Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 68
July 1, 2018
Newsletter: Goa, baby
(A little behind on posting here, so this edition is two week's old. For the latest, subscribe!)
What can I say about Goa in the monsoon that you're not already picturing in your head? It's slow, slower than usual. There are fewer people on the road, and most faces are brown. I'm just eating and sleeping and working--a lot of deadlines this past weekend meant that this newsletter is a late one--but I feel more relaxed, just by being somewhere cool and rainy. It's funny how even as a modern day human, we're as affected by the weather as our caveman ancestors. Delhi is a boiling circle of hell, at least it was when I left it, and that definitely knocked on to my mood and my energy levels. Constantly an Irritable Sloth, basically.
It's not even raining that much yet, just a few showers to punctuate the day. Over the weekend, we've booked a hotel in Panjim, and we're going to spend a few days there, but for now, we're staying with friends, lounging about on their sofa, watching the World Cup.
Yes, I am watching football! I don't know why the World Cup is the only exception I make to watching a sport game match on television, because sports = boring, there's only two outcomes: you win or you lose. There's no middle ground with sports, no shades of grey. I find that very dull. But with the football world cup, I think I invent little stories about the teams, imbibe each time with qualities of the country, plus it's quite a quick game, so you can use it to while away an hour and a half, building camaraderie and all the things one builds when one is watching a team sport. I also have made it more fun for self by picking a team out of each group, and have an ALMOST perfect score (Germany let me down). (My picks are on Twitter!)
This week in my occasionally pish-posh life: The first week we were here (last Monday? Gosh, time really HAS slowed down) K's mum was here as well. My mother-in-law, that makes her, but that is such an adult relationship--a HUSBAND, a MOTHER-IN-LAW, holy shitballs, and me only nineteen years old! (I don't think I'll ever be old enough in my head to have actual children.)
She had booked out this amazing Airbnb called Villa Josephine, somewhere in Mapusa. And if you're familiar with Goa, you're going to be like, "Mapusa? Really?" but evidently the area has some quiet roads besides the teeming main market, and Villa Josephine is one of those homes. Part of it is an old house, renovated, the other part is new made to look like old, and there are four bedrooms, which include two ENORMOUS suites, and a palm leaf shaped pool outside, and it was all very pretty and delightful. (Zero internet though, so finish your deadlines and go.) K's mum specifically picked it because it accepted pets, so began my Month of Dogs, with Lily The Rescue Spitz, who is now a pish-posh dog in her own right.
[The other two dogs are Meghna and Ralf's--Simba the Rottie-Doberman (Roberman? Doweiler?) and Jango the indie. We have all grown very fond of each other, although I am still *slightly* intimidated by Simba, she's just so powerful looking, and her face has this stoic expression that means you can't really tell how she's feeling. However, she does like to sit next to us when we work, and she does that dog thing of sticking her tongue out and then pulling it back into her mouth, which I always associate with great contentment.]
[How are the CATS amidst all this? Well, we have left them to Najma, our housekeeper, who loves them and is used to them, so she pops by once a day to see that everything's cool, no one's starving or dying from lack of water etc. I think they'll be fine, I left TC, my old ginger cat, alone by himself for two months while I went to England with just a maid popping in and occasional friends to see that he hadn't died or anything. He was fine too, and these three have each other, although Bruno and Squishy do fight, I hope our absence means there's less to fight over.]
This week in fish thaalis: Vinayak fish thaalis, though once beloved, have seriously gone down in quality. NOT very nice. I assume the rest of the food is still good, and we are planning on going there for lunch today and trying something else, so let us see. And hope. BUT! Thanks to a prior recommendation from friends Mrig and Akshay, I remembered that there was a place in Mapusa called Spice Goa that was meant to have amazing food. ("Like Goa's Swagath," was Mrig's description.) So we went, it was super busy, but the fish thaali was elaborate and large and delicious and introduced me to the delicate lady fish in a rawa fry which was delectable.
Eldou's while pretty has also got a not great thaali, but Goan Spice (like Spice Goa but reversed!) continues to be amazing. We have not yet ventured to Catherine's Corner, it being too rainy to go very far--also we'd have to drive by our old house and I feel this pang of jealousy when I think of someone else living there, even though we broke up with it FIRST--but we did go to Mum's Kitchen in Panjim when K's mother was here, and that was really good food too.
Panjim, on the whole, has some interesting food options, and I look forward to exploring them all over the weekend, most especially a place called Pinto's, which has not one single vegetarian item.
This week in stuff I wrote: I was hoping that my new column (!) would be up by the time I wrote this, but alas, it is still not published. I'm doing a series called Mythology for the Millennial (or something along those lines) where I take ancient stories and look at them through a modern lens, but in a chatty, pop-culture sort of way. It will be out on Firstpost! So look out for it there and I'll share a link next week.
Also my review of Sumana Roy's Missing is out in Open magazine.
Very tempted to become an Instagram Influencer but a) don't actually want to approach people with a "HEY PLEASE GIVE ME FREE SHIT" b) it's probably not as easy as just messaging people for free shit and c) it sounds like it's damn annoying. (Also hidden caveat d: you can never bitch about anything if it's been given to you for free.)
What can I say about Goa in the monsoon that you're not already picturing in your head? It's slow, slower than usual. There are fewer people on the road, and most faces are brown. I'm just eating and sleeping and working--a lot of deadlines this past weekend meant that this newsletter is a late one--but I feel more relaxed, just by being somewhere cool and rainy. It's funny how even as a modern day human, we're as affected by the weather as our caveman ancestors. Delhi is a boiling circle of hell, at least it was when I left it, and that definitely knocked on to my mood and my energy levels. Constantly an Irritable Sloth, basically.
It's not even raining that much yet, just a few showers to punctuate the day. Over the weekend, we've booked a hotel in Panjim, and we're going to spend a few days there, but for now, we're staying with friends, lounging about on their sofa, watching the World Cup.
Yes, I am watching football! I don't know why the World Cup is the only exception I make to watching a sport game match on television, because sports = boring, there's only two outcomes: you win or you lose. There's no middle ground with sports, no shades of grey. I find that very dull. But with the football world cup, I think I invent little stories about the teams, imbibe each time with qualities of the country, plus it's quite a quick game, so you can use it to while away an hour and a half, building camaraderie and all the things one builds when one is watching a team sport. I also have made it more fun for self by picking a team out of each group, and have an ALMOST perfect score (Germany let me down). (My picks are on Twitter!)
This week in my occasionally pish-posh life: The first week we were here (last Monday? Gosh, time really HAS slowed down) K's mum was here as well. My mother-in-law, that makes her, but that is such an adult relationship--a HUSBAND, a MOTHER-IN-LAW, holy shitballs, and me only nineteen years old! (I don't think I'll ever be old enough in my head to have actual children.)
She had booked out this amazing Airbnb called Villa Josephine, somewhere in Mapusa. And if you're familiar with Goa, you're going to be like, "Mapusa? Really?" but evidently the area has some quiet roads besides the teeming main market, and Villa Josephine is one of those homes. Part of it is an old house, renovated, the other part is new made to look like old, and there are four bedrooms, which include two ENORMOUS suites, and a palm leaf shaped pool outside, and it was all very pretty and delightful. (Zero internet though, so finish your deadlines and go.) K's mum specifically picked it because it accepted pets, so began my Month of Dogs, with Lily The Rescue Spitz, who is now a pish-posh dog in her own right.
[The other two dogs are Meghna and Ralf's--Simba the Rottie-Doberman (Roberman? Doweiler?) and Jango the indie. We have all grown very fond of each other, although I am still *slightly* intimidated by Simba, she's just so powerful looking, and her face has this stoic expression that means you can't really tell how she's feeling. However, she does like to sit next to us when we work, and she does that dog thing of sticking her tongue out and then pulling it back into her mouth, which I always associate with great contentment.]
[How are the CATS amidst all this? Well, we have left them to Najma, our housekeeper, who loves them and is used to them, so she pops by once a day to see that everything's cool, no one's starving or dying from lack of water etc. I think they'll be fine, I left TC, my old ginger cat, alone by himself for two months while I went to England with just a maid popping in and occasional friends to see that he hadn't died or anything. He was fine too, and these three have each other, although Bruno and Squishy do fight, I hope our absence means there's less to fight over.]
This week in fish thaalis: Vinayak fish thaalis, though once beloved, have seriously gone down in quality. NOT very nice. I assume the rest of the food is still good, and we are planning on going there for lunch today and trying something else, so let us see. And hope. BUT! Thanks to a prior recommendation from friends Mrig and Akshay, I remembered that there was a place in Mapusa called Spice Goa that was meant to have amazing food. ("Like Goa's Swagath," was Mrig's description.) So we went, it was super busy, but the fish thaali was elaborate and large and delicious and introduced me to the delicate lady fish in a rawa fry which was delectable.
Eldou's while pretty has also got a not great thaali, but Goan Spice (like Spice Goa but reversed!) continues to be amazing. We have not yet ventured to Catherine's Corner, it being too rainy to go very far--also we'd have to drive by our old house and I feel this pang of jealousy when I think of someone else living there, even though we broke up with it FIRST--but we did go to Mum's Kitchen in Panjim when K's mother was here, and that was really good food too.
Panjim, on the whole, has some interesting food options, and I look forward to exploring them all over the weekend, most especially a place called Pinto's, which has not one single vegetarian item.
This week in stuff I wrote: I was hoping that my new column (!) would be up by the time I wrote this, but alas, it is still not published. I'm doing a series called Mythology for the Millennial (or something along those lines) where I take ancient stories and look at them through a modern lens, but in a chatty, pop-culture sort of way. It will be out on Firstpost! So look out for it there and I'll share a link next week.
Also my review of Sumana Roy's Missing is out in Open magazine.
Excerpt: If it is possible to make someone vanish by just talking around them, that is what has been done to this character. The more the reader learns, the less, paradoxically, do we know. It is as if Kobita is being bricked up behind a wall of description. Who is this woman, why did she leave, will she ever return? We are as helpless as Nayan, waiting for news to be spoonfed to us.This week in stuff other people wrote
Very tempted to become an Instagram Influencer but a) don't actually want to approach people with a "HEY PLEASE GIVE ME FREE SHIT" b) it's probably not as easy as just messaging people for free shit and c) it sounds like it's damn annoying. (Also hidden caveat d: you can never bitch about anything if it's been given to you for free.)
Excerpt: “Everyone with a Facebook these days is an influencer,” she said. “People say, I want to come to the Maldives for 10 days and will do two posts on Instagram to like 2,000 followers. It's people with 600 Facebook friends saying, ‘Hi, I'm an influencer, I want to stay in your hotel for 7 days,’” she said. Others send vague one-line emails, like “I want to collaborate with you,”with no further explanation. “These people are expecting five to seven nights on average, all inclusive. Maldives is not a cheap destination.” She said that only about 10 percent of the requests she receives are worth investigating.Good solid writing advice. I don't know why people get so pissed with advice articles. Just don't take the damn advice if it doesn't apply to you, no?
Excerpt: Many people are familiar with this kind of procrastination pattern — suddenly, the chores we’d typically die before doing become irresistible and urgent, because there’s one thing we’d rather do even less: work. I think people in most careers experience this, but writers tend to pathologize it, claiming “writer’s block” and, like, an absent “muse” or whatever.The ugly Indian tourist. Much has been said about this phenomenon, but while much of the article is true, I think the onus of change lies with the Goa government and not with the tourists who are just coming to have a good time. Don't want people shitting everywhere? Put up free public toilets. Don't want dirty uncles on the beach? Put more cops on patrol. I mean OF COURSE the Indian tourist also has to change, but sometimes these changes have to be forced. There's no way a lot of these behaviours are going to change from within.
Excerpt: Many domestic visitors these days are what Sardesai calls ‘drive-in’ tourists. Arrivals in buses and jeeps are increasingly common for long weekend holidays. They eat food they cook themselves on stoves brought along, sleep in their vehicles or on the beach, and use the fields as toilets. “These people don’t contribute one bit to the economy,” says Sardesai, “They only clog up the beaches and streets and dirty everything. We have to stop this sort of tourist from coming in.”Delhi's gold diggers. Um, not quite as glam as you're expecting.
Excerpt: “The gold dust gets mixed with the mud outside the workshops. We earn our living from the gold that was otherwise going to be wasted. It is quite similar to a barber’s shop. When the barber walks out of the saloon, he is bound to carry some hair on his body,” said Mohammad Salil, one of around 200 men engaged in the occupation.A football player on being poor in his childhood. (It reveals how little I know about football by saying "a football player," he's probably really famous.)
Excerpt: I wanted to be the best footballer in Belgian history. That was my goal. Not good. Not great. The best. I played with so much anger, because of a lot of things … because of the rats running around in our apartment … because I couldn’t watch the Champions League … because of how the other parents used to look at me.
June 25, 2018
June 22, 2018
Today in Photo
Literally went to see a man about a dog today. Panna, short for panna cotta, but pronounced like aam panna, just as delicious as her name but a stroppy little bitch to other dogs which is why she was sent away to recover from a bite on her necj. The photo is of her finally getting to come home. #dogstagram #rescuedog #adoptdontshop #traveldiary
via Instagram
June 21, 2018
Today in Photo
Self portrait of an afternoon nap which was not to be because I was too distracted by selfies and such. #portrait #traveldiary
via Instagram
June 19, 2018
Today in Photo
The three faces of Cream Choc. Eating half hazelnut half vanilla and matching in my new yellow raincoat. #traveldiary #monsoon
via Instagram
Today in Photo
K's mum took this last week outside Mum's Kitchen in Panjim, but love the #celebstyle of our poses. Looks like we were totally papped. Also good hair day so had to share because Vanity. #traveldiary #monsoon
via Instagram
June 18, 2018
Newsletter: May the odds be ever in your favour
(Last week's newsletter. This week's just went out so you know what to do.)
Pop quiz #2: This week's newsletter title is an easy guess, but humour me anyway. (If you're curious "Some Pig" is from Charlotte's Web, which features my favourite literary rat character (even more than Rat in Wind In The Willows) a wisecracking every-creature-for-himself glutton called Templeton.)
This week in the Lives of People Who Are Dead Now: I am very late to the Nancy Mitford party, but I just began reading her very thinly veiled "novel" about two young girls in Britain living the U-life (U meaning upperclass, a thing that was being written about in Mitford's time, vs. of course, the Non-Us). There's a reference to the Us and non-Us in The Pursuit of Love as well, as the children belonging to this large extended family are all daughters of lords, so they get to have an "Hon." before their names, and so form a society: Hons vs Counter Hons. You don't have to be born an Hon to be an honourary Hon, a hon-Hon if you will, but Counter Hons say things like "notepaper" for writing paper and "dentures" for false teeth.
I looked up Nancy Mitford yesterday, and while she was quite fascinating, what I found most interesting was the life of her sister, Unity Mitford. Unity VALKYRIE Mitford, a first world yoga name if I've ever heard one. Here is a picture, she was quite lovely.
If you've watched The Crown on Netflix, you know that every old established rich British family has some Nazi lovers closer than you think. In the Mitford sisters' case, there were about three of them who were reasonably sympathetic, but Unity really took it to a new level. If she had been born today, she'd be dangling off Trump's arm, talking about white pride with gusto and poise on television, but since she was born in 1914, she took up a pro-Hitler stance, primarily just to get some attention from her family, being a middle child.
However, she traveled with a sister to Germany, and there she saw Hitler and decided to take her fandom to a completely different level. She basically found out all his hang out spots and went and sat at the same cafe as he had lunch at every single day. TEN MONTHS LATER, Hitler finally asked her to join him, so this was a pretty dedicated case of stalking. He was completely charmed by her, her Aryan good looks and her connection to Wagner, who Hitler loved. (Unity's grandfather was a close friend of the composer.) Anyway, Hitler was quite superstitious so he considered Unity a sort of "sent from heaven" reward or something, and also, was quite happy to play her off against Eva Braun, because it's not enough to be a monster, you must also be an asshole boyfriend.
She wanted very much for Hitler to reach some sort of deal with Britain and threatened to kill herself if a war ever happened. War did happen, and she shot herself with a pistol, only she survived the impact and the bullet stayed inside her skull, after which Hitler paid her hospital bills and arranged for her to go back to England. She was changed, apparently, a bit like she had had a stroke, incontinent, like a large child, but she still remembered being a Nazi, and said she wanted to have many children and name the eldest son Adolf. Eventually she died of meningitis because of the swelling of her brain around the bullet. She was 33.
Here's another interesting fact about Unity: she was conceived in a town called Swastika, Ontario. I wonder if she thought about that and about the Nazi party and decided that was the way her life was going to go since she was born to it.
(There is a biography of the Mitford sisters that looks quite good: The Mitford Girls by Mary S Lovell, which is on the Amazon store in India. Will get a copy and let you know how it is!)
This week in stuff I wrote: My review of Yashodhara Lal's How I Became a Farmer's Wife. "Was it really that good?" asked someone to me skeptically, and yes it was. I'm not polite at all in my reviews, if I don't like something, I will say it, as you will see in a review that should be out next week. I do sometimes try and find a redeeming thing though, and there usually is a redeeming thing.
This week in television I recommend on Amazon Prime: I made this list for Twitter, but I'm finding my engagement on that platform is way down from even a few months ago. No retweets at all, and maybe one or two likes? It's odd, because nothing else has changed, not my tweets, not my follower count, so I'm just putting it down to faulty algorithms and not just that people aren't finding me interesting any more. (the horror!), So I thought, let me just migrate the things I would tweet about to this newsletter, and give up on Twitter for a little bit. Of all the social media I use (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) I'm getting the least interactions out of Twitter, so I think I might start to wind down there mostly. Are you having the same problem or is it just me?
1) Parks & Recreation: brilliant, government office mockumentary with one of the FINEST feminist protagonists you'll ever see on television, Leslie Knope. In the same vein, and inspired from, The Office (US) also on Prime and it is also amazing.
2) The Magicians is a subtle satire-y sci-fi show that just goes from strength to strength every season. There's pop culture, there's magic, there's humour, there's pathos, you'll love it.
3) Parenthood: If you liked Gilmore Girls or Brothers and Sisters or anything with a big messy family and their interactions, this is a MUST MUST WATCH show.
4) Friday Night Lights: It is about American football, yes, but I, an avowed sports hater ("so boring ya!") am still binge watching it like it is going out of style.
5) The Mindy Project: will take you two or three episodes to fully get into but after that it is just like candy. So funny and refreshing.
This week in stuff I read on the internet that was cool
I have a Dom character in my new Girls of the Mahabharata book, so this long read (and winner of a journalism award!) about a modern day Dom was truly fascinating.
And finally, Prayaag on football, his football-averse partner and the fact that their first child is due during the first week of the World Cup.
Pop quiz #2: This week's newsletter title is an easy guess, but humour me anyway. (If you're curious "Some Pig" is from Charlotte's Web, which features my favourite literary rat character (even more than Rat in Wind In The Willows) a wisecracking every-creature-for-himself glutton called Templeton.)
This week in the Lives of People Who Are Dead Now: I am very late to the Nancy Mitford party, but I just began reading her very thinly veiled "novel" about two young girls in Britain living the U-life (U meaning upperclass, a thing that was being written about in Mitford's time, vs. of course, the Non-Us). There's a reference to the Us and non-Us in The Pursuit of Love as well, as the children belonging to this large extended family are all daughters of lords, so they get to have an "Hon." before their names, and so form a society: Hons vs Counter Hons. You don't have to be born an Hon to be an honourary Hon, a hon-Hon if you will, but Counter Hons say things like "notepaper" for writing paper and "dentures" for false teeth.
I looked up Nancy Mitford yesterday, and while she was quite fascinating, what I found most interesting was the life of her sister, Unity Mitford. Unity VALKYRIE Mitford, a first world yoga name if I've ever heard one. Here is a picture, she was quite lovely.
If you've watched The Crown on Netflix, you know that every old established rich British family has some Nazi lovers closer than you think. In the Mitford sisters' case, there were about three of them who were reasonably sympathetic, but Unity really took it to a new level. If she had been born today, she'd be dangling off Trump's arm, talking about white pride with gusto and poise on television, but since she was born in 1914, she took up a pro-Hitler stance, primarily just to get some attention from her family, being a middle child.
However, she traveled with a sister to Germany, and there she saw Hitler and decided to take her fandom to a completely different level. She basically found out all his hang out spots and went and sat at the same cafe as he had lunch at every single day. TEN MONTHS LATER, Hitler finally asked her to join him, so this was a pretty dedicated case of stalking. He was completely charmed by her, her Aryan good looks and her connection to Wagner, who Hitler loved. (Unity's grandfather was a close friend of the composer.) Anyway, Hitler was quite superstitious so he considered Unity a sort of "sent from heaven" reward or something, and also, was quite happy to play her off against Eva Braun, because it's not enough to be a monster, you must also be an asshole boyfriend.
She wanted very much for Hitler to reach some sort of deal with Britain and threatened to kill herself if a war ever happened. War did happen, and she shot herself with a pistol, only she survived the impact and the bullet stayed inside her skull, after which Hitler paid her hospital bills and arranged for her to go back to England. She was changed, apparently, a bit like she had had a stroke, incontinent, like a large child, but she still remembered being a Nazi, and said she wanted to have many children and name the eldest son Adolf. Eventually she died of meningitis because of the swelling of her brain around the bullet. She was 33.
Here's another interesting fact about Unity: she was conceived in a town called Swastika, Ontario. I wonder if she thought about that and about the Nazi party and decided that was the way her life was going to go since she was born to it.
(There is a biography of the Mitford sisters that looks quite good: The Mitford Girls by Mary S Lovell, which is on the Amazon store in India. Will get a copy and let you know how it is!)
This week in stuff I wrote: My review of Yashodhara Lal's How I Became a Farmer's Wife. "Was it really that good?" asked someone to me skeptically, and yes it was. I'm not polite at all in my reviews, if I don't like something, I will say it, as you will see in a review that should be out next week. I do sometimes try and find a redeeming thing though, and there usually is a redeeming thing.
Excerpt: Lal is, by her own description, a “romance” writer, and this book is meant to be a sequel of sorts to her first, which was similar fiction-ish, memoir-ish story of the first years of being married. Romance writers can definitely plot, even if they are somewhat condescended to by the greater literary establishment.
This week in television I recommend on Amazon Prime: I made this list for Twitter, but I'm finding my engagement on that platform is way down from even a few months ago. No retweets at all, and maybe one or two likes? It's odd, because nothing else has changed, not my tweets, not my follower count, so I'm just putting it down to faulty algorithms and not just that people aren't finding me interesting any more. (the horror!), So I thought, let me just migrate the things I would tweet about to this newsletter, and give up on Twitter for a little bit. Of all the social media I use (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) I'm getting the least interactions out of Twitter, so I think I might start to wind down there mostly. Are you having the same problem or is it just me?
1) Parks & Recreation: brilliant, government office mockumentary with one of the FINEST feminist protagonists you'll ever see on television, Leslie Knope. In the same vein, and inspired from, The Office (US) also on Prime and it is also amazing.
2) The Magicians is a subtle satire-y sci-fi show that just goes from strength to strength every season. There's pop culture, there's magic, there's humour, there's pathos, you'll love it.
3) Parenthood: If you liked Gilmore Girls or Brothers and Sisters or anything with a big messy family and their interactions, this is a MUST MUST WATCH show.
4) Friday Night Lights: It is about American football, yes, but I, an avowed sports hater ("so boring ya!") am still binge watching it like it is going out of style.
5) The Mindy Project: will take you two or three episodes to fully get into but after that it is just like candy. So funny and refreshing.
This week in stuff I read on the internet that was cool
I have a Dom character in my new Girls of the Mahabharata book, so this long read (and winner of a journalism award!) about a modern day Dom was truly fascinating.
Excerpt: Mithun spends hours performing the back-breaking work of sifting through mountains of ash to cull tiny pieces of melted gold and silver - remnants of jewellery the deceased were wearing - to later sell for a meagre sum of money. Out of respect for their dead, families leave the jewellery (often a necklace, a few bangles, a gold nose-ring, or a gold tooth) on their relative before performing the last rites. For the Doms, the competition to find these tiny, precious pieces is cut-throat. As soon as the ash from a burned out pyre is swept into the river, an army of men - with pants rolled halfway up - rush in, wading through the murky water. To reduce the competition, some throw in broken glass and razors to make the process more arduous for others.My mum (whose birthday it is today, happy birthday!) has a copy of Cook and See which she procured with great difficulty, and I've always found it ridiculously charming. Here's a piece on learning from it.
Excerpt: Strangely I can hear my dad in this book, perhaps because “third rate” is a word he uses quite often. And also because the book reminds me of his particular brand of “strict reassurance” – this will annoy you but this is ultimately good for you. For instance, there was a time when my father would find me dreaming serenely on Sunday afternoons and attempt to break my reverie by asking me stuff like, “what is 167395 minus 578?” His is a lifelong mission to make me alert, either by shocking me with mental mathematics or dark warnings of potential accidents that would most certainly occur thanks to incessant day dreaming.Gorgeous piece on a man who turned his entire house into a shrine and a work of art.
Excerpt: When visitors come, they often cry. Others are overwhelmed by inspiration, or a sudden feeling that everything makes sense and they know just what they need to do. By the end of their visit, they want to speak to, confide in, or be counseled by Wright. It feels like there is a magnetic air of wisdom around him that you can’t help but want to feel close to. Wright listens and hugs, he understands.Since 40 is three years away, here's a fun piece on how to get there. (Note: I feel a midlife crisis coming on just at the thought of it.)
Excerpt: What have we aged into? We’re still capable of action, change and 10K races. But there’s a new immediacy to the 40s — and an awareness of death — that didn’t exist before. Our possibilities feel more finite. All choices now plainly exclude others. It’s pointless to keep pretending to be what we’re not. At 40, we’re no longer preparing for an imagined future life. Our real lives are, indisputably, happening right now. We’ve arrived at what Immanuel Kant called the “Ding an sich” — the thing itself.What would a world without Star Wars look like? I'm really not into the franchise, but it affected things that eventually brought me Netflix, SO yes.
Excerpt: At the end of the decade, Vice President Al Gore edges George W. Bush in one of the closest elections in American history. Observers credit his win to the positive influence exerted on his campaign and the election by CNN — which is the only major 24-hour news network. Rupert Murdoch watches from the United Kingdom; he’d failed to find a solid entry point into American media in the mid-’80s, Fox having collapsed years earlier, and his dreams of a conservative challenger to CNN remain unrealized.When EB White wrote Stuart Little there was a librarian who basically RAN the children's book industry and she was not happy with him. This article should be made into a movie.
Excerpt: Today, children’s book publishing—an industry richly described in Leonard S. Marcus’s excellent new book, “Minders of Make-Believe”—is one of the most profitable parts of the book business. But that industry exists only because, in much the same way that the nineteenth-century middle class invented childhood as we know it, early-twentieth-century writers, illustrators, editors, and publishers—and, most of all, Anne Carroll Moore—invented children’s literature. It would be convenient if White and Moore stood on either side of a divide between antimodernist and modernist writing. But things don’t really sort out along those lines. A better way of thinking about it might be to say that Anne Carroll Moore did not like fangs. She loved what was precious, innocent, and sentimental. White found the same stuff mawkish, prudish, and daffy. “There are too many coy books full of talking animals, whimsical children, and condescending adults,” White complained.I'd watch all these Sex and the City in 2018 plots.
Excerpt: Miranda arrives late to brunch because one of her favorite male colleagues was just fired, following #MeToo accusations. She’s conflicted because, despite her feminist convictions, she loved this guy and isn’t sure the accusations warranted his dismissal. Samantha says that she, too, is being sued by a former assistant for sexual harassment, which she doesn’t feel is warranted. Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda share their #MeToo stories, and Miranda is particularly horrified to recall several experiences she had as a teenager — the same age her son, Brady, is now. Miranda reconsiders how she’s raising her own son; when he tells her he’s taking a girl on a date, she insists on a sit-down with the two of them, during which she goes embarrassingly overboard and scares them out of their date.
And finally, Prayaag on football, his football-averse partner and the fact that their first child is due during the first week of the World Cup.
Excerpt: Perhaps fitting, given her deep distaste for the sport, that my wife is scheduled—if all goes well, please keep your fingers crossed—to give birth to our first child in the first week of this year’s World Cup. She’s happy because she believes this means I will not be able to watch any of the games. I’m happy because I believe this means I’ll be able to watch them all.
June 9, 2018
Today in Photo
Storm outside, books inside. I love the double image with the reflection in the sliding doors like my study is floating about by the trees. #delhidiary
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June 8, 2018
Today in Photo
Louis Sachar, Newbery Medal winner, National Book Award winner, author best known for Holes and the Wayside school stories and who I recently discovered signed this book i picked up in Daryagunj a while ago. I feel a small thrill, like meeting a celebrity. #signedcopy #bookstagram
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June 6, 2018
Today in Photo
As much as I treat my dresses with love, I handle my bags so roughly that within a year or two they're all scuffed and falling apart, which is a terrible thing to do. Especially since this precious present is the only designer bag I own. RIP Kate Spade, inventor of the best black handbag I've ever had in my entire life. #katespade #whatiworetoday #lotsofbaggage
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