Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 84
October 2, 2017
Today in Photo
Aftermath of a baby shower. I've had an extremely social long weekend. The reason they're all looking so jolly is because I said I'd caption this "Aarthi and the twins" #dipsochronicles #delhidiary
via Instagram
September 30, 2017
Today in Photo
Portrait of a lady with her cat. A lady who--might I add--has gotten into her sari herself for the first time without help from Mum. K hung on to the pallu and helped me with the pleats. OK so my shoes are fully visible but all the better to make a run for it if need be instead of mincing about with demure ladylike steps. #sarinotsorry #suhaajraat
via Instagram
September 29, 2017
Today in Photo
First photo with my brand new Moto G5 Pro! Well okay the first FLATTERING photo, spent ages on it trying to take them perfect selfie, finally have up Android got K to do it. All set for my friend's wedding party at home (which really needs a hashtag) slapped on some make up to hide my flu swollen face, just have to make sure no one gets too close to me tonight. #paranoidandroid #portraits #delhidiary
via Instagram
September 26, 2017
I Want To Live In America: On The Appeal Of The Babysitter's Club
(This appeared on Scroll ages ago.)
Their names were something generic—something you'd call your kids when you birthed them far away from everything you knew, and they probably had really pretty “real” names, but I knew them as Pinky and Minnie and they lived next door to my aunt when I visited Nashua, New Hampshire at 11. It was my first trip abroad—the one I had done at two years old didn't count, because then I was just an accessory to my mother—and this was a trip I had made by myself, an unaccompanied minor, walking behind a series of very kind stewardesses, the last of which deposited me straight to my aunt waiting at Boston airport. I was small, shy and gawky, thick soda bottle glasses and uncontrollable hair, which my mother insisted on cutting in a “boy cut,” so she didn't have to deal with it.
In many ways, I was young for my age, and even though I had read Anne of Green Gables and Little Women by then, my mind stayed childlike, undisturbed still by the faraway murmurings of puberty. I had to go give a talk as a “person from India” to my cousin's first grade class, and once the class let out, I found myself in a sea of children my own age, but they were giants, and they knew so much more than me, and they seemed so confident, that I sat with the six-year-olds for the rest of my day there.
Pinky was a little older than me and Minnie was a little younger, girls of Indian origin that my aunt asked over to play with me thinking I'd be bored with her two boys—one six, one three. I was pleased to see familiar looking faces, and we all sat outside on the porch, swinging our legs while they peppered me with questions about India: did we have a cow? Did we have an elephant? And Pinky glancing at me sideways: do you have a boyfriend? I must have mumbled something and looked shocked, because she grinned, and left me with a copy of Hello Mallory!, book 14 of TheBabysitter's Club and inadvertently introduced me to people I'd know for a long time.
The Babysitter's Club is quite tame compared to its peer group, the attractive Wakefield twins, who the creator Francine Pascal follows from childhood all the way to university and everyone has sex at some point, and definitelyeveryone has a boyfriend. In contrast, the girls in the BSC (as it was known to those familiar with it) are stuck at perpetual tweenage—the older girls are twelve and thirteen, the younger ones are ten and eleven.
Every book is a little bit like the old '90s show Full House—Very Special Episodes dealing with everything from racism to bullying to diabetes. You got a little spiel in the beginning: Kristy is bossy, has a step father who is a millionaire and an adopted baby sister from Vietnam, Dawn is the hippy from California, who is also a vegan and a health food nut which leads to a lot of jokes about how gross tofu tastes, Mary Anne is shy and sensitive but is the only one with a steady boyfriend and is stepsisters with Dawn, Stacey is big city cool and has diabetes, Claudia is a Japanese-American artist whose eyes get called “almond shaped” a lot and who eats a lot of candy and never gets a pimple. And the younger two: Jessi who is black and Mallory who is white, and that's pretty much how their friendship got described, apart from a few details about their siblings. A pretty diverse group of friends, whose speciality, whose passioneven was babysitting the neighbourhood kids. So each book was somewhat formulaic—it led with the lead character of that book whose name would also be in the title (Kristy's Big Idea, The Trouble With Stacey, Jessi's Secret Languageetc) and there would be a B plot which involved a babysitting problem but which also ultimately tied back in with the original babysitter's problem. But for some reason, they fascinated not only me, but a host of girls worldwide growing up with the same characters. However, navigating America as I did that summer, the girls provided me with a roadmap to US teens. I imagined their wholesome faces as I “did” the country, and in New York City, I even bought myself the BSC Super Special 6: New York, New York, so I could see the city the way they did. (Unlike them, I was never allowed to wander about alone, but it was still fun.)
Over the years, the teen readers grew up and the BSC began to get sort of fetishized as many things from the late '80s and '90s tend to do in this nostalgia-obsessed age. There is a blog dedicated to Claudia's many outfits called What Claudia Wore (which is now defunct, but was very popular till 2013). It detailed such gems as:
"Anyway, I wore the coolest tuxedo I'd recently bought in a thrift shop, including a silky, piped shirt and a bright red velvet cummerbund. I removed the shoulder pads from the jacket, which made it really slouchy (I love that look). Then I bought a pair of white socks with silver glitter. I decided to wear a pair of red sneakers to match the cummerbund. I swept my hair up and fastened it with a rhinestone barrette in the shape of a musical note."
Claudia—being Japanese American—might have been the most written about babysitter, with even a whole graphic essay dedicated to her being a role model for other Asian American girls.
We all had favourites—but mine was Mallory, considered by some to be the most boring babysitter, but I had met her first, her eleven-year-old soul was a kindred spirit, she liked to read and write, she had braces and glasses—Mallory, c'est moi! When I look at my collection now, the eleven-year-olds (Mallory and Jessi) have a majority of the shelf space, and obviously, my heart. Even as I grew up, I identified more with them than with the other girls (save maybe Mary Anne, who was quiet and shy and had an over-protective father). In America, I was learning, the girls got to go out on their own, look after other people's children, and make their own money without having to worry about silly things like parental permission. In many ways, the BSC were my first feminist role models—their business-like minds, their ingenuity and their independence.
I didn't hang out with Pinky and Minnie much after that one time, because in my innocence, I told my aunt about the conversation I had with them. “Do all American girls have boyfriends?” I asked, and she took Pinky to task about it. I even overheard her saying, “Things are different in India!” After that, I held my own counsel, but I didn't need Pinky and Minnie any more anyway. I had the BSC.
Their names were something generic—something you'd call your kids when you birthed them far away from everything you knew, and they probably had really pretty “real” names, but I knew them as Pinky and Minnie and they lived next door to my aunt when I visited Nashua, New Hampshire at 11. It was my first trip abroad—the one I had done at two years old didn't count, because then I was just an accessory to my mother—and this was a trip I had made by myself, an unaccompanied minor, walking behind a series of very kind stewardesses, the last of which deposited me straight to my aunt waiting at Boston airport. I was small, shy and gawky, thick soda bottle glasses and uncontrollable hair, which my mother insisted on cutting in a “boy cut,” so she didn't have to deal with it.
In many ways, I was young for my age, and even though I had read Anne of Green Gables and Little Women by then, my mind stayed childlike, undisturbed still by the faraway murmurings of puberty. I had to go give a talk as a “person from India” to my cousin's first grade class, and once the class let out, I found myself in a sea of children my own age, but they were giants, and they knew so much more than me, and they seemed so confident, that I sat with the six-year-olds for the rest of my day there.
Pinky was a little older than me and Minnie was a little younger, girls of Indian origin that my aunt asked over to play with me thinking I'd be bored with her two boys—one six, one three. I was pleased to see familiar looking faces, and we all sat outside on the porch, swinging our legs while they peppered me with questions about India: did we have a cow? Did we have an elephant? And Pinky glancing at me sideways: do you have a boyfriend? I must have mumbled something and looked shocked, because she grinned, and left me with a copy of Hello Mallory!, book 14 of TheBabysitter's Club and inadvertently introduced me to people I'd know for a long time.
The Babysitter's Club is quite tame compared to its peer group, the attractive Wakefield twins, who the creator Francine Pascal follows from childhood all the way to university and everyone has sex at some point, and definitelyeveryone has a boyfriend. In contrast, the girls in the BSC (as it was known to those familiar with it) are stuck at perpetual tweenage—the older girls are twelve and thirteen, the younger ones are ten and eleven.
Every book is a little bit like the old '90s show Full House—Very Special Episodes dealing with everything from racism to bullying to diabetes. You got a little spiel in the beginning: Kristy is bossy, has a step father who is a millionaire and an adopted baby sister from Vietnam, Dawn is the hippy from California, who is also a vegan and a health food nut which leads to a lot of jokes about how gross tofu tastes, Mary Anne is shy and sensitive but is the only one with a steady boyfriend and is stepsisters with Dawn, Stacey is big city cool and has diabetes, Claudia is a Japanese-American artist whose eyes get called “almond shaped” a lot and who eats a lot of candy and never gets a pimple. And the younger two: Jessi who is black and Mallory who is white, and that's pretty much how their friendship got described, apart from a few details about their siblings. A pretty diverse group of friends, whose speciality, whose passioneven was babysitting the neighbourhood kids. So each book was somewhat formulaic—it led with the lead character of that book whose name would also be in the title (Kristy's Big Idea, The Trouble With Stacey, Jessi's Secret Languageetc) and there would be a B plot which involved a babysitting problem but which also ultimately tied back in with the original babysitter's problem. But for some reason, they fascinated not only me, but a host of girls worldwide growing up with the same characters. However, navigating America as I did that summer, the girls provided me with a roadmap to US teens. I imagined their wholesome faces as I “did” the country, and in New York City, I even bought myself the BSC Super Special 6: New York, New York, so I could see the city the way they did. (Unlike them, I was never allowed to wander about alone, but it was still fun.)
Over the years, the teen readers grew up and the BSC began to get sort of fetishized as many things from the late '80s and '90s tend to do in this nostalgia-obsessed age. There is a blog dedicated to Claudia's many outfits called What Claudia Wore (which is now defunct, but was very popular till 2013). It detailed such gems as:
"Anyway, I wore the coolest tuxedo I'd recently bought in a thrift shop, including a silky, piped shirt and a bright red velvet cummerbund. I removed the shoulder pads from the jacket, which made it really slouchy (I love that look). Then I bought a pair of white socks with silver glitter. I decided to wear a pair of red sneakers to match the cummerbund. I swept my hair up and fastened it with a rhinestone barrette in the shape of a musical note."
Claudia—being Japanese American—might have been the most written about babysitter, with even a whole graphic essay dedicated to her being a role model for other Asian American girls.
We all had favourites—but mine was Mallory, considered by some to be the most boring babysitter, but I had met her first, her eleven-year-old soul was a kindred spirit, she liked to read and write, she had braces and glasses—Mallory, c'est moi! When I look at my collection now, the eleven-year-olds (Mallory and Jessi) have a majority of the shelf space, and obviously, my heart. Even as I grew up, I identified more with them than with the other girls (save maybe Mary Anne, who was quiet and shy and had an over-protective father). In America, I was learning, the girls got to go out on their own, look after other people's children, and make their own money without having to worry about silly things like parental permission. In many ways, the BSC were my first feminist role models—their business-like minds, their ingenuity and their independence.
I didn't hang out with Pinky and Minnie much after that one time, because in my innocence, I told my aunt about the conversation I had with them. “Do all American girls have boyfriends?” I asked, and she took Pinky to task about it. I even overheard her saying, “Things are different in India!” After that, I held my own counsel, but I didn't need Pinky and Minnie any more anyway. I had the BSC.
Today in Photo
Tuesday night at Coast Cafe with this one and a new camera app calls for a photograph. We spoke of "shoes and ships and sealing wax. Of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot. And weather pigs have wings." #delhidiary #friendswhocarroll
via Instagram
September 24, 2017
Today in Photo
Worn out by all the partying. Squishy is my spirit animal today. Photo by Kian. #catsagram #blackcatsofinstagram #snooze
via Instagram
September 23, 2017
Today in Photo
Rainy day reading material. I'll never be too cool for Agatha. Massive online sales and a partner who bought me three books off them, ahhh heavenly. Cup of coffee, a messy bed, a purring cat somewhere about and book 147 of #150in2017. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #nowreading
via Instagram
September 22, 2017
Today in Photo
New pinch new clothes! Shift dress and contrasting jacket set for a gig at Piano Man last night. A bit long at the back but I felt very graceful and flowing and not like a blob which is rare with long lots of fabric type clothes when you are "fun sized." Off @ajiolife which is where I've been getting a lot of my clothes lately, if anyone's interested. #whatibought #ootd #delhidiary
via Instagram
Newsletter: Dispatches from the domestic front
(I sent this out as my newsletter for 01.05.2017. For more up-to-date madness, subscribe here!)
K has taken to exercise in a way that is alarming for me. If we were animals, he'd be something strong limbed and energetic--a big cat, perhaps--and I'd be a sloth. Or a panda. They're cute, right? But they conserve their energy and move only very slowly, and I am a slow moving kind of person. Oh, I don't mind walking as long as the walk isn't the PURPOSE of the thing. Walk and shop, walk to get somewhere, fine, but walking just for the sake of walking? I'm always checking the time to see if I'm done yet, whether I can go home now please. Even the Mi Band I bought isn't spurring me on, on the contrary, the days where I manage to do one kilometre just pacing the house are red letter days for me, I feel so virtuous and alive. And in the meanwhile, there is K with his skipping rope and his pull-up bar. Some of us just aren't meant to exercise. I am one of those people. I never get "addicted" to it, never need to stretch my limbs unless I've been on a bus or something, never feel like my well-being depends on it. Luckily, I also eat moderately, so my body keeps a balance, staying the same size mostly. I say that now, but in my thirties I'm way heavier than I was in my twenties and in my forties I probably will double that as well. Ugh. Ageing sucks. Having to "look after your body" also sucks. I miss the old days where no one cared about health and pregnant women bummed cigarettes from children and everyone drank till they dropped dead.
This week in Khan Market: Surprised by the fact that I don't miss Khan Market. I thought I was going to once I moved away from Nizamuddin, but moving away also made us explore so many other places in this city. Like, our Nizamuddin selves would not pop over to Little Saigon at least once a month for lunch. or try and find new exciting places to hang out at instead of the same ol', same ol'. It is damn convenient--Khan Market ie--though. Everything that you need for a fancy life: your well-stocked grocer, your book store, your bar, even your roadside jewellery shops. And Khan Market will always have a place in my heart, just not the only place, I don't think.
Anyway, I was in my old stomping grounds twice this week--once for a friend's birthday at Public Affair (which I always think of as PUBIC Affair for some reason, sorry guys, it's very fancy and nothing remotely pubic about it, it's just my brain association); and the second for a conversation my mother was doing with Sunil Sethi at Cafe Turtle. Both times, I went out to the terrace (both for a cigarette and to get away from relentlessly cold air conditioning. K has a theory that the posher the place in Delhi, the colder it has to be, which is funny because it's true. I'm going to have to start carrying a little shawl around.) If you also haven't been in Khan Market for a while, you may not know that there's this whole MCD thing to close down the terrace sections of restaurants. Apparently one collapsed in Connaught Place even, so terraces in all these heritage type markets have this desolate sad look. Gossip has it (and this is just gossip, so don't quote me) that this one prominent family that owns a bunch of buildings in Khan pays the NDMC a lakh a week or something for them to look the other way and so their restaurant is the only one allowed to keep tables and things outdoors.
This week in other places that are not in Khan Market: My dad was in town so full parental week for me. We went to Delhi Club House, which I've been wanting to try, but which all my friends are bored of, so no one wants to come with me. Quite nice--again with the super high air con though. I was battling a hangover from Public Affair the night before, so could not stomach the idea of a cocktail, but they looked pretty good. Surprisingly, a large number of patrons looked like Gymkhana-Club-On-A Thursday members, so either a) they're really into clubs, or b) they're dressing aspirationally.
This week on books-to-television: From all accounts the new Netflix adaptation of Anne Of Green Gables is going to be that dreadful thing for nostalgia reading: gritty. It's now called Anne-with-an-E, and is written by the same writer who did that Breaking Bad episode called Ozymandias. Uff, what an episode that was. BUT that's okay for a meth lord and Santa Fe, but not for idyllic PE Island and a little girl with red hair who always saw beauty in things. As a palate cleanser for my soon-to-be outrage, I watched the 1985 CBS adaptation of Anne, starring Megan Follows who WAS Anne, who was so, so perfect in the show. It made me feel better.
This week in Kittenamas: I THINK (knock on wood etc) that the two kitties we are fostering are mostly spoken for, it's just a question of my friends making up their minds. They're both SO sweet, and have really blossomed. I wish we could take more credit, but really it's just a matter of giving kitties lots of food and a secure place to live, out of the mean streets. Mack--the brown kitten--is especially a Love Cat, and likes best to be cuddled and picked up and have his tummy tickled (very rare trait in cats), while the Hobgoblin is a little darting bit of cotton wool. Our other cats have managed to ignore them completely, so peace reigns, mostly. It's nice to have enough space for five cats, but kittens are such delicate darlings, I check in on them every morning just to see they haven't perished in the night.
This week in new books: After a meeting with the guys at Harper Collins this week (book is looking SO lovely!) I asked them for a copy of Anuja Chauhan's latest, about an Air Force pilot called Baaz. Excellently done, even though Anuja is clearly more into the idea of armies and battles than I am (I am a pacifist, believe that if everyone was, the world would be a lovely place, don't believe in young men being lured on promises to become cannon fodder. This is extremely naive of me, I know, but wouldn't it be nice?) and the book has some very exciting battle scenes as well as the zingy dialogue that makes her books so readable. You should pick it up, you'll love it.
Lunch reading list to ease you into Monday: Loved this piece by Manasi on Jo March (and it inspired me to start re-reading Little Women again). ** Fab obituary on the Hungarian woman who married a Nehru. ** Freelance journalist Aparna Kalra was attacked in a park near her home, but happily she's making a good recovery and even wrote a piece about it. ** Like a Zomato for sex workers. ** Dental care is the new hipster must-buy. (I've been using an electric toothbrush for years and since I switched haven't had a single cavity or gum bleeding). ** Related: the best inventions of 2016. ** Genital cutting in the United States. ** 100 Days of Trump, 100 days of false statements. ** Nevertheless HE persisted. **
K has taken to exercise in a way that is alarming for me. If we were animals, he'd be something strong limbed and energetic--a big cat, perhaps--and I'd be a sloth. Or a panda. They're cute, right? But they conserve their energy and move only very slowly, and I am a slow moving kind of person. Oh, I don't mind walking as long as the walk isn't the PURPOSE of the thing. Walk and shop, walk to get somewhere, fine, but walking just for the sake of walking? I'm always checking the time to see if I'm done yet, whether I can go home now please. Even the Mi Band I bought isn't spurring me on, on the contrary, the days where I manage to do one kilometre just pacing the house are red letter days for me, I feel so virtuous and alive. And in the meanwhile, there is K with his skipping rope and his pull-up bar. Some of us just aren't meant to exercise. I am one of those people. I never get "addicted" to it, never need to stretch my limbs unless I've been on a bus or something, never feel like my well-being depends on it. Luckily, I also eat moderately, so my body keeps a balance, staying the same size mostly. I say that now, but in my thirties I'm way heavier than I was in my twenties and in my forties I probably will double that as well. Ugh. Ageing sucks. Having to "look after your body" also sucks. I miss the old days where no one cared about health and pregnant women bummed cigarettes from children and everyone drank till they dropped dead.
This week in Khan Market: Surprised by the fact that I don't miss Khan Market. I thought I was going to once I moved away from Nizamuddin, but moving away also made us explore so many other places in this city. Like, our Nizamuddin selves would not pop over to Little Saigon at least once a month for lunch. or try and find new exciting places to hang out at instead of the same ol', same ol'. It is damn convenient--Khan Market ie--though. Everything that you need for a fancy life: your well-stocked grocer, your book store, your bar, even your roadside jewellery shops. And Khan Market will always have a place in my heart, just not the only place, I don't think.
Anyway, I was in my old stomping grounds twice this week--once for a friend's birthday at Public Affair (which I always think of as PUBIC Affair for some reason, sorry guys, it's very fancy and nothing remotely pubic about it, it's just my brain association); and the second for a conversation my mother was doing with Sunil Sethi at Cafe Turtle. Both times, I went out to the terrace (both for a cigarette and to get away from relentlessly cold air conditioning. K has a theory that the posher the place in Delhi, the colder it has to be, which is funny because it's true. I'm going to have to start carrying a little shawl around.) If you also haven't been in Khan Market for a while, you may not know that there's this whole MCD thing to close down the terrace sections of restaurants. Apparently one collapsed in Connaught Place even, so terraces in all these heritage type markets have this desolate sad look. Gossip has it (and this is just gossip, so don't quote me) that this one prominent family that owns a bunch of buildings in Khan pays the NDMC a lakh a week or something for them to look the other way and so their restaurant is the only one allowed to keep tables and things outdoors.
This week in other places that are not in Khan Market: My dad was in town so full parental week for me. We went to Delhi Club House, which I've been wanting to try, but which all my friends are bored of, so no one wants to come with me. Quite nice--again with the super high air con though. I was battling a hangover from Public Affair the night before, so could not stomach the idea of a cocktail, but they looked pretty good. Surprisingly, a large number of patrons looked like Gymkhana-Club-On-A Thursday members, so either a) they're really into clubs, or b) they're dressing aspirationally.
This week on books-to-television: From all accounts the new Netflix adaptation of Anne Of Green Gables is going to be that dreadful thing for nostalgia reading: gritty. It's now called Anne-with-an-E, and is written by the same writer who did that Breaking Bad episode called Ozymandias. Uff, what an episode that was. BUT that's okay for a meth lord and Santa Fe, but not for idyllic PE Island and a little girl with red hair who always saw beauty in things. As a palate cleanser for my soon-to-be outrage, I watched the 1985 CBS adaptation of Anne, starring Megan Follows who WAS Anne, who was so, so perfect in the show. It made me feel better.
This week in Kittenamas: I THINK (knock on wood etc) that the two kitties we are fostering are mostly spoken for, it's just a question of my friends making up their minds. They're both SO sweet, and have really blossomed. I wish we could take more credit, but really it's just a matter of giving kitties lots of food and a secure place to live, out of the mean streets. Mack--the brown kitten--is especially a Love Cat, and likes best to be cuddled and picked up and have his tummy tickled (very rare trait in cats), while the Hobgoblin is a little darting bit of cotton wool. Our other cats have managed to ignore them completely, so peace reigns, mostly. It's nice to have enough space for five cats, but kittens are such delicate darlings, I check in on them every morning just to see they haven't perished in the night.
This week in new books: After a meeting with the guys at Harper Collins this week (book is looking SO lovely!) I asked them for a copy of Anuja Chauhan's latest, about an Air Force pilot called Baaz. Excellently done, even though Anuja is clearly more into the idea of armies and battles than I am (I am a pacifist, believe that if everyone was, the world would be a lovely place, don't believe in young men being lured on promises to become cannon fodder. This is extremely naive of me, I know, but wouldn't it be nice?) and the book has some very exciting battle scenes as well as the zingy dialogue that makes her books so readable. You should pick it up, you'll love it.
Lunch reading list to ease you into Monday: Loved this piece by Manasi on Jo March (and it inspired me to start re-reading Little Women again). ** Fab obituary on the Hungarian woman who married a Nehru. ** Freelance journalist Aparna Kalra was attacked in a park near her home, but happily she's making a good recovery and even wrote a piece about it. ** Like a Zomato for sex workers. ** Dental care is the new hipster must-buy. (I've been using an electric toothbrush for years and since I switched haven't had a single cavity or gum bleeding). ** Related: the best inventions of 2016. ** Genital cutting in the United States. ** 100 Days of Trump, 100 days of false statements. ** Nevertheless HE persisted. **
