Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 72
April 1, 2018
Today in Photo
Off out to Easter lunch and following the floral theme of the festival to its DEATH. #whatiworetoday #delhidiary
via Instagram
March 29, 2018
Newsletter: Rage, rage against the dying of the light
As always, you can subscribe to my newsletter here for it to arrive into your inbox instead of waiting for me to post it here!
This week in further signifiers of my old age: I taught myself to type. I learned online--the best way--by going on chat rooms and talking to people around the world. Age 14. The internet was brand new in India, my dad needed to amuse me one long summer, so he took me with him to work every now and then, where there was an internet enabled computer. Everything took several minutes to load, but worth it. We got the internet at home, eventually, and soon the speed picked up and so did my typing skills. (You can read all about my early experiments with the internet on this longform piece I did for Yahoo Originals a few years ago.)
So, I wrote everything--six years of journalism, ten years of freelancing, almost ten years of book writing--using my two index fingers. The hunt and peck style so favoured by grannies around the world, except I can go damn fast with my hunt and peck, at my prime, I was averaging five thousand words a day without breaking a sweat. (Now I am old and my words are more considered, so it's down to 2000 including sweating.) Alas, friends! Alas for everything, because now my money makers, my two index fingers, have been FELLED by old age and greed! I started developing a TWINGE in my right forefinger which quickly became an ache which quickly became so bad that I couldn't open things or pull tabs off packets or do all the motor skills stuff you depend on your forefinger and thumb to do.
K is sadly familiar with carpal tunnel syndrome (also known as repetitive strain injury or RSI) but I was foolishly hoping to wait until I finish my next manuscript before I mentioned it, because even as I'm writing this, I'm forcing myself to try and use other fingers but I feel CRIPPLED. Anyway, the pain got too much to ignore and I started to worry about seriously doing myself an injury so now I'm wearing his old wrist guard and I've swapped my mouse around so that it's on my left side (very hard but you have to begin using your left index finger) and I'm trying to type this half on an external keyboard and half on my laptop. In the meanwhile, if any of you have done exercises for your hand and wrist with good results, please share them.
This week in VOGUE VOGUE VOGUE: Went to Sarojini Nagar with my mother--an outing we do quite a lot. I have some secret shopping places both within the large Sarojini Market, some stalls to hit which always yield good results, as well as one more export surplus-y place in East Delhi quite near her house where I always score pretty incredible accessories. I have a rule of thumb when buying stuff off the road: mostly it's about fabric. The synthetic stuff always looks cheap, unless it's got a nice geometric or some such pattern--and you're looking for BIG prints not small. Fitted dresses are tricky to figure out size for, I bought a lovely white cotton dress, but alas, it doesn't zip up all the way, so we had to go to the tailor this morning and get him to add a panel to the sides so it expands a bit. This time though, there wasn't such an embarrassment of riches as there usually is, so I think I'm going to need to make another trip soon. *yay*
Oh, the tailor! It is a temperamental shop with a revolving cast, one masterji, who I barely see and instead deal with a tall, handsome young fellow who appears to be second-in-command, but it is right down the road from me, so I go often and I am ALWAYS optimistic. There's always some dress I used to love but is now too old, too faded, too worn, and I want to revive it by giving it an all new cast and crew as it were. This time I'm aiming for a lovely grey kimono/kurta/dress thing with an orange embroidered panel at the back, and it'll either be AMAZING or.. well, it HAS to be amazing because I am paying seven hundred bucks for it, which may not sound like a lot to you, but is roughly double of what he normally charges because of the complicated sleeves and pockets and what not.
Also last week I bought a lovely dress off Olio Stories. I've been wanting to buy a dress from their website for a while, because it all looks so airy and COOL, like with-sunglasses, not temperature, but it's always been ridiculously expensive (you see how I'm wailing about 700 rups also here, so you get my general spend on clothes) but they're having a clearance sale, so you should check them out while the going's good. (Tip: everything is a bit big so even the small which I ordered is slightly loose on me, but in a nice way.) (I normally wear a medium.) (Check the size charts before you buy ANYTHING on the internet.) (The dress was cheaper when I bought it.)
This week in food and drink: Have all the men left after all that chat about clothes? WELL ANYWAY, I am now going to talk about sausages which is a very manly food--both in shape and in cooking techniques, so come back, men!
Vir Sanghvi just wrote a long wailing column about how there were no good sausages to be had in Delhi, unless you go to the OBEROI, DAHLING, but only because they export everything. Now, Vir Sanghvi is very posh and I am not, so I have ONE WORD to say to him, and that word is Pigpo. Pigpo continues to knock it out of the park in terms of sausages. I am no connoisseur, unlike certain Germans in my life, but the teeny Pigpo sausages, about the size of your thumb, are delicious, freeze well and are incredibly easy to just pop into a pan. With them, last week, I made Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes off this recipe from Lifehacker, which you can also make in your pressure cooker. I substituted the half and half mentioned with coconut milk, and they came out just as creamy and no lingering coconut flavour also. (I seriously pop coconut milk into so many things these days that I've just begun buying loads each time I do.)
Sadly, Pigpo is very far away from me, and while the meat delivery website Lionfresh looks nice and all, it is really only Pigpo I crave. Next time I'm just going to buy two kilos and freeze all of it. Instant sausage fest! Perfect for Sunday night with Netflix.
Wednesday Link List! When Harry Met Sally is definitely on my top five list of best movie of all time. ALL TIME!
Who is my dog? This writer did a DNA test on her mutt.
This week in further signifiers of my old age: I taught myself to type. I learned online--the best way--by going on chat rooms and talking to people around the world. Age 14. The internet was brand new in India, my dad needed to amuse me one long summer, so he took me with him to work every now and then, where there was an internet enabled computer. Everything took several minutes to load, but worth it. We got the internet at home, eventually, and soon the speed picked up and so did my typing skills. (You can read all about my early experiments with the internet on this longform piece I did for Yahoo Originals a few years ago.)
So, I wrote everything--six years of journalism, ten years of freelancing, almost ten years of book writing--using my two index fingers. The hunt and peck style so favoured by grannies around the world, except I can go damn fast with my hunt and peck, at my prime, I was averaging five thousand words a day without breaking a sweat. (Now I am old and my words are more considered, so it's down to 2000 including sweating.) Alas, friends! Alas for everything, because now my money makers, my two index fingers, have been FELLED by old age and greed! I started developing a TWINGE in my right forefinger which quickly became an ache which quickly became so bad that I couldn't open things or pull tabs off packets or do all the motor skills stuff you depend on your forefinger and thumb to do.
K is sadly familiar with carpal tunnel syndrome (also known as repetitive strain injury or RSI) but I was foolishly hoping to wait until I finish my next manuscript before I mentioned it, because even as I'm writing this, I'm forcing myself to try and use other fingers but I feel CRIPPLED. Anyway, the pain got too much to ignore and I started to worry about seriously doing myself an injury so now I'm wearing his old wrist guard and I've swapped my mouse around so that it's on my left side (very hard but you have to begin using your left index finger) and I'm trying to type this half on an external keyboard and half on my laptop. In the meanwhile, if any of you have done exercises for your hand and wrist with good results, please share them.
This week in VOGUE VOGUE VOGUE: Went to Sarojini Nagar with my mother--an outing we do quite a lot. I have some secret shopping places both within the large Sarojini Market, some stalls to hit which always yield good results, as well as one more export surplus-y place in East Delhi quite near her house where I always score pretty incredible accessories. I have a rule of thumb when buying stuff off the road: mostly it's about fabric. The synthetic stuff always looks cheap, unless it's got a nice geometric or some such pattern--and you're looking for BIG prints not small. Fitted dresses are tricky to figure out size for, I bought a lovely white cotton dress, but alas, it doesn't zip up all the way, so we had to go to the tailor this morning and get him to add a panel to the sides so it expands a bit. This time though, there wasn't such an embarrassment of riches as there usually is, so I think I'm going to need to make another trip soon. *yay*
Oh, the tailor! It is a temperamental shop with a revolving cast, one masterji, who I barely see and instead deal with a tall, handsome young fellow who appears to be second-in-command, but it is right down the road from me, so I go often and I am ALWAYS optimistic. There's always some dress I used to love but is now too old, too faded, too worn, and I want to revive it by giving it an all new cast and crew as it were. This time I'm aiming for a lovely grey kimono/kurta/dress thing with an orange embroidered panel at the back, and it'll either be AMAZING or.. well, it HAS to be amazing because I am paying seven hundred bucks for it, which may not sound like a lot to you, but is roughly double of what he normally charges because of the complicated sleeves and pockets and what not.
Also last week I bought a lovely dress off Olio Stories. I've been wanting to buy a dress from their website for a while, because it all looks so airy and COOL, like with-sunglasses, not temperature, but it's always been ridiculously expensive (you see how I'm wailing about 700 rups also here, so you get my general spend on clothes) but they're having a clearance sale, so you should check them out while the going's good. (Tip: everything is a bit big so even the small which I ordered is slightly loose on me, but in a nice way.) (I normally wear a medium.) (Check the size charts before you buy ANYTHING on the internet.) (The dress was cheaper when I bought it.)
This week in food and drink: Have all the men left after all that chat about clothes? WELL ANYWAY, I am now going to talk about sausages which is a very manly food--both in shape and in cooking techniques, so come back, men!
Vir Sanghvi just wrote a long wailing column about how there were no good sausages to be had in Delhi, unless you go to the OBEROI, DAHLING, but only because they export everything. Now, Vir Sanghvi is very posh and I am not, so I have ONE WORD to say to him, and that word is Pigpo. Pigpo continues to knock it out of the park in terms of sausages. I am no connoisseur, unlike certain Germans in my life, but the teeny Pigpo sausages, about the size of your thumb, are delicious, freeze well and are incredibly easy to just pop into a pan. With them, last week, I made Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes off this recipe from Lifehacker, which you can also make in your pressure cooker. I substituted the half and half mentioned with coconut milk, and they came out just as creamy and no lingering coconut flavour also. (I seriously pop coconut milk into so many things these days that I've just begun buying loads each time I do.)
Sadly, Pigpo is very far away from me, and while the meat delivery website Lionfresh looks nice and all, it is really only Pigpo I crave. Next time I'm just going to buy two kilos and freeze all of it. Instant sausage fest! Perfect for Sunday night with Netflix.
Wednesday Link List! When Harry Met Sally is definitely on my top five list of best movie of all time. ALL TIME!
Basically: eat your vegetables.Excerpt: Perhaps because Ephron took so much from real life, When Harry Met Sally is a surprisingly grounded romantic comedy. It’s made up largely of low-stakes hangout scenes that have more in common with today’s more realistic rom-coms than they do the glossy rom-coms of the 2000s. For instance, the film contains perhaps the most hilariously accurate depiction of a game of Pictionary
ever captured on screen. Although the dialogue often has the patter of a play, Reiner and Ephron anchor those well-written conversations in the natural milieu of New York City life. Harry and Sally discuss their dating lives while unrolling a rug or wandering through Central Park or spending a day at The Met, delivering silly banter in goofy voices.
Why should you care about all that Facebook stuff?Excerpt: The body detoxifies itself daily; that’s a primary job of the liver and the kidneys, and they are really good at it. (The intestines, spleen, and immune system are in on it, too.) So, you want to take good care of your liver and kidneys, gut, and immune system. That’s a far better “cleanse” than any juice. How do you take good care of all your detoxifying organ systems? By taking good care of yourself, of course. That means eating well, not smoking, exercising, sleeping enough, managing your stress, and so on.
Three links about pets this week because I will read anything domestic companion animal related. (Sadly, these are all about dogs, but they should get some internet love too.) (Dammit, I want a dog for my collection.)Excerpt: If you keep secrets about yourself, even innocuous ones, Facebook is likely aware of them in some capacity thanks to the sites you visit, the profiles you linger over, the comments you leave. And it’s not comforting to think that you’re not in charge of that data. Remember when we found out the NSA was spying on everyone, and people argued that “if you have nothing to hide then you shouldn’t be worried”? This feels kind of like that. You should care about what companies can learn about you without your permission, and what data they can retain against your wishes.
Who is my dog? This writer did a DNA test on her mutt.
We treat our pets around the same way ancient cave people treated THEIR pets.Excerpt: Oh, you would like to know even more about Peter? If you insist. He has velvet ears. He has a spotted tongue. When he walks down the stairs, at his moderately paced gentleman’s trot, you can tell he’s a bit bow-legged. He has the heart of an angel and the soul of a poet, and there’s a hint of sadness to him that makes you want to protect him against all of the world’s harshness. He has whiskers that are so prominent they make you second-guess whether whiskers are a typical dog trait, or whether he could potentially be part mouse. He will sit his big, fat butt on your lap like he’s tiny, when he is actually 25 pounds. He’s affectionate, but not needy. “He’s just so...kind,” is how a cousin of mine once described him, and it’s true: he’s just so kind. Also he loves to burrow under the covers, and he loves to sleep with his head on a pillow like a tiny little man.
The long and complicated relationship between humans and wolves.Excerpt: As civilization proceeded and small-scale hunter-gatherer societies gave way to urban elites and subservient rural populations, pet keeping entered a completely new phase. In the generally egalitarian communities of the Paleolithic everyone could keep animals as companions, whereas in the highly stratified societies of the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman empires, right up until the twentieth century, the poorest had little opportunity to acquire pets for their own sake. That’s not to say that they didn’t feel affection for dogs and cats, but those animals had to earn their keep. The surviving evidence generally suggests that from the classical period (fifth and fourth centuries bce) until the end of the nineteenth century, pets played a part in the lives of the wealthiest members of society. As the less well-off inevitably left fewer traces of their lives, we can only guess at how they interacted with their animals; no doubt they had less time and fewer resources to devote to them. Not until the nineteenth century, with the rise of the middle classes, did the keeping of pets for their own sake become widespread once more.
Excerpt: It is alarming, although perhaps predictable, that in the US attitudes toward wolves are becoming divided along political lines, with Republicans continuing to introduce and support laws that restrict or persecute them, while First Nations people and many Democrats are much more tolerant, or even encouraging, of the animals. In Europe, by contrast, a more easygoing relationship is being established, as was demonstrated in 2016 when one of the first wolves to enter the Netherlands in centuries crossed the border from Germany. It wandered the streets of a village for several days, the sanguine Dutch displaying little more than minor concern. Elsewhere in Europe, however, where wolves cause more harm to livestock, schemes are in place whereby farmers are compensated by the EU for losses to their flocks. Conflict between wolves and humans in Europe will doubtless continue, but in Europe wolves have a bright future, in part because most landowners seem willing to abide by laws and regulations formulated to address their interactions with the animals. In the US, however, wolves continue to be shot whenever they encroach onto private land. As a result, today more wolves can be found in Europe than in all the US, including Alaska, despite the fact that Europe’s human population is more than twice as large as that of the US.
March 27, 2018
Today in Photo
Read this week for column, book review and pleasure. Some days I love my job. #bookstagram #158in2018
via Instagram
March 26, 2018
Today in Photo
"Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones - In fact, he's remarkably fat. He doesn't haunt pubs - he has eight or nine clubs, For he's the St. James's Street Cat! He's the Cat we all greet as he walks down the street In his coat of fastidious black: No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousers Or such an impeccable back. In the whole of St. James's the smartest of names is The name of this Brummell of Cats; And we're all of us proud to be nodded or bowed to By Bustopher Jones in white spats!" - Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats #catsagram #bruno
via Instagram
March 24, 2018
Today in Photo
The karela vines grow like CRAZY, even though they were just planted two weeks ago, they're already taller than I am. We're going to get a bumper crop again, but luckily, I am a fan. Glad to see the end of the kohlrabi though, just one more harvest and they're done. Investing some time in flowers too so the garden looks pretty AND functional so was excited to see my new buds on the jasmine and the long arms and new flowers of the bougainvillea. Practically stopped smoking at home so I don't have a chance to go hang out on the terrace much, so I'm making myself step outside and watch all the green growing things every now and then. #terracegarden #eatwhatyougrow #karela #thegourdsmustbecrazy #delhidiary
via Instagram
March 21, 2018
Today in Photo
Cat lady dilemma: how am I supposed to go back to work NOW? #catsagram #blackcatsofinstagram #squishy
via Instagram
March 18, 2018
Today in Photo
Felt like drawing this morning so I did this portrait of a famous person. Can you guess who it is? Hint: she's very posh and about 40 years younger than my drawing skills make her look. #wacom #sketchSundays
via Instagram
March 15, 2018
Newsletter: Alexa and hula hoops
As always you can subscribe to this newsletter in your inbox in a timely fashion over here.
This week in New Household Members: We are Smart Homed! Well, a little bit anyway. My dad had an Amazon Echo speaker, which he really only used to ask the question "Alexa, how old is Mammootty?" Which is a great party trick, but he found he had no other use for it, so on a recent trip to Cochin, he passed it on to me. I did some research about stuff you can do with Alexa here in India, and while they range from ordering stuff on Amazon to booking a cab, I find myself using it for two things: 1) when I say "Alexa, good morning" she reads me the news from three different sources and ends with a weather report, which is a great way to start your day, especially if, like me, you don't get any newspapers. 2) I've discovered how much I miss having a steady stream of music in the background all day, and so I just call out "Alexa, play ambient music!" (Ambient or baroque is what I use to write to, it's easier when it's music without words and sort of gentle that you can tune in or out of.) but usually I have on a radio station called Radio Paradise, which has been a revelation.
The Echo can pull up music for you from both Amazon Prime music as well as TuneIn, which is an internet radio app that collates a bunch of different stations from around the world (including all of the Beeb), and when I searched online to find the best station on there for a work day, a bunch of people on forums said Radio Paradise was amazing. It is, actually, kind of amazing. We've had people over a lot the last week, and Radio Paradise has been the background score all through. They play a mix of jazz/rock/country and folk. Yesterday, the RJ said that Alexa had integrated Radio Paradise as one of the skills, so all I have to do now is say, "Alexa, play Radio Paradise" instead of "Alexa, on the TuneIn app open Radio Paradise." Oh, and I'm also very pleased with the fact that I can say, "Alexa, volume up!" from across the house and she does it. I have fully drunk of the Kool Aid, and K is so jealous despite the fact that he banished Alexa to my study because he "didn't want Jeff Bezos to listen to all our conversations" that he has built his own Alexa from scratch, which is very impressive, but not as nice as mine.
Oh, and if you're looking for a cool station to listen to at work, Radio Paradise is also streaming. It's not just algorithm driven music, it's real people choosing a playlist which means the music is all very good.
This week in New Fads: If you follow me on Instagram, you will have no doubt seen the extremely dorky video of me trying to hula hoop, while my friends Rosalyn and Janice manage it with ease and panache. However, it was great fun to do---Rosalyn brought over her hula hoop to show us, as she had just been converted into the cult by our friend Mrig in Goa. And I was so inspired, I made an impulsive drunk purchase and bought my own, which should arrive next week. I do like to TRY all the exercise forms possible, before I decide they're not for me. No one can say I don't have an open mind, I'm just very very lazy and also tend to lose patience if I'm not amazing at the new thing within the first two days. Hula hooping could totally be my new thing though. I'm optimistic.
Meanwhile, I've been sorta kinda doing yoga again with the help of an app called Down Dog, which I recommend highly. You can set your experience level, how long you want to do it for, what areas of your body you want to focus on and so on, and it's free! I got bored of our old yoga teacher, and this for about 12 to 20 minutes a day is more challenging, plus we don't have to make small talk. How soon before I completely forget how to talk to new people, do you think?
Last week in travel: Since we last spoke, I was in Cochin for a very brief trip to speak at the Krithi Lit Fest. I had a lovely session talking about women and mythology with Namita Gokhale, moderated by my friend (and sometimes editor) Manasi Subramaniam. Later that night, we all went out to dinner with my father, who took us to the Seagull Club in Fort Kochi, which I recommend to anyone in that area. So lovely, the restaurant has a sit out that's right over the water. Then the next day I came back to Delhi and I will be here for some time, even though little pangs about a holiday that is not lit fest or wedding related are happening. As soon as I finish my book!
Friday Link List For The Bored And The Weary
Super Bollywood movie type story by Snigdha on a juvenile school shooter in Haryana who turned into a Don.
Excerpt: Akash was keen to return to “normal life”. In 2008, he came out of the observation home on bail. He was 15. His parents had moved back to their village, Bhamrauli, on Pataudi road in Gurgaon. In 2010, he took his Class 10 board exam from an open school in Faridabad. “Then, we admitted him to a regular school in Faridabad for Classes 11 and 12, but a friend of Abhishek’s joined the school a few months after, told everyone about Akash’s past, and the principal asked us to take our son out,” said Kamlesh, his mother. The family made a few more attempts at returning him to school. “They always found out who I was and struck my name off the rolls,” said Akash.Next time you take your laptop to a coffee shop, maybe don't.
Excerpt: Logging in for two hours of free Wi-Fi requires the user’s email address, which goes onto the Rose’s mailing list — and while people can log right back in, the expiration reminds them that it might be time to order another round. Servers circulate to ask if they can get something else for a customer tied to his electronic devices. And Wi-Fi service ends at 5:30 p.m., to signal that the workday has ended and dinner service is about to begin. [... ]Mr. Neroni tried extending the Wi-Fi until 7 one night, “as an experiment,” he said. “People looked up and figured we forgot to turn it off. And it was ‘Oh, boy,’ and a line of people carrying their open laptops into the dining room so they could keep working.”Related: how remote working may not be as incredible as it looks.
Excerpt: The desire to live cheaply abroad while remaining part of a like-minded social group makes a certain amount of sense. But how can you be confident that a random collection of fellow travelers won’t undermine your productivity and happiness, to say nothing of being fun or intellectually stimulating? Maybe I just have a bad attitude, but in my experience, most people are a little annoying, even the ones with good hearts and minds. Think of any coffee shop you’ve been to and how elusive productivity can be—with patrons talking loudly, lingering at the register when there’s a line, piling their personal effects on adjacent tables that others might want to use.If you want to keep believing in magic, don't look at these behind-the-scenes photos of the Harry Potter movies.
Excerpt: Most people are (well aware that Robbie Coltrane isn’t actually as tall as Rubeus Hagrid. He’s playing a character, and with some simple movie magic, audiences can be led to believe that Coltrane is actually a half-giant wizard without a single shred of doubt. Still, though, seeing him out of costume seated beside a stunt double in a half-giant Hagrid suit doesn’t feel right. What’s worse is that the double is holding a dummy of Harry Potter, and Coltrane is gently rubbing its chin.While I continue to love This Is Us, this parody is very funny.
Excerpt: JACK: The way you know I’m great is that everyone keeps insisting how great I am.
REBECCA: How are you so perfect, babe?
JACK: Let’s do this activity before I die, which is absolutely going to happen.
I love this project called The Museum of Material Memory founded by Aanchal Malhotra which gets people to write in with their family keepsakes.
Excerpt: In those days, it was customary to include a cabinet for dolls in a bride’s wedding presents; this was at a time when most brides were no more than ten or twelve years old. The doll’s showcase possibly travelled with many child brides, across paddy fields and city by lanes, keeping pace with palanquins and jostling on boats across Bengal’s wide rivers. For these child brides, the doll’s showcase served as an antidote to homesickness, as a pacifier to deal with the pangs of separation at a tender age. In a strange new life, it was a vestige of the familiar and the known, a reminder of a home so far away. And though my grandmother was no child bride, custom demanded that a doll’s showcase follow her to her affinal home. Complete with a set of miniature silver utensils- the wooden showcase found pride of place in one corner of the marble floored drawing room in her new house. But my grandmother dreamt beyond the roles of domesticity that the young owner of such a showcase was generally relegated to. She wanted to fill this wooden cabinet, with its glass paned doors and rounded patterns, with dolls from across the world. And that’s just how it came to be.\
March 9, 2018
Newsletter: My endless wordcount days
Grooving to that Saturday beatThis week in domesticated companion animals: Bruno has taken to yowling outside the bedroom door (which all three cats are on the other side of because they like to party all night and we do not). He times these yowls just when I'm in the middle of a dream, so I haven't even finished my full REM circle, and when I wake up mid-dream I wind up just dozing for the rest of the night, until I am properly awake. Plus I have to pee. And when I get up to go to the loo, I may as well stay up because there's no way I'm getting back to sleep.
All that to explain why at 7.30 this morning, I lay in bed watching the early morning light at the edges of our blinds. Stupid cat.
When I wake up in the morning, I pad along into the living room and pull up the blinds there--I don't know how many more days THAT'S going to last, friends, we had the fan on all night for the first time yesterday, and I'm craving gin and tonics instead of red wine, my usual summer switch. Anyway, next door has a pet rooster called Lodhi, I feel like I've told you about him already, but recently they have added a puppy to their household. (I suspect this puppy is part of a litter we've been seeing on the road recently, very cute things in that fluffy confident way all puppies are, except with a certain insouciance of expression that only Indian street dogs have. One puppy had his paw run over, poor little thing, but seems to have either made a full recovery or vanished and this is another black puppy I've been admiring all the while.) Anyway, in a totally non-creepy way, I see next door's young daughter with her pets on the terrace when I open the blinds. Some days she just cradles the rooster and walks him around while the puppy follows at her feet, but usually it's just her sitting on the stairs with her mobile and the puppy curled up and asleep just under her legs. Today I saw someone else on the terrace, but the puppy was in his usual spot anyway. I'm still not even circling the idea of having children, but I do want a dog one day again. But only when we stop travelling and can stay still for a moment.
This week in the movies: It's the Oscars today, and while I've long given up the pretense that movies even have a fighting chance in my entertainment schedule (books, TV, meeting people with the last two often sacrificed for travel) we did go to watch Black Panther on Holi, after all the festivities had died down and the roads were as empty as a hill station after a long weekend. The movie was great, not least because of the 3D glasses and the big bucket of popcorn, and all the other people instead of just being in our house. I could have lived without the girl next to me who was one of those people who insist on reading aloud stuff that isn't said by the characters. You know the type, the two characters are in front of a store and she's saying the name of the store out loud, the dialogue hasn't caught up with the subtitles so she repeats the last word and laughs. SO ANNOYING.
Anyway, a lot of people will be recommending Black Panther at you, so you shouldn't just take my word for it. It is a superhero movie, but also an utopian one, which I realise I haven't actually seen before, my world being peopled mostly by DYStopia.
This week in the writing life: I am working very hard and should be done with the first draft of The One Who Had Two Lives (the story of Amba and Shikhandini) by April if all goes well, and even taking into account the two days I will be travelling (going to Cochin tomorrow for the Krithi Lit Fest, but because I'm so ensconced in the book right now, for the first time ever I am not extending my trip longer than the one day I have a session so I should be able to get work done both before and after.)
Speaking of lit fests, here are my thoughts on the Gateway lit fest in Mumbai where I was last week.
And my book recommendation column is up for this month which also includes a meditation on bookstores in general.
This week in favours: This newsletter is only 15 (!!!) subscribers away from 400. It would be wonderful if you forwarded people this email or sent them a link to this sign up page. I like round numbers. THANK YOU.
The mostly-bookish Monday link list!
(A reader wrote to me last week asking if I could change the formatting of the link list so that the excerpts came AFTER the link. It made sense, so I'm trying it. Let me know how you feel about it, if you have strong feelings at all, that is.)
* While we're talking about Black Panther, let's also gaze in wonderment at everyone's new boyfriend Michael with-a-B Jordan*
Dammit Jojo Moyes, is there anything you write that won't make people cry? This story of her rescue mountain dog is not the exception.
Excerpt: It goes without saying that Michael B. Jordan is hot. And he’s jacked. And he has a super-cute smile, I suppose, as well as maybe the cutest nose in the world. But there’s something more than all of that going on. What’s the science behind his rebranding as the shiny internet-at-large’s newest boyfriend? What has made this conventionally hot, anime-loving, lives-with-his-parents-in-New-Jersey movie star truly ascend into the pantheon of thirst?
Excerpt: It’s not without its challenges. The carpet shampooer is in frequent use — her weak bladder means she needs walking every three hours. She disapproves fiercely of cyclists, scooters, and, once (to our utter mortification), a motorized wheelchair. She fosters irrational dislikes and has to be shut away to stop her “herding” of the odd guest. She has nearly dislocated my shoulder and requires regular specialist grooming and glucosamine for her joints, and if she sits on your lap, you have twenty minutes before your legs go numb and start falling off.This was a great reading week for me. I finished two books I'm recommending to everyone: Dreamers by Snigdha Poonam and Lullaby by Leila Slimani, a French writer who got so popular, they're asking her to go into government.
Excerpt: There is not a lot of great contemporary literature about motherhood. It is as bad as sex. We have myths, we have Bible stories, we have fairy tales, we have Peppa Pig, but it is not often that you open a novel and encounter people buying socks, picking glitter out of floorboards, putting away toys in plastic bins. Like Jenny Offill, Slimani can write ravishingly of female bodies, even postpartum ones (“her belly of folds and waves, where they built their house, where so many worries and joys flowered”), but “Chanson Douce” is not so much about motherhood as it is about what the cultural theorist Angela McRobbie has called the “neoliberal intensification of mothering.” An activity, not a state, mothering—along with its gender-neutral version, parenting—is competitive and outsourceable. Slimani tries to put a price on the anxieties, hypocrisies, and inequalities that arise from the commodification of our most intimate relationships.I am Diane from Anne of Green Gables and I am fucking drunk (because there will never be an Anne thing I do not link to.)
Excerpt: Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaa! You gotta do it, go real low then stand up. Try it! Seriously! Oh my god, it’s like… WHOA, you know? Ugh, where is all the DICK! I’m so horny I’d fuck Fred — what’s his name? The pink-faced one? He’s like, ugly hot, you know? Like, you hate yourself but that’s part of it. Omigod, shut up Anne you’re gonna marry Gilbert Fuckin’ Blythe but the rest of us gotta eat, too. Is Ruby Gillis’s brother around? Still? Because I would. You know I would.In which Supriya goes for a book swap blind date and hilarity and insights ensue.
Excerpt: I was bewitched, although I could not have felt flirty or romantic about the whole exchange any less had they been my own children. In any case, the atmosphere was not one of flirtation. The “dating” in this speed dating event was a gentle irony. Singles in the greater Bandra area are so self-conscious and narcissistic that, like the Zumba instructor I once had, we’re all at our best blowing kisses to ourselves in the mirror.Movie rights are not always amazing, just ask these twenty authors who hated the film adaptations of their books. At least this is what I tell myself to feel better.
Excerpt: I went to the theater bought my ticket and popcorn, and found a seat. Then onto the screen came an insane fisherman carrying an ice hook. He wasn’t in my book. I thought, You know, this is a big complex; maybe I’ve walked into the wrong theater. So I was preparing to leave and then, no, up from below rolled the words “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” and I thought, That is my book, but who is that man and what is he going to do with that ice hook? Well, I soon found out. He was going to decapitate my characters. Their heads were flying off, and their blood was spurting, and everybody was screaming, and I was screaming. I was so horrified I couldn’t even open my popcorn.I closed open DMs on my Twitter because all I got was young men saying "Hi." It's a global epidemic.
Excerpt: t’s unclear who coined the term, or for that matter, how it’s actually spelled. Some go with numerous As (e.g., “fraaaandship”), while others disregard the D entirely (e.g., “fraanship”). Either way, fraandships refer to the kind of guys who randomly add people living in the West on Facebook with an accompanying message begging you to accept their request. They slide into your DMs on Twitter or add you to a giant group chat (usually featuring celebrities, brands and/or other verified people). They send adoring emails to your work account and tag you in all of their posts, regardless of their content.This family was so tired of paying rent AND EMIs they moved into their Noida housing society and now they're the only ones there.
Excerpt: The towers are serviced by three lifts. At tower D, where Charu stays, all the three lifts are functional. She has organised a cab for her kids for their commute to school and back. The only activity one hears at the Sports Wood is the noise from other flats where construction is still on — finishing work on floors, windows and doors is still in progress in many apartments.
March 7, 2018
Today in Photo
Here I am in another hotel room. I wanted to travel lots this year, as I do every year, but I didn't realise that all my travel would be in the first two months of 2018. After this quick trip to Kochi, I am Delhi bound for a while, finishing my book, watching spring turn to summer, catching up with people and my life. Maybe that's why I'm drawn to this staircase, the zigzag nature of our days. Forgive me, I'm on my second cup of coffee and I have no one else to talk to right now let alone free associate with. #traveldiary #cochin #litfestlife #stairs
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