Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 39

The Internet Personified: Ring ring ring

Hello my charming kettlebells,

When is it that we got less excited about stuff we bought? I mean, the need to endless consume things hasn’t gone anywhere, in fact, it’s larger than ever, a lot of us using online shopping apps to self-soothe. (You don’t have to spend the money, but just the act of “adding to basket” makes you feel a little spurt of joy.) I suppose it comes from the instant-ness of shopping these days. You’re an Amazon Prime member, you order something today morning, it’s at your doorstep the next. The anticipation period is over.

Just as I typed that sentence, the doorbell rang and my new navy blue belted cardigan was delivered. Rs 840, marked down from Rs 2699. French Connection. A bargain in acrylic. And then I remembered I bought another sweater from an Instagram “thrift store” (mostly export surplus, which I’d do myself, but I’m avoiding Sarojini Nagar this year) and so I popped into the store’s DMs, asking when it would be shipped.

And then you have the thing—the thing you wanted, and were able to find with just a few taps on your keyboard. “Belted cardigan” I typed into my preferred clothes shopping app. I found the darkest colour, the best price, I bought it instantly. What would once have taken a few trips to a few stores, a weekend afternoon given over to finding the right fit and size, coming home with a shopping bag marked with the store’s name, and leaving that bag by your closet for a while, remember that? Remember looking at it with satisfaction, pulling it out, tags still intact, the smell of the store still lingering on it? I don’t even like mall shopping at big brand stores that much, but I remember the pleasantness of going home, a bag on the seat next to me, trying on your new outfit at home to see if it still looks as good. I just did it for my birthday last year, the whole mall shopping experience, but only because I couldn’t find what I wanted online so I thought I’d browse. (“Just did it” = last December, ten months ago, but what is time anyway?)

I was thinking about this, this less excitement because I bought a new phone this past week. A couple of my friends are on my same Phone Cycle (if you’re the type of person who upgrades technology on an as-needed basis or every three-four years, you probably have a Phone Cycle with someone you know as well. If you’re the type of person who must have a new gadget as soon as it launches, well, I don’t really understand you) so they had gotten new phones just before I did, and I did my usual dithering about which one to get, which boiled down to two, which eventually came down to one, and I am pleased with my decision. I should be—I looked at ONE ZILLION reviews, all saying versions of the same thing, till my eyes crossed. But I am excitable about these things, and so if you follow me on any other of my social media feeds, you’ll probably know I got a new phone because I’ve been banging on about it. But, the thing is, I don’t know if any of my other friends—not just the ones on my Phone Cycle—have new phones or not, because somewhere along the way, we stopped talking about things like new phones or new laptops or new cars. (Unless we’re super rich assholes whose sense of self comes from Ferraris or that one very fancy cellphone that used to be a thing that came with a concierge service, remember? But I don’t follow any super rich assholes, not finding them of interest.) I don’t mean we stopped buying them, as I type this, someone just on my feed is probably getting a new gadget, I mean we seem to have agreed collectively that it’s somehow… not cool to talk about your pleasure in a new thing?

Because I am Very Old, I remember, of course, the pre-cellphone world, the pre-internet world, the pre-when-your-cellphone-connected-to-the-internet world. Actually, all this connection technology stuff only happened in the last twenty years. My first cellphone was a birthday present, age 19, almost exactly twenty years ago, actually. If you are in your twenties, this probably seems almost prehistoric for you. I sometimes think of all the things that have evolved just in my own lifetime and I’m like, “Ooof.” Anyway, twenty years ago, the year 2000, we didn’t have that much choice in our actual devices, but even then, I bucked the crowd, and got a Motorola, when all around me were losing their Nokia devices and blaming it on— (A little Kipling to keep you on your toes.) The Nokia devices were standard, small enough even then to be palmed with one hand, a pleasant heavy heft and a little antenna on top. The charge lasted a week, as did my Motorola, but what I didn’t have and what they did, was the Snake game which they played endlessly.

Airtel, the only network in India, charged for incoming calls and outgoing calls and text messages, so we were the generation that invented the Missed Call, where you call someone and hang up so they have to call you back. We were the first to hack our phones, make them attractive by gluing glitter all over them as they got smaller, by getting little charms to hang off the end. The craze was to have a phone that got tinier and tinier, no antenna, no bulky lines, just phones the size of toy cars that you could palm with one hand and let sit in your pocket with your keys. We invented emoticons, at least, it seemed like we did, we decided that the : + ) looked like a smiley face, see :) or a sad face :( or a kiss :* or an I’m-not-reacting-to-this-just-now face :/

I had asked for a cellphone for my birthday, I was delighted with it, but what I didn’t realise was that I was effectively signing up for a leash. I wish I’d known, one moment before, I lost all my mystery of movement. I wish I’d known I was going to be kissing my beloved cordless landline goodbye. I used that in my argument to convince my parents: “see now you never have to worry about where I am” but oh my god, that’s what I signed up for. I’m always available. When the internet came to cellphones, I rejoiced at this New Future, I wondered what messages not sent via SMS would look like, but again, I didn’t realise the Faustian bargain we were all making. Never again could we disappear for an afternoon. Never again would we wait for letters or only check email once a day or show people something on our own devices or lose our way going somewhere or argue about a fact without immediately having it settled.

I’m sure you watched—or at least heard about—that social media documentary on Netflix that was Flavour of the Month recently. The Social Dilemma, which was a pretty on-the-nose look at how social media is controlling every aspect of your life, oh no. With a mix of fact and fiction, the documentary shows a human being being pushed and pulled along by an algorithm (played by Pete from Mad Men) and how we have zero control over these things, and okay, it was nice, but, in retrospect, not this eye-opening searing indicment of social media it was claiming to be. It was basic. We all know being on social media constantly, 24/7, is bad for us. No one is denying it—the same way smokers know that cigarettes will give them cancer. It’s not new information. But we’re also in the middle of an unforeseen event. We need social media more than ever in 2020 because it is our only way of connecting with the world.

Maybe that’s why I’m thinking of my new phone more than I would be in the past (although I’ve always been excited by these things). It’s larger than my old one—somewhere along the way, cellphone manufacturers did a pivot and now it’s like the dogs in the tinder box story, each one bigger than the next. On its large screen, I look at the world. Through its fancy camera, I take pictures of myself, the cats, the garden, and I post them online so I feel like I’m talking to someone other than myself. I did all these things with my old phone too, but since the tech has changed in the last three years, it feels like I am speeding through the internet in a bullet train, rather than a Bombay local. On my shiny new screen, already smudged with fingerprints, I pull down the Twitter app to refresh it, to see what people are saying. I see more of their tweets, because my screen is bigger. I connect more with the world. I still don’t want to talk to you, but I will double tap on your photo to like it, and I hope you know that means I’m thinking of you and you make me smile.

Links I Loved

Have you been checking out Fifty Two? It’s this online magazine, founded by Supriya Nair and others, which commits to publishing one amazing longform story a week, for the year. Here’s my particular favourite of the four up so far: on India’s history with custard powder. But you should read them all!

I loved this personal essay about the author’s Dalit father and his lockdown relationship with the birds in his garden.

Hilary Mantel on trusting yourself as a writer.

What is fun anymore anyway?

The story of one anonymous man, dying alone in New York City.

The most haunted road in America is really a story about why we need ghost stories.

I’ve only read the first two lines in this because I just opened it but I know it’s going to be good because it’s PATRICIA LOCKWOOD WRITING ABOUT NABOKOV.

Have a great week!

xx

m

Where am I? The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.

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 the person who looks at all your stories and never writes back if you didn’t.

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Today in Photo

Since I wasn't getting to wear Indian festive wear at all this year, I took matters into my own hands and turned a casual Just Us dinner at a friend's into a dress up occasion. Particularly love the pants, brocade churidars which are part of a velvet kurta set I wore to my friend's wedding last year. I loved them so much then I thought to myself that I should use them to mix and match with other outfit choices later. OK so it's not ENTIRELY Indian festive, especially with my peplum top (old faithful from Sarojini Nagar market) but it's MY kind of Indian clothes anyway. A little of this and a little of that. Meanwhile pants are SO TIGHT (which is very sexy but I can't sit back on a sofa or climb stairs without completely splaying my knees and waddling up them--less sexy then.) (I've decided lifts are corona hotboxes so I take the stairs even if there is a lift option.) (Sadly if I gain even an extra half inch of weight on my thighs it's going to be bye bye pants so let's enjoy them while they last.) #whatiworetoday

via Instagram

Today in Photo

I got a new phone yesterday! So here have a photo of the bougainvillea against the weak winter sun and hazy sky to celebrate. #terracegarden #flowers #delhidiary

via Instagram

Today in Photo

This is turning into an All Cat Content All The Time feed but I would totally invite this teeny vampire into my house. #derp #squishythecat #blackcats #catsofinstagram

via Instagram

What I'm Reading

I don't know whether y'all do this but I usually have a separate Day Book and Night Book. Night Books are normally on my Kindle--I have the Paperwhite with a backlight feature so I can read in the dark. HOWEVER! Reading this book in the dark might've been a mistake. I mean, it feels like comedy writing, it's funny in bits and then it's really fucking scary and I don't scare easily. (except for haunted house books. Oof.) I think what made it so subtly terrifying was the structure: it's the 80s, Patricia is a housewife who joins a true crime book club. A charming and erudite man moves in next door who everyone just loves, including Patricia's psychiatrist husband. Only she thinks there's something wrong with him. Lots of visceral horror scenes including with rats and cockroaches so approach with a look at your own delicate sensibilities. I kinda loved it though. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #120in2020 #thesouthernbookclubsguidetoslayingvampires

What I'm Reading

Been in a bit of a reading rut recently so I was surprised that I finished this French translated true crime in just one afternoon. Just now in fact. I was reminded of this Netflix documentary I just saw--super interesting--called An American Murder. And at the end they say more than 60% or some shockingly high number of children killed by their parents are killed by their fathers. And then I started to think about this other book by Helen Dunmore about the trial of this man also arrested for killing his children. The Adversary is about the same sort of guy, Jean Claude, who just ups and kills his entire family one day: wife, children, parents. And then his whole web of lies starts to collapse. Made me think about our fascination with killers, why do we want to keep poking at them and figuring out why they do it? It also made me think about lies and why humans tell them. Fascinating book but left me a little unsatisfied, which I can't explain to you without spoilers so go ahead and read it yourself! #truecrime #emmanuelcarrère #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #120in2020

Today in Photo

Sheddy McSnugglepants. (OK he is the least snuggly but once you're a cat person, you have to keep pointing out how cutely they sleep. It's our secret password.) #catsofinstagram #brunothetabby

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Today in Photo

Digitally "painted" yesterday, turned Squishinder into a Squishierre. #catsofinstagram #drawtober #squishytheblackcat #painting #wacom

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The Internet Personified: The Wilderness Years

Hello my persistent little yaks,

It’s been a long time since I wrote. (I feel like eventually all bloggers/newsletter writers will write that sentence: it’s been a long time since I updated this thing! Here’s what’s been up with me followed by three paragraphs of catching you up on their lives, even sadder if it was a blog no one visited, like a party you throw where no one comes.) (Is it sadder to have a party where literally zero people attend or a party where you’ve invited twenty people and only two people show up and not even two people you’re particularly close to, these are maybe co-workers or that guy you met at a different party who seemed sort of cool but you don’t know him well enough to sit across from him all night and make chit-chat while behind you, your dining table heaving with food and drink, just sort of hangs out like the elephant in the room?) Woof. That was a digression! Anyhow, I have not been particularly occupied one way or the other. My interminable book edits continue. I’m in a reading slump. I’m watching The Wire for the first time and it is everything that was promised.

The funny thing is, even though The Wire is relatively new to my life, I’ve already had one dream about wire-tapping but I have had exactly zero dreams about this pandemic we’re all living through. None of my dreams feature masks or social distancing, we’re all just going about our lives, touching and being crowded together in public transport. I think it’s telling that a TV show has apparently reached into my subconscious and needs to be processed and apparently, COVID needs no processing at all. (My spellcheck is putting a curly red line under COVID, which makes me wonder how long before it is an official word recognised by dictionaries.)

And winter is making its presence felt here in Delhi, we went from air conditioning to fans off in just ten days. Another season given over to pandemic living. Remember when we thought this was going to be over by September? Hah. Anyway, obviously since the present is more of “sat at home and thought about things” mixed with a little “I leave my house in great excitement to sit at a friend’s house and think about things” obviously I have taken to thinking about the past. Stories flash in and out of my head, and I walk through my memories like I’m a time traveller, watching from a distance. It’s not just glimpses of memory, I’m reliving time like I never have before. In my thoughts I am standing at the doorway of a long ago room, looking in, and then I arrange all the furniture so it’s exactly how it was when I was there, and then I go through my rememberances like prayer beads, holding each one for a moment between my fingers and then letting them go to fall into place. Do you do this too?

One of the eras of my life I’ve been thinking about a lot is moving to Bombay. Did I ever tell you I lived there? For four formative years, I lived and worked in Bandra—first the East and then the West. I was so Bombay that I let go of all my Delhiness easily, like a snake shedding off their skin. I was immersed in Bombay things, in Bombay people (mostly immigrants like me), in the Bombay life. I didn’t take anything of my old self with me, it seemed like nothing I had had in Delhi for the 25 years I lived there prior stayed.

I don’t know whether you can make that sort of move, the Snake Shedding Its Skin move more than once in your life. You have to be in a place where you’re ready to give over everything, everything to the present. No looking back, no reliving your past. It feels like those years were lived in hectic living in the moment vibes that exhaust me if I think about them now, but in Bombay I floated like a dandelion in the breeze from one friend group to another, from one unsuitable man to the next.

I guess what I remember most is travelling, sitting in a local train or a rickshaw or a cab, sitting next to people usually, it’s so humid outside and we’re too cheap to spring for a Cool Cab, which is what they called the air conditioned ones, they were painted blue. This was before Uber, before Tinder, before Zomato, before any of those things that you now can’t imagine your life without. How did I meet people? I went to bars, particularly this one bar called Zenzi, which was painted orange and had these Chinese noodle boxes they served to you in takeaway cardboard and also wasabi mayo fries. All this sounds like I had a lot of money, and actually, no, I have never been poorer. I lived on love, some parental handouts, some columns I did, royalty statements from You Are Here which came out while I was in Bombay, and the kindness of my salaried friends who bought me a drink whenever they could or whenever I could freeload off them.

Funnily enough, I also remember myself as being vividly unhappy. I must have been, otherwise why would I keep choosing such toxic men? Every single man I met, I decided to fall in like with (love is a strong word, and I only thought I loved two of them) and then I was deeply disappointed when they turned out to be commitmentphobic or full of emotional issues. One refused to tell me his last name, can you believe it? I only found out when I saw a boarding pass in his apartment. He also cheated on me eventually, after flying down to Delhi to attend my bestie’s wedding, which means he lives on in her wedding album. If you’re in a relationship you suspect will not last and you’re considering taking him or her to a wedding with you, DO NOT. You will live to regret it over a decade later. One was very nice, but our relationship had a time limit because he was going off to do an MBA (plus, his folks were super conservative and he couldn’t tell them he ever dated me). One I was only hooking up with out of boredom, because I had no one else to pine after that month and I was addicted to the drama by then. One I was engaged to be married to, and burnt me out and sent me running back to Delhi, but I don’t want to think about those years with him.

Bandra East was nice. My friend chose it, he was moving to Bombay and I had gone to his farewell party and I was like, “Oh I wish I was moving to Bombay” and he said, “Come” so I went with a suitcase, and we shared a flat and I adopted a kitten because I was so homesick, an impulse decision that led me to the wonderful world of cat ownership. (I’d always had dogs up until then.) It was a quiet neighbourhood, called MIG Colony, which stands for Middle Income Group, and the flats were only two floors high, very government quarters. Bal Thackeray lived down the road, so I always used to joke that I was safer than I was anywhere else in Bombay because the Shiv Sena wouldn’t burn down their own neighbourhood. (And now the Shiv Sena is… liberal? What a strange world we live in.) It was ridiculously quiet after nine pm, there was no home delivery except for two sea food restaurants which I did not appreciate because at the time I was going through a fish aversion, yes, of my four years in Bombay, I spent three years eating bony mutton and stringy chicken. Whenever I had to get home from somewhere else, I had to trick the taxi/rickshaw driver into it. I’d say somewhere else and then halfway through, I’d be like, “Oh actually, can you make it Bandra East?”

And then I met this chap, you know the one I decided eventually to marry, not out of love, oh no, but because by the time he proposed I was like, “Might as well.” MIGHT AS WELL. My god. And we decided to get a flat together in Bandra West, the posh bit and you guys. I loved that flat so much. I would not change a thing about it. It was on Perry Road, right before the turn to Carter Road. It was a large one bedroom fourth floor walk up and it was amazing. It only cost 24k a month which even back then was ridiculously low rent. And this chap, this guy I wanted to make a life with (whyyyyyy) was away half the year in the UK where he was from for visa or whatever reasons, so really, I basically lived alone on half the rent. It was in this flat that I had a small drinks party to which I invited K, because we were sort of friends by then, and K and this other fellow actually met and hung out and thinking about that is so weird. I wish I remembered more of that evening, but you never know when something is significant at the moment, do you? You never say, “Oh look, here’s an interaction with my future husband meeting my future ex boyfriend!”(Actually maybe that situation is super specific to me, but please let me know if this is your life too.)

I feel like my Bombay years were the first time I felt like a proper young grown up. I mean, I’d been living alone in Delhi since I was 21, so flat sharing and so on wasn’t new to me. It’s just that Delhi depended so much on who would drop you home, being safe, being careful, blah blah blah and suddenly, here I was, walking home at two in the morning or just jumping in an auto whenever I was done with a scene, wearing whatever I wanted to wear and being whoever I wanted to be. That’s probably how I met so many different people, Bombay back then was what someone described as Dubai International Airport, a revolving door of people, and only a few of us stalwarts there year after year. Every week, almost, there’d be a goodbye party, and at that party, you’d meet someone who had just moved. One of my favourite stories about Bombay is at one of these parties where I met a guy who had just arrived two days prior from London and I smiled and said the usual things and he gripped my wrist and said, “What have I done?”

Also, I think it made a difference that all but one of my friends was living away from their parents. No one had parents in the city and that made us this young pack, I guess. Free of adult influences. Unencumbered by opinions. I had originally planned to only stay for one year, but I was having such a good time, I stayed till the very end, when the host has started to pick up dirty glasses from around you and the sun is pushing its way through a grubby dawn sky.

Always leave a party when you’re having fun.

Links I Liked On The World Wide Web:

I wrote this list for Voice of Fashion about ten exciting Indian books that have come out in the last six months.

THIS STORY IS ADORABLE. A chipmunk restaurant!

The Very Quiet Foreign Girls Poetry Club.

TL;DR of this funny story: do not put your boarding pass on Instagram.

Here’s how it feels to be an extrovert. (Which it turns out, I am, despite thinking I was an introvert all this while.)

Watching bad TV at the end of the world.

Why Alcoholics Anonymous isn’t always the answer.

All about Reddit’s Am I The Asshole subreddit.

And related! Some tweets I tweeted about AITA (click through to see the whole thread.)

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan @reddymadhavanAITA if I (28 m) told 20f that she was not pretty enough for me to dance with? In my defense, I didn't know she could hear me and also her family seem really weird and loud and like they're social climbers?

October 15th 2020

1 Retweet23 Likes

Have a great week! I miss you when we don’t talk for a while.

xx

m

Where am I? The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.

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!)

Got sent this newsletter? Sign up here to subscribe!

Forward to your friends if you liked this and to the thought that you can’t actually fix time if you didn’t.

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

Today in Photo

Olga is basically living my best life. #catsofinstagram #olgadapolga

via Instagram