Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 76
January 12, 2018
Quick review: People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry
Lucie Blackman, only a few years older than me, vanished in Tokyo where she had been working as a hostess in 2000. Obsessed with this book, it's even staining my dreams. Pictured here fittingly with a plate of sushi from a new Japanese restaurant we found in Anjuna yesterday, it's true crime but also a sociological text, it's someone else's life but it could have so easily been someone I know. In Delhi, we were offered hostess jobs all the time in college, hostess or "car show girls" and while it seemed a seedy way to make money to me it was always a little tempting. So much cash just to stand around and be friendly. But if any of those young women had been raped and murdered i can bet the cops would spin a long story about prostitution and what not. All this to say that you should read it! Read it! (oh also this is part of my #readharder2018 challenge I got from book riot which is fun to do.) #158in2018 #bookstagram #nowreading
via Instagram
January 6, 2018
Today in Photo
Yesterday morning I woke up super early (for me) and was lying in bed at 7 am, tossing and turning and trying to get back to sleep. Eventually, I decided to just give up and read a book, which is when I finished Every Heart A Doorway, which is about rehabilitating kids who go through doorways to other worlds, Narnia etc. Interesting premise but the book was a bit flat for all of that, an unnecessary mystery and too much exposition. The same streak of meh reading continued with Paul Auster's New York Trilogy which I finally had to abandon because it irritated me so much but HURRAY Behold The Dreamers is SO good it is restoring my faith in the world. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #nowreading #158in2018
via Instagram
January 4, 2018
FOMO? More like HAMO!* (on social menopause in this busy age)
(* that's... errr... happy about missing out.)
(This piece was first published in Scroll at the end of 2016 and since then, the symptoms described have become even stronger.)
It's a surreal sort of feeling when you realise that one of your favourite sensations is when a plan that has been laid out and is waiting for you has been cancelled the afternoon of the event. There's a sense of liberation, an “ahh, now I can stay indoors,” a cozy, pit-of-your-stomach warming that comes with the anticipation of an evening spent in your pajamas, doing nothing but surfing the internet or reading a book or binge-watching a TV show. It's almost as if this plan cancellation has created time out of thin air, a pocket of free hours to do with as you wish.
Long ago, in a book of fairy tales by Alison Uttley, I read a story about a man who was selling time. He offered a free hour to anyone who wanted it, and the story went on to follow a busy housewife who wanted to dance, a painter who wanted an extra hour to paint and so on. The children in the story followed behind the vendor jeering, “Who needs time? We have all we need!” and since I was those children then, I too wondered at a world where adults would need to “buy” an extra hour. It was never my favourite story in that book, but if a time man came by today, shaking his golden hourglasses, I'd buy one. I might even buy two, if he'd let me. And what would I do with this spare time? I suspect I would do what I usually do—spend it reading or thinking or talking to someone one-on-one, close activities that conjure up nothing more exciting than a cup of tea or a purring cat.
And yet, I used to be one of Those People in the early 2000s and the beginning of my twenties. You know “those people”: they're always on the go, their Sundays require a Monday because Sundays are full on, restless activity, from a boozy brunch to late dinner, phone constantly buzzing with texts and messages. A weekend that isn't complete with at least three house parties, preferably all on the same night so you could prove your social credentials by hopping from one to another, never putting your handbag down, because you could never settle. I took pride in my ability to socialise, relentlessly, without getting bored of having the same three conversations over and over again, pride in my throbbing head the next few days, because I knew what FOMO meant before the acronym was even invented. I went to parties and I blogged about them later; not because someone was paying me for it, but because by then my audience expected to see what I had done that weekend by Monday night, they waited for it, fingers poised above the comments button. What had I worn? Who had I kissed? What was Delhi like? And I delivered—spilling out insecurities and nausea, a little banter which I wished I could have actually said instead of only writing out on my blog, and so on and so forth. And, yet, I never realised that my favourite bit was actually the sitting at home and writing about all of my activities later.
I only came across “social menopause” as a term when this article was commissioned and I went looking for it. But it's so perfect! The feeling of slowing down in your late twenties and early thirties, when you'd rather go to a quiet restaurant than a heaving nightclub, when your best social evenings can be summed up with three friends and a bottle of wine on your coffee table, and you try and not schedule more than one engagement per weekend, because it takes you the rest of the week to recover. Everything is slowing down, and unless your friends keep pace with the extent of your ageing, sometimes it's quite lonely. They're all “WHEE CLUBS!” and the most exciting thing on your calendar is finishing watching Stranger Thingson Netflix finally.
Especially now with the end of December upon us. Is there any other month in the whole year so full of anticipation and dread as this month? For me, in particular, this is also the month of my birth, so there's always that great expectation. As far back as I can remember, I've spent the week running up to my birthday wishing that birthdays were never invented, but also really looking forward to it at the same time. The day of my actual party, I'd be the one probably having a nervous breakdown from all the emotions, and so was fairly casual about the rest of the year. (Happy to report that this year, as always, I had a super time.) Anyway, for those of us not born in December, and there's the whole New Year's Thing. Oh god, the New Year's Thing. Anxious emails start going out in August, your social media feed gets filled with people running away, and finally there's only about a handful of you left in the same city, and what do you know? Each of those people is having their own individual New Year's Eve party. This is where you can either ride out your ageing (“I'd rather stay home and celebrate with one other person and a nice whiskey”) or be rebellious and rage against the dying of the light. I found my friends in general falling into two camps: the ones that had achieved social menopause (SoMe) before me and the ones who were still ready to put on their high heels at the slightest bell of a Whatsapp group message.
The older SoMes usually had some sort of extenuating reason: some had married, and as marrieds, you were more excused from the usual carousel of social stuff than single people, the reason being that people with husbands or wives had to answer to one more person at home. Some had embraced their SoMes way before any of us did, and you knew not to ask those people out on Saturday night. They were your Thursday evening coffee friends, or your Tuesday impromptu early dinner friends, they could usually cook pretty well, and because they spent so much time at home, their homes, unlike yours, would be tidy and perfect, no plastic dishes, no need to BYOB either. You judged them a little bit before you went over, but there'd be a moment, when you'd be standing by their bookshelves, and it was only about 10.30 pm but the night was obviously, clearly over, and you'd envy them their surety. How nice to be so certain about your place in the world.
The ones not yet in SoMe desperately clung on to the last of the partying like they knew what was coming. Every time you messaged, “Not tonight, I'm tired” it was a betrayal. They were an army poised against ageing, and you were the person down, leaving them with fewer and fewer to fight. They took to new friends sometimes, and you'd see them smiling out at you from Facebook or Instagram photos, each captioned “best night ever!!!!” with duck face and glitter shoulders. Some, you'd lose track of entirely: there they were at a music festival in Berlin! There they were on a beach! There they were anywhere but home where things grew old, trying to recreate Neverland. They were the Lost Boys and Girls, and sometimes you run into them at parties, but often you take in the feather headpieces, the carefully faded t-shirt with an aspirational slogan and you hide behind the kitchen cabinets so they won't see you, and anyway they're not at the party long enough to notice you were there. Others come limping back to you once they're done, and now it's them who message you, “Can't make tonight, have had a hectic day at work.” And you message back a sad face, but secretly you're sort of glad that the guilt of cancelling isn't on you.
But I recently hit my mid-thirties. And I can see a glimmer—the very faintest little Tinkerbell light—in the distance. Now that it's okay for me to stay home for three weeks in a row, I'm suddenly up for being social again. I've accepted my SoMe, made peace with it, and as a result, my calendar is filling up. My blog is a thirty something's musings now, people don't engage with me on it, but occasionally there's the fun of taking the perfect picture, writing the perfect caption, composing the perfect tweet storm. Interestingly, my older SoMe friends are feeling more and more that way too—a few are hunting for the perfect New Year's Eve bash, while my friends who had not yet achieved SoMe-ness, are talking of quiet evenings at home. Maybe this is how the world is going to whirl now with all of us and longer life expectancies, maybe it will ebb and flow, like the end of Gatsby: “and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
(This piece was first published in Scroll at the end of 2016 and since then, the symptoms described have become even stronger.)
It's a surreal sort of feeling when you realise that one of your favourite sensations is when a plan that has been laid out and is waiting for you has been cancelled the afternoon of the event. There's a sense of liberation, an “ahh, now I can stay indoors,” a cozy, pit-of-your-stomach warming that comes with the anticipation of an evening spent in your pajamas, doing nothing but surfing the internet or reading a book or binge-watching a TV show. It's almost as if this plan cancellation has created time out of thin air, a pocket of free hours to do with as you wish.
Long ago, in a book of fairy tales by Alison Uttley, I read a story about a man who was selling time. He offered a free hour to anyone who wanted it, and the story went on to follow a busy housewife who wanted to dance, a painter who wanted an extra hour to paint and so on. The children in the story followed behind the vendor jeering, “Who needs time? We have all we need!” and since I was those children then, I too wondered at a world where adults would need to “buy” an extra hour. It was never my favourite story in that book, but if a time man came by today, shaking his golden hourglasses, I'd buy one. I might even buy two, if he'd let me. And what would I do with this spare time? I suspect I would do what I usually do—spend it reading or thinking or talking to someone one-on-one, close activities that conjure up nothing more exciting than a cup of tea or a purring cat.
And yet, I used to be one of Those People in the early 2000s and the beginning of my twenties. You know “those people”: they're always on the go, their Sundays require a Monday because Sundays are full on, restless activity, from a boozy brunch to late dinner, phone constantly buzzing with texts and messages. A weekend that isn't complete with at least three house parties, preferably all on the same night so you could prove your social credentials by hopping from one to another, never putting your handbag down, because you could never settle. I took pride in my ability to socialise, relentlessly, without getting bored of having the same three conversations over and over again, pride in my throbbing head the next few days, because I knew what FOMO meant before the acronym was even invented. I went to parties and I blogged about them later; not because someone was paying me for it, but because by then my audience expected to see what I had done that weekend by Monday night, they waited for it, fingers poised above the comments button. What had I worn? Who had I kissed? What was Delhi like? And I delivered—spilling out insecurities and nausea, a little banter which I wished I could have actually said instead of only writing out on my blog, and so on and so forth. And, yet, I never realised that my favourite bit was actually the sitting at home and writing about all of my activities later.
I only came across “social menopause” as a term when this article was commissioned and I went looking for it. But it's so perfect! The feeling of slowing down in your late twenties and early thirties, when you'd rather go to a quiet restaurant than a heaving nightclub, when your best social evenings can be summed up with three friends and a bottle of wine on your coffee table, and you try and not schedule more than one engagement per weekend, because it takes you the rest of the week to recover. Everything is slowing down, and unless your friends keep pace with the extent of your ageing, sometimes it's quite lonely. They're all “WHEE CLUBS!” and the most exciting thing on your calendar is finishing watching Stranger Thingson Netflix finally.
Especially now with the end of December upon us. Is there any other month in the whole year so full of anticipation and dread as this month? For me, in particular, this is also the month of my birth, so there's always that great expectation. As far back as I can remember, I've spent the week running up to my birthday wishing that birthdays were never invented, but also really looking forward to it at the same time. The day of my actual party, I'd be the one probably having a nervous breakdown from all the emotions, and so was fairly casual about the rest of the year. (Happy to report that this year, as always, I had a super time.) Anyway, for those of us not born in December, and there's the whole New Year's Thing. Oh god, the New Year's Thing. Anxious emails start going out in August, your social media feed gets filled with people running away, and finally there's only about a handful of you left in the same city, and what do you know? Each of those people is having their own individual New Year's Eve party. This is where you can either ride out your ageing (“I'd rather stay home and celebrate with one other person and a nice whiskey”) or be rebellious and rage against the dying of the light. I found my friends in general falling into two camps: the ones that had achieved social menopause (SoMe) before me and the ones who were still ready to put on their high heels at the slightest bell of a Whatsapp group message.
The older SoMes usually had some sort of extenuating reason: some had married, and as marrieds, you were more excused from the usual carousel of social stuff than single people, the reason being that people with husbands or wives had to answer to one more person at home. Some had embraced their SoMes way before any of us did, and you knew not to ask those people out on Saturday night. They were your Thursday evening coffee friends, or your Tuesday impromptu early dinner friends, they could usually cook pretty well, and because they spent so much time at home, their homes, unlike yours, would be tidy and perfect, no plastic dishes, no need to BYOB either. You judged them a little bit before you went over, but there'd be a moment, when you'd be standing by their bookshelves, and it was only about 10.30 pm but the night was obviously, clearly over, and you'd envy them their surety. How nice to be so certain about your place in the world.
The ones not yet in SoMe desperately clung on to the last of the partying like they knew what was coming. Every time you messaged, “Not tonight, I'm tired” it was a betrayal. They were an army poised against ageing, and you were the person down, leaving them with fewer and fewer to fight. They took to new friends sometimes, and you'd see them smiling out at you from Facebook or Instagram photos, each captioned “best night ever!!!!” with duck face and glitter shoulders. Some, you'd lose track of entirely: there they were at a music festival in Berlin! There they were on a beach! There they were anywhere but home where things grew old, trying to recreate Neverland. They were the Lost Boys and Girls, and sometimes you run into them at parties, but often you take in the feather headpieces, the carefully faded t-shirt with an aspirational slogan and you hide behind the kitchen cabinets so they won't see you, and anyway they're not at the party long enough to notice you were there. Others come limping back to you once they're done, and now it's them who message you, “Can't make tonight, have had a hectic day at work.” And you message back a sad face, but secretly you're sort of glad that the guilt of cancelling isn't on you.
But I recently hit my mid-thirties. And I can see a glimmer—the very faintest little Tinkerbell light—in the distance. Now that it's okay for me to stay home for three weeks in a row, I'm suddenly up for being social again. I've accepted my SoMe, made peace with it, and as a result, my calendar is filling up. My blog is a thirty something's musings now, people don't engage with me on it, but occasionally there's the fun of taking the perfect picture, writing the perfect caption, composing the perfect tweet storm. Interestingly, my older SoMe friends are feeling more and more that way too—a few are hunting for the perfect New Year's Eve bash, while my friends who had not yet achieved SoMe-ness, are talking of quiet evenings at home. Maybe this is how the world is going to whirl now with all of us and longer life expectancies, maybe it will ebb and flow, like the end of Gatsby: “and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Today in Photo
I'm going to try and log ALLLLL the books I read this year on Instagram as well as just writing down the names for myself just as an experiment, and so you can see that when it comes to a certain type of fiction I read so rapidly, I'm done in a day while other books take dayZZZ sometimes even weeks. I read fast, which makes it easier for me to read a lot. I also write fast. Sometimes I slow myself down on purpose but usually I go with the flow and enjoy the breathlessness of it. Ann Patchett has been coming as "recommended for you" for a while & I loved A State Of Wonder so bought this second hand. (I love Anne Tyler, another Anne! And her style is similar.)Soft slow building sweet. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #nowreading #158in2018
via Instagram
January 3, 2018
Today in Photo
My first new book for the new year! (finished Six Four yesterday and mostly enjoyed it.) I've only ever read Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier and this isn't a Gothic supernatural book like most of her others. Instead it's about a family: three siblings and their peculiar relationship with each other. I love stories about large families, especially ones like this that go backwards and forwards through time and Du Maurier is such a master of the little details that it's been a quick greedy read, only begun last night and I'm already halfway through. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #nowreading #158in2018
via Instagram
December 31, 2017
Newsletter: Year end recap edition
December 31st, and tomorrow is both a Monday and the beginning of a new year. It seems a bit silly to set so much store by a calendar date, but I'm sort of swept up in the global excitement. It seems like a new year is like a blank page in a brand new notebook: anything could happen. Anything could also happen on the first of September for example, but you know what I mean. It's also the day when you look back on the year that passed and do a report card for yourself. Ends of years are useful for taking stock, especially on a cold morning like this one, when the sun is weakly pushing through the fog, and your hot water bottle is warm against your belly.
I had a pretty good year. Some self-doubt crept in re: my writing, but I hope to conquer the little critical voices in my head and move on in 2018. After all, as a writer of fiction, you should exist only to please yourself and not the sales figures or literary festivals or what have you. Maybe there will always be self doubt, because there's always someone you compare yourself to, and we all, ultimately, want to be JK Rowling or Neil Gaiman, or failing that, Margaret Atwood. I'm grateful to my readers though, and everyone who has sent me a message or an email saying that they liked my books and what I do, it's very heartening, especially when you think you're going it alone. A few things will be recalibrated for me in 2018, but they are all baby, nascent ideas, and I'll tell you all about them when they are actually in practice. I will be finishing the next book of my Girls Of The Mahabharata series early next year and I have an essay out in a Penguin anthology which will be released in February, so I'm still writing, and writing makes me happy. (It's only post publishing that all the doubts start to creep in.)
Anyway, that's the bitterness of the pill, here's the sweet!
This year in life events: We got married! We were never very marriage-y people, but we came to the decision with the same certainity we've approached most things in our relationship: it's the right thing for us to do at this point. The boring reason: we wanted it to be easier to live and work in each other's countries. The romantic reason: love and all those other things. Our wedding was almost exactly how I wanted it to be (the only thing I would change was not being so tired after three days of partying--despite the fact that we had a "low key" wedding, we wound up having three parties anyway. Small intimate parties, but parties nonetheless.) Life has... not changed a bit. Most often, we forget we're married, except when we're using wedding presents around the house.
This year in bucket lists: I loved my month in Europe, even though now, five months later, it's taken on the dreamy quality in my memory of someone else's life. We went from Germany to Spain, from Spain to France, from France to Luxembourg, from Luxembourg to the Netherlands (via Belgium.) I got to see Europe by road, by train and by plane. I got to have expensive meals (at the beginning of my trip) and two euro steak and wine (at the end) and I loved all of it, even being broke, a little bit. Through my entire trip, I had this vague feeling of standing outside my body watching myself: pinch me, this is real, this is happening.
This year in writing: Many MANY freelance assignments. A few of my favourites: fancy book launches in Mint, how The Handmaid's Tale is relevant in modern India for Scroll, re-examining Marilla Cuthbert for Indian Express, on children's literature for Mint again, on reading the childhood memoirs of your favourite authors for Open, on why myth-lit is so popular for Deccan Chronicle. This plus several columns made my year one of heavy reading.
I also had a new book (The One Who Swam With The Fishes) out last summer, and read a lot more about the Mahabharata than I ever expected I would, and now I can rattle off back stories and sub-plots and literary analyses like a pro.
This year in little luxuries: My favourite money spend this year was hiring someone to do our garden for us. It was a bit expensive setting up, all the pots and soil and what not, but Ram Lal is a genius and I love that we barely ever buy veg anymore, since we have a steady crop of things to eat around the year. It has really changed the way I live my life, just the simple fact that we're growing FOOD. I now know the colours of the aubergine flower (purple, like the fruit), how pretty the lauki flower is in the hot sunshine, and how everything tastes so much better when you can just reach out and pluck it.
This year in habits: Getting K a compost bin for his birthday was changing the way we process trash in this house. We still put out a lot of paper and plastic (I blame Amazon and their easy next-day deliveries), but no wet waste at all, it all goes into our bin. He liked it so much, he bought a second one, and while I still find it somewhat icky, it doesn't smell, and the gardener uses it in our plants so it's all very circle of life.
This year in life lessons: A project that seemed super definite and like it was going to be a Thing, did not, finally wind up happening the way I expected it to, so I have learned to, um, curb my enthusiasm, so to speak. This is the year my optimism started to fade, just a little bit, and become tempered with realism. I think I'll always be a rose tinted glasses kind of person, but every now and then you have to take your glasses off and really look at the world.
And that's my report card! Let me know how the year worked out for you in the comments at the bottom of this. Happy New Year, and I'll see you all on the other side.
I had a pretty good year. Some self-doubt crept in re: my writing, but I hope to conquer the little critical voices in my head and move on in 2018. After all, as a writer of fiction, you should exist only to please yourself and not the sales figures or literary festivals or what have you. Maybe there will always be self doubt, because there's always someone you compare yourself to, and we all, ultimately, want to be JK Rowling or Neil Gaiman, or failing that, Margaret Atwood. I'm grateful to my readers though, and everyone who has sent me a message or an email saying that they liked my books and what I do, it's very heartening, especially when you think you're going it alone. A few things will be recalibrated for me in 2018, but they are all baby, nascent ideas, and I'll tell you all about them when they are actually in practice. I will be finishing the next book of my Girls Of The Mahabharata series early next year and I have an essay out in a Penguin anthology which will be released in February, so I'm still writing, and writing makes me happy. (It's only post publishing that all the doubts start to creep in.)
Anyway, that's the bitterness of the pill, here's the sweet!
This year in life events: We got married! We were never very marriage-y people, but we came to the decision with the same certainity we've approached most things in our relationship: it's the right thing for us to do at this point. The boring reason: we wanted it to be easier to live and work in each other's countries. The romantic reason: love and all those other things. Our wedding was almost exactly how I wanted it to be (the only thing I would change was not being so tired after three days of partying--despite the fact that we had a "low key" wedding, we wound up having three parties anyway. Small intimate parties, but parties nonetheless.) Life has... not changed a bit. Most often, we forget we're married, except when we're using wedding presents around the house.
This year in bucket lists: I loved my month in Europe, even though now, five months later, it's taken on the dreamy quality in my memory of someone else's life. We went from Germany to Spain, from Spain to France, from France to Luxembourg, from Luxembourg to the Netherlands (via Belgium.) I got to see Europe by road, by train and by plane. I got to have expensive meals (at the beginning of my trip) and two euro steak and wine (at the end) and I loved all of it, even being broke, a little bit. Through my entire trip, I had this vague feeling of standing outside my body watching myself: pinch me, this is real, this is happening.
This year in writing: Many MANY freelance assignments. A few of my favourites: fancy book launches in Mint, how The Handmaid's Tale is relevant in modern India for Scroll, re-examining Marilla Cuthbert for Indian Express, on children's literature for Mint again, on reading the childhood memoirs of your favourite authors for Open, on why myth-lit is so popular for Deccan Chronicle. This plus several columns made my year one of heavy reading.
I also had a new book (The One Who Swam With The Fishes) out last summer, and read a lot more about the Mahabharata than I ever expected I would, and now I can rattle off back stories and sub-plots and literary analyses like a pro.
This year in little luxuries: My favourite money spend this year was hiring someone to do our garden for us. It was a bit expensive setting up, all the pots and soil and what not, but Ram Lal is a genius and I love that we barely ever buy veg anymore, since we have a steady crop of things to eat around the year. It has really changed the way I live my life, just the simple fact that we're growing FOOD. I now know the colours of the aubergine flower (purple, like the fruit), how pretty the lauki flower is in the hot sunshine, and how everything tastes so much better when you can just reach out and pluck it.
This year in habits: Getting K a compost bin for his birthday was changing the way we process trash in this house. We still put out a lot of paper and plastic (I blame Amazon and their easy next-day deliveries), but no wet waste at all, it all goes into our bin. He liked it so much, he bought a second one, and while I still find it somewhat icky, it doesn't smell, and the gardener uses it in our plants so it's all very circle of life.
This year in life lessons: A project that seemed super definite and like it was going to be a Thing, did not, finally wind up happening the way I expected it to, so I have learned to, um, curb my enthusiasm, so to speak. This is the year my optimism started to fade, just a little bit, and become tempered with realism. I think I'll always be a rose tinted glasses kind of person, but every now and then you have to take your glasses off and really look at the world.
And that's my report card! Let me know how the year worked out for you in the comments at the bottom of this. Happy New Year, and I'll see you all on the other side.
December 29, 2017
Today in Photo
I'm calling it. This is the last book I will read in 2017. Gorgeous Japanese crime fiction which is a great way to explore a country I have always wanted to go to. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #nowreading
via Instagram
Today in Photo
New year's resolution: get through my to-be-read pile while also finishing off my next book and managing to have a social life and also finding time for travel and things. Not a very big ask, I don't think. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub
via Instagram
December 28, 2017
Tsundoku: Two memoirs and one narrative non-fiction book I loved
(A version of this appeared as my column for BLInk in July)
I realised after I made the list for the books I was going to include in this edition that all of them were either autobiography or narrative non-fiction. This is a pleasant departure for me, since my leisure reading is almost always fiction, but I had made a resolution last year to add more non-fiction to my list. Do memoirs count as non-fiction? They're mostly stories—and the gold standard for non-fiction is those heavy-with-research tomes which are still light and readable. I buy them with every good intention and a few months later, they're paperweights or are propping up my projector. Oh well. These three books should help ease you into that set if you're a fellow fictionhead too.
Water cooler: We're all thinking it: how does an author like Ruskin Bond, who writes about unstylish things like walking in the hills and rooms on roofs, stay so enduringly popular? He doesn't even do the lit fest circuits, even though from all accounts, he's unfailing pleasant and generous with his time if you meet him in person. And yet, this year saw not one, not two but three memoir-y books by Bond: a reading memoir, recollections of his father, and the one everyone's talking about, Lone Fox Dancing, his straight up autobiography. I've been a Bond fan since I was little and he was twice a “required reading” book on my school syllabus, but having long outgrown the markets and vistas he talks about, it was almost like a reunion for me, it had been so long since we had last met. Lone Fox Dancingis marked by Bond's quiet style, the people are real and well-described, the story meanders from plot point to plot point like a gentle river, and all of it so vivid and so real, it's like it happened yesterday. Through it also the reader gets a sense of Bond's intense loneliness: the child abandoned, practically, by his mother who creates a new family for herself, the beloved father who dies young, the young student in search of love and finally, the adult who retreats into isolation by choice. Lone Fox Dancingby Ruskin Bond, Speaking Tiger Publishing, Rs 599.
Watchlist: The biggest news to hit my social media feed recently was the case of Zohra Bibi, a domestic worker employed in a building society in Noida, who didn't go home one night because she had been locked into a room by her employers. Her friends and neighbours rose up en masse, FIRs were filed, and think pieces abounded. About the perfect time to read Tripti Lahiri's new book: Maid In India: Stories Of Inequality and Opportunity Inside Our Homes. Lahiri speaks to the bosses as well as the maids, cutting a neat cross-section across the country: from the villages the women have left to make new homes in the cities, to the quiet, birdsong-filled mansions of Lutyen's Delhi.I wish she had spoken to more of the male help that exists, the drivers, the “man Fridays” and so on, but I suppose that would have been a different sort of book. As with all texts and stories about “the help” in India, you'll probably be left feeling guilty and defensive or smug and “I do what I can” but it's also worth examining your own responses to the book to figure out how the great inequality that exists in India works on you. Maid In India: Stories of Inequality And Opportunity Inside Our Homes by Tripti Lahiri, Aleph Book Company, Rs 599.
Wayback: Since I made this list thinking of memoirs, I'm recommending one of my all-time favourite autobiographies as the nostalgia pick for this week. I got put on to Agatha Christie's An Autobiography from a Facebook post made by a friend, instantly got it for my Kindle and spent the next week (it's gloriously fat) wrapped up in Christieland. Even non-mystery lovers will find things to love about her recollections of a Victorian childhood, growing up during the war, her house and her pets and her sister, the minutiae of life that is so engaging when you're reading about someone else's. The mysterious years after her husband left her where she just vanished are never alluded to, I'm afraid, but there's plenty about how she worked during the war in the pharmacy of a hospital and thereby got acquainted with all the poisons she puts into her mysteries. Also, about how much she hated Hercule Poirot. An Autobiography by Agatha Christie, Harper Collins, Rs 250.
I realised after I made the list for the books I was going to include in this edition that all of them were either autobiography or narrative non-fiction. This is a pleasant departure for me, since my leisure reading is almost always fiction, but I had made a resolution last year to add more non-fiction to my list. Do memoirs count as non-fiction? They're mostly stories—and the gold standard for non-fiction is those heavy-with-research tomes which are still light and readable. I buy them with every good intention and a few months later, they're paperweights or are propping up my projector. Oh well. These three books should help ease you into that set if you're a fellow fictionhead too.
Water cooler: We're all thinking it: how does an author like Ruskin Bond, who writes about unstylish things like walking in the hills and rooms on roofs, stay so enduringly popular? He doesn't even do the lit fest circuits, even though from all accounts, he's unfailing pleasant and generous with his time if you meet him in person. And yet, this year saw not one, not two but three memoir-y books by Bond: a reading memoir, recollections of his father, and the one everyone's talking about, Lone Fox Dancing, his straight up autobiography. I've been a Bond fan since I was little and he was twice a “required reading” book on my school syllabus, but having long outgrown the markets and vistas he talks about, it was almost like a reunion for me, it had been so long since we had last met. Lone Fox Dancingis marked by Bond's quiet style, the people are real and well-described, the story meanders from plot point to plot point like a gentle river, and all of it so vivid and so real, it's like it happened yesterday. Through it also the reader gets a sense of Bond's intense loneliness: the child abandoned, practically, by his mother who creates a new family for herself, the beloved father who dies young, the young student in search of love and finally, the adult who retreats into isolation by choice. Lone Fox Dancingby Ruskin Bond, Speaking Tiger Publishing, Rs 599.
Watchlist: The biggest news to hit my social media feed recently was the case of Zohra Bibi, a domestic worker employed in a building society in Noida, who didn't go home one night because she had been locked into a room by her employers. Her friends and neighbours rose up en masse, FIRs were filed, and think pieces abounded. About the perfect time to read Tripti Lahiri's new book: Maid In India: Stories Of Inequality and Opportunity Inside Our Homes. Lahiri speaks to the bosses as well as the maids, cutting a neat cross-section across the country: from the villages the women have left to make new homes in the cities, to the quiet, birdsong-filled mansions of Lutyen's Delhi.I wish she had spoken to more of the male help that exists, the drivers, the “man Fridays” and so on, but I suppose that would have been a different sort of book. As with all texts and stories about “the help” in India, you'll probably be left feeling guilty and defensive or smug and “I do what I can” but it's also worth examining your own responses to the book to figure out how the great inequality that exists in India works on you. Maid In India: Stories of Inequality And Opportunity Inside Our Homes by Tripti Lahiri, Aleph Book Company, Rs 599.
Wayback: Since I made this list thinking of memoirs, I'm recommending one of my all-time favourite autobiographies as the nostalgia pick for this week. I got put on to Agatha Christie's An Autobiography from a Facebook post made by a friend, instantly got it for my Kindle and spent the next week (it's gloriously fat) wrapped up in Christieland. Even non-mystery lovers will find things to love about her recollections of a Victorian childhood, growing up during the war, her house and her pets and her sister, the minutiae of life that is so engaging when you're reading about someone else's. The mysterious years after her husband left her where she just vanished are never alluded to, I'm afraid, but there's plenty about how she worked during the war in the pharmacy of a hospital and thereby got acquainted with all the poisons she puts into her mysteries. Also, about how much she hated Hercule Poirot. An Autobiography by Agatha Christie, Harper Collins, Rs 250.
December 26, 2017
Newsletter: The return of the part-time hermit
But I'm also writing my new book so THEREI have been reading the Penguin Book Of British Short Stories (volume II from PG Wodehouse to Zadie Smith) which is not only reminding me how much I love the short story--sort of got out of the habit last year--but also included a gorgeous story by Evelyn Waugh, who I have never read before. Called The Cruise, it's letters from a young lady of leisure while she does a cruise to Egypt, and each of her letters has "Goodness how Sad" in them, and in one of them, a postcard, she makes it just "G how S" and now that phrase is stuck in my head. Squishy and Bruno fight? G how S. My coffee spills? G how S. I even woke up in the morning thinking "G how S" and it's a very convenient phrase for all manner of things.The last time I was obsessed with a line I read in a book was way back in 90s, when I read Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris, and Fadiman, pregnant, is wandering about the house at night, wanting a piece of cheese "toasted mostly." My friend Nayantara and I had a whole bit about toasted mostly, and mostly toasted, and I think G how S that we don't really do things like that anymore. I think it's because people seldom read the same books at the same time anymore--books with memorable lines in them anyway, and the last time I can remember a collective fad as it were was with the Harry Potter books, and that's why we can still reference them today. I was re-reading Harry Potter just recently, the last two books, and now I've gone back to the beginning with Philosopher's Stone and G how S that they're over and I'll never read them for the first time again.
(I'll stop.) (But G how S.)
This week in domesticity: My cousin gave us an Instant Pot for our wedding, and it's been sitting in its box on top of the kitchen shelves for a long time, since we didn't have a transformer to convert the voltage (American to Indian.) It didn't even occur to me when I asked for it that it would need a transformer, because I'm used to buying things from Europe should I need to. (Well, not used to buying things from Europe, that sounds like I just whip out and order like French cheeses or something all the time. I mean that we've bought electronics from Europe before, on our last two trips and they haven't needed any fancy plugs.) Finally, we bought a massive box to change the voltage, which was more expensive than I expected it to be, having never bought one before, but luckily it is blue and matches the kitchen tiles and we have snuck it into a corner and stacked cookbooks on top of it so it looks inoffensive.
SO the Instant Pot. It's basically an electric pressure cooker, with a slow cooking and yogurt making option (also rice), but it's so insanely popular that there's a whole cult movement around it. Here are just two of the articles I found when searching for "instant pot why popular." I began using mine just yesterday and I feel like as a reluctant cook, it has cut down a lot of the guesswork for me, because... dun dun DUN, it has a TIMER. I just set the thing and leave it to do its work, no counting whistles, no need to turn down the stove. I made a coconut chicken curry yesterday and a cauliflower soup today (our winter veggies are basically just cauliflower and aubergine, so we have bumper crops of each.) Both SO good, and I'm totally giving all credit to the pot. I've also been kinda scared of the regular pressure cooker since the one time I tried to use it, it exploded (sort of) and there were vegetables everywhere.
And the soup! You guys, if you've never made a soup from scratch, only those packet ones, there's this wholesome Martha Stewart type feeling that floods through you. I made this soup, you think. SOUP. I MADE. And it tasted good! Plus, if you don't like veggies, it's a good way of disguising them and still eating healthy.
And lest you think I've only turned to domesticity and given up my social life, I'll have you know I went to two very fancy parties this week.
This week in oops, maybe that was a bad bargain: I bought a one month membership to Ola Select, but honestly, it wasn't really worth it. Sure, it's cheaper to get an "Ola Prime" but those are usually just beat up Swift Dzires, and I'd rather have a new Wagon R, I think. Also, it takes SO LONG to get a cab, which is not usually the case with Uber. With Ola, your waiting time shows up as "ten minutes" and then, half an hour later, it's STILL ten minutes. Makes it very hard to go out unless you've planned to book your cab thirty minutes in advance, which you know, I got out of the habit of. Will not be renewing I don't think, even though I really wanted to love Ola, since Uber is so evil.
Saturday reading list for those of you sitting at home today drinking soup:
Round ups:
* The best children's books of 2017.
* These very hyped gadgets went out of business, so a memorabilia gift guide to 2017.
* Things that offended Indians in 2017.
* A hater's guide to a posh Christmas catalogue.
* And finally, every single year end list because we can't get enough.
People assume that to choose to live in a cold place is to choose austerity and a life without comfort. Because, of course, to escape the cold—to winter in the tropics, retire under the sun, take off for the islands at Christmas—has always meant you had achieved a certain level of success. But a cold life is not without its own riches. There are clear winter days when the surface of the snow glitters like diamonds. We have access to silence, one of the rarest commodities. And cold ocean waters make for extravagant dinners: salmon hooked minutes before, clams and mussels gathered into buckets by cold hands, oysters slurped raw so that you can feel the ocean dribbling deliciously down your throat.
- In defense of winter in Alaska.
More and more, however, families and friends of those who die on Everest and the world’s other highest peaks want and expect the bodies to be brought home. For them and those tasked with recovering the bodies — an exercise that can be more dangerous and far more costly than the expedition that killed the climber in the first place — the drama begins with death.- I LOVE Everest stories, and this one is insane and sad all at the same time.
The Love Commandos, on the other hand, advertises a one-time fee that covers the cost of a wedding ceremony and registration; couples are invited to stay as long as they need. Perhaps more important is Sachdev’s promise to protect them even when it compromises his safety. Armed men and disgraced relatives routinely come knocking, he said, and at least four khaps have issued bounties for his death. None have made good on their promise, but he and his colleagues have been beaten. “Look, we are madmen,” he explained. “We are not scared of dying.”- In a year of bad news re: choosing who you love, here's a lovely story about India's Love Commandos.
