the hills. (Fifty Two)

Oooh I love E Nesbit and therefore profiles about E Nesbit. (The New Yorker)

Colleen Hoover, the author, is doing so amazingly well that publishers are baffled, which is not really flattering for CoHo, but she’s baffled too. (New York Times)

Inside the Metaverse and the future of what online life is going to look like if Facebook gets its way. (NYT)

Sorry, but I had to: astrology and the death of personality. (Maybe Baby)

LOVED this story about Berghain which is about a ten minute walk from our flat, and might be sadly closing soon before I ever go in. (The White Review)

The article that got the most clicks last time was this one about Harry Potter fan fiction. (Slate)

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Have a great week!

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.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. (Plus my book recommendation Instagram!)

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Forward to your friends if you liked this and to people who will, no doubt, spend all of next week bursting firecrackers and then complain about the air quality if you didn’t.

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The Internet Personified: Paging all passengers

Greetings my green bananas,

I was going to draw this newsletter for you, a very ambitious project, but I’ve fallen out of practise with my Wacom, so I’ll need to do a few practice runs before I get down to it.

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I am back from one trip and about to leave for India in a week, so this is a Very Brief Berlin Interlude, which was made even briefer by the fact that I had an editing deadline, and had to finish off all my Soft Animal edits before I returned to India. It’s coming together! I’ve been looking at some cover designs, and everything looks so GORGEOUS, I can’t wait to share the final version with you. It’s only out in March, so you might be surprised by all the advance work we’ve got to do, but these things have a six month lead in time, so everything basically has to be ready to go when it is actually March. Exciting though. I feel like I haven’t had a new novel out in ages so all this feels familiar, like an old house I’m returning to but also brand new, because each book has its own fate, as my mum always says, so who knows where this one will go. I’m going to need all of you to mash that pre-order link as soon as it’s up because that will rocket up my ranking on Amazon (which in India is a necessary evil) and then make my book visible to a lot more people. OK? Thank you!

Holidays are kind of weird if you think about them. You leave your flat, the most comfortable place in the entire world and for what? To stuff three weeks worth of clothes into a tiny suitcase which you then drag around with you on unfamiliar public transport, sleeping in unfamiliar beds, dealing with unfamiliar weather… it makes you wonder why anyone does it. Now, of course, we are in the year 2022, we have jets and Google maps and cheap deals and friends around the world, but why did anyone do it when tourists first started becoming a thing? I suppose if you were rich, it was a chance to be rich somewhere else, always nice for a change of scene, but the middle class didn’t actually travel much until the rise of the cheap package holiday. That’s this side of the world. Indians are roamers, in general, if it’s checking off a “top ten temples” tour or going to spend months with a cousin or an uncle in a city you don’t live in, or just, I don’t know, driving ten hours to look at one waterfall just because it’s there.

I’m now writing this from Munich airport, on my way back to Delhi for what I hope will be my final visa run of this entire protracted move to Germany. At last I have an appointment, but it’s on the second of November. However, my Schengen visa has finally finished (you can do three months at a stretch on it) so it’s not so much time I returned and more well, I guess I should get out of here. The nice thing about flying back to India, my home country, issuer of my passport, is that I never have to say much at immigration, where normally I have to bend over backwards to prove that I’m in the country legally and not planning to overstay or any of those things. With a homebound flight, it’s just stamp-and-have-a-nice-day all the way through.

I’ve been up since 4.15 this morning, and so my day has taken on a certain dreamy hazy quality. Two cups of coffee (and one connecting flight from Berlin to Munich) (and, ok, two ciggies, Munich might have a pretty basic airport compared to Frankfurt, but it does have rather nice smoking lounges) and I am awake in that jittery sort of way that you know is not true alertness, it’s just riding out the caffeine high till I crash again. Which is why, forgive me any disjointed sentences or typos.

Next to me is an Indian man on the phone, talking in Hindi. We’re on the same flight, but he doesn’t know it. He’s saying, “Make mutton and two rotis, I’ll be back late.” He also doesn’t know this is the same dinner I’ll be eating at 1.30 in the morning, just like him.

I really love airports. I was reading by the gates a little earlier, and I saw signs for Rio and for Toronto, and just for a second, allowed myself to get drawn into the magic of it all, look at all these (tired) people going places I’ve never been. Look at those words: Rio De Janeiro, just there, within grasping distance, the world so close and so far away all at the same time.

I’ve been thinking about accents. Specifically mine. In England, the nice thing was that everything was in my first language, which made things ridiculously simple. Almost too simple, like you weren’t really travelling, or playing a game on easy mode instead of hard. And life should be easy when you travel, but I’m so used to being in places where there’s one life for the local language speakers and another for us tourists that this was weird. You mean I just say something how I’d always say it and everyone will understand me? I was so used to being in Germany that I asked K, “How do you say ‘extra spicy’ in English?” And then we both realised and laughed. After a few days, this was delightful though. I understood everything! EVERYTHING!

But this also meant a few notes about my accent, which really only ever has happened to me in England before. I guess it’s normal, we’re all speaking the same language so the only thing that you notice is the way I pronounce things. But all the comments were how “Anglicised” I sounded, which made me think about the way we (my friends and I) speak. It’s a flat sort of English accent, I don’t think the people commenting meant “Anglicised” per se, I think they meant a lack of an accent or at least the lack of an accent one would associate with India. It’s a standard accent for People Like Us, your (yes) privileged urban South Asian lot, flat because we learnt accentless English in school, and then, depending on your pop culture consumption, with a smattering of American or English influences. The past year in Berlin has made me slow down my speech a lot (when I get excited, I talk fast, but then people can’t understand me) so I guess you’re hearing the accent more, or the lack of it at any rate. I’m not sure, I can’t hear myself. I have a few Delhi peculiarities specific to my accent, for eg: emphasising the second last word in a question (“are you coming tomorrow?”), elongating words (“noooo ya”) or the odd way of expressing enthusiasm with your words but not with your tone: “oh, you’re kidding. that’s insane.” I’d like to do a whole study on it, see how our speech patterns vary across metros, what marks a Delhi accent vs a Bombay one or how differently they speak English in Pakistan. It would be interesting.

Here’s where I’m going to toss in a random comment button and ask you to tell me about your accent: the things you can notice anyway!

Leave a comment

A tall businessman tried to cut in front of us in the security line today, but he was catching the same flight as us, so I yelled at him in English and K yelled at him in German but he ignored us and sidled into the line all the while with this little smile playing around the corners of his mouth and finally K (exasperated) said, “Are you going to a funeral?” and he said, “Yup” but he was totally lying so I was very happy when I made it to the boarding gate ahead of him. (OK, maybe he wasn’t lying, but he just looked smug and glad he was making us stand behind him in line and we were literally on the same flight so I don’t know why he thought cutting ahead of us was such a great idea.)

I actually really like queues, they’re orderly and have some reason to them but I don’t think I’d stand in one for an event (like the queen dying for instance). I don’t know why I said that, I’m lying, I don’t “really like” queues, but if there’s a situation where there’s a lot of people swarming to get into one narrow entrance, and I have to be in this situation, I prefer that we stand in line, but I get super angry, like Red Mist of Rage angry with people who queue jump. In Delhi there’s always some random older woman just casually lalalala strolling to the head of the line and everyone just lets her, but not me. I’m always, “THE LINE IS OVER HERE” which makes me one of those “the line is over here” people but you know what, in this world you eventually get put into one bracket of convention or another, so this might as well be mine.

Now that I’ve been in therapy so long (and I’m now doing it twice a week, which feels like overkill to me, but my analyst said we weren’t really moving forward with once a week sessions, and traditionally analysis is several times a week, but how much do I have to say?) I can see a common theme in this newsletter, even though I’ve broken it up into sections, which is why I’m in analysis in the first place: to know the human mind so that I can write about it, and so I used the closest human mind I had: my own. The theme, in case you can’t see it, is belonging, and not belonging, and trespasses, and outsiders, and common ground. Soon, I will be in the country of my birth, and I will feel odd and alien there at some level and I will also feel at home like I don’t outside it, and another good thing about therapy is being able to be comfortable with two different feelings at once and not have to choose a side.

Chalo, I’m going to wrap this up because I’ve been desperate to send this for weeks and my flight is nearly boarding so if I don’t send this now I’ll have to wait another day. I’ll write to you guys much more regularly, so expect something soon. Buy me a coffee if you feel like tipping, I live, she says sweeping an arm dramatically, off your generosity.

Buy me a coffee

THE LINK SECTION WHICH ONLY 10% OF YOU READ, WHICH IS ODD, BECAUSE I PERSONALLY LOVE LINKS AND ALSO RECOMMENDING THEM

The billionaire yogi behind Modi’s rise.

What about whataboutism?

An adoptee from Sri Lanka goes in search of his birth family.

The best Harry Potter novel wasn’t written by JK Rowling.

Holy cow capitalism.

That’s my very sleepy airport update! Have a great week.

xx

m

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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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London got off to a good start. Went looking for a pub which would still serve (was midnight, unlike Berlin, this city closes early) and stumbled upon an old phone booth turned into a library. I broke the rules, you're supposed to leave a book behind if you take one but I don't HAVE a book and I wanted to reread Jane Eyre so I left clutching it. The pub was closing, alas, but I do have a book now so that's something. #london #traveldiaries

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Night walks in Berlin. Last night the Bundestag was lit up (that big dome) and as I walked past it I heard "apple bottom jeans, boots with the furrrrr" so I thought it was some new club I hadn't heard of but when I messaged my friend whose house I'd just had dinner at she said it was open house at the parliament building that evening. Next year even I will go and dance to cheesy music with the chancellor (not sure exactly what happens at an open house but I feel like this could be accurate for Berlin.) #berlinna #bundestag #alittlenightwalking #citystreets

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