Literature Straight From My Ovaries Because That's Where I Also Keep My Brain Cells

Reading this, by Jennifer Weiner, a hugely successful author, got me thinking about what I don't like about the label 'chick lit'. If you're just joining me, then you may not know that in the past, in the press and on this blog at various points, I have rebelled against the label. 'Chick lit', I say, stridently, 'is about a young woman whose motivations are solely based on her relationship. In the end, she finds her perfect lover and walks off into the sunset with him.' By arguing that my book didn't follow that formula, I implied that while it's all very well for other authors to write about relationships and accept the label 'chick lit' with such impunity, it wasn't for me. In a way (see this article I did for Open magazine) I was being as bad as the men, slightly condescending, "Oh, a happy relationship? How trite." But fellow authors of the female persuasion, accept this as an apology and let us not be happy with that label that dogs us everywhere we go, in bookstores, on pretty pink covers, on the start of guilt that our readers give when someone sees them reading us, because we're so easily dismissible and they should really be reading a Dude. Because, dudes are the only ones who can be taken seriously. Because when a Dude writes about love it's literature. Because a Dude can write about drugs AND love AND his mother AND travelling and no one will focus on just the love bit, they'll say, "Oh what far ranging topics" but the moment we dare introduce even an inkling of "She wondered what would happen to their relationship" it's like DING DING DING! CHICK LIT!

It has to be hetero normative, no one would call a novel about two lesbians chick lit. If you care about fashion and you mention that in your writing, you'll get a cover with shoes on it. Lady, you could have written a thesis on Coco Chanel, no one cares, if your heroine is seen with a high end designer bag, just resign yourself to the shoes on the cover.

Here's a fun fact: I have read pretty much every single significant Indian author to come out in the last five years. Here's another fun fact: it's almost one hundred percent likely that they have not read me. Not just me--I mean, I'm totally biased about my own books and think they're pretty good, but other "chick lit" authors as well. They've done well, you guys! They've sold and sold and sold and yet, there's no recognition by the Club. I'm also not making a case for bad writing, there's shitloads of bad writing, and that is dreadful, but some of the women authors I have read have been GOOD. They've resonated. They've made me laugh. They've made me not want to stop reading.

This is an old battle. You write for prizes and for membership to the Club or you write to be read. In India, there really aren't any woman writers who have done as well as Chetan Bhagat. Because why? Because I'LL TELL YOU WHY: Chetan Bhagat isn't getting slapped with a 'just for boys' label. No, he gets to be unisex, his covers are gender neutral and women writers, with a certain price point who don't write about death and despair and so on, get the whole HI-NO-BOYS-ALLOWED covers, which means you're slotted along with other covers in the same shade of fuchsia/pink/bright blue and your male readers have no chance of getting access to you.

A generation ago, in order to be taken seriously as a woman writer, you had to dress down. The dowdier the better. If you were pretty or fashionable, people assumed you sucked at what you did. Doing book tours, I consider my wardrobe. Because I'm being marketed as a certain kind of author, I have to play along, and I kinda enjoy dressing nice. I like nice clothes! I like money! I'm sorry! This shouldn't take away from the fact that a) I love writing and b) I have never, ever, not once compromised on what I want to say on the printed page. Shouldn't this make SOME sort of difference?

"Don't tell my mother you write about sex," said a friend to me the other day when I went to her house. I almost looked behind me. Who was she talking to? Not me, surely. She didn't think that's what I did, did she? "Writes about sex". Wow. I bet you wouldn't introduce Tarun Tejpal that way, and his descriptions are far more graphic than mine. Sex is part of what I write about, yes, because the stories I tell, the women I write about, are having it. And it's important. I'm not dismissing it. But in that way, I also write about women, I write about love. I write about friendship, I write about family and so on, but no one's in a hurry to push me into those slots. 'Sex writer' is the easiest, most salacious label, but saying, "oh, you asked for it" is like saying "you have sex and so you should be raped." Just because I don't treat sex like this big old dirty elephant turd in the cat litter box that no one wants to acknowledge doesn't mean that I am suddenly eM the Sex Writer. Or "sex blogger" as a friend introduced me at a party. "No, I'm not," I said, "I don't have ANY graphic descriptions of sex." "Don't be shy of your past!" she said, merrily. Sex bloggers exist, you guys, and they'd think I was so tame. But maybe I am only being defensive of it because I secretly have come to believe these labels.

So, yes. "Chick lit". What's it going to take to get people to stop calling women writers who write about relationships that? Do we all have to grow a penis? (OH MY GOD, SHE SAID PENIS SHE'S A SEX BLOGGER) I think, the first step is for us, women who write to be read, who write about relationships, to disagree with that label. You may say it doesn't matter. It's just a publishing thing. But it does. With each person calling you a "chick lit author", you're allowing them to basically pat you on the head, tell you what a pretty girl you are and now, run away, the grown ups are talking. Say it with me, "I write about relationships. I don't agree with the label 'chick lit'. I think it's derogatory. I'm sorry you now no longer have an easy way to classify my writing in your head. Maybe you should try reading it?"  If nothing else, we'll make more sales, which is always a good thing, right?

Things; and Bombay

The politics of farewells

So, like, when you're about to leave? After you've spent a considerable amount of time in a certain place? And then you say goodbye to everyone, like really heartfelt, "Goodbye. I'll see you the next time I'm here. Be well. God be with you." It's essential to emphasise the "good" bit of "goodbye", maybe not say "God be with you" because you don't know whether or not you believe in God, and you think saying "God be with you" is basically forcing someone to believe in something, even if they don't want you, but it serves the purpose in this paragraph which is to say "I'm hoping everything in your life is all right and stays all right till the next time I am able to see you and maybe even after that, because you're my friend."

But then, you rely on something as fickle as a railway waitlist? And even though you're reasonably sure that today, Tuesday, is the day you leave, it turns out it's not, because the chart's been prepared and you're not on it and so you're probably on your way out tomorrow. And now you have a whole extra day, except you already said bye to everyone you had to and you feel a bit stupid having to call them and say, "Hey, by the way, I take back that God be with you stuff, because I'm still here!" It's that awkwardness, you know that awkwardness, you say bye to someone, how we laughed and still with a smile on your face you go towards your form of transport and lo and behold, there they are again, going towards their form of transport and all the nice things have already been said and so you sort of nod.


Hello, I don't live here anymore

I did a bunch of Bombay touristy stuff in town last week. I went to the Jehangir art gallery.

And they had some cool pictures up, and it was air conditioned. Plus, if you're ever stuck in the Kala Ghoda area and really, really have to pee, they have a nice loo and charge Rs 2 for a token, so you don't have to feel guilty about ONLY using the bathroom. Do other people feel guilty about this? I've once walked past three perfectly good coffee shop bathrooms just because I didn't feel right just ducking in and using their facilities.

The Jehangir Art Gallery also has a terrace section which is crazy hot right now in this weather and they didn't let me take any pictures, but it has a nice view. So, go there.

Then I went to Rhythm House which felt very retro, you know, having actual music CDs that aren't torrents and do people really still buy hard copy CDs? So weird. But I listened to some albums and then suddenly I was aware of a hat and a pair of eyes just staring at me over the world music section. I think it was a guard, but he looked at me for a while and then went away. That was funny.


Fashion Street has nothing on Sarojini Nagar.

The Prince Of Wales museum is really awesome and has a brilliant natural history section. I'm a sucker for natural history museums, I might be too old for them, maybe only children are supposed to get a kick out of taxidermied animals, but even though they were at the same time both too lifelike and too dead, it was awesome. And they had this one giant hornbill and they had some information  about it and in that information was the fact that this hornbill used to be a pet one at the Bombay natural history society and he was fed fruit which they tossed to him and he never missed a catch and I thought that was really cool that he did that and that they put it in his information sheet.


Taken on my SLR but then given
an Instragramm-y effect because
I'm a sucker for retro things.

Also, there's a miniature painting in one of the galleries that shows Shiva, Parvati and their two sons all enjoying a nice glass of bhang and it's quite awesome. Go look for that.

And Woodside Inn is a really nice place to get a glass of wine by yourself and they have a good selection of magazines and I felt very grown up and things, but then I met an old school friend and then I stopped being Mysterious and Alone.






I got a haircut.

And it's very curly, very Marilyn Monroe meets Whitney Houston but also a chrysanthemum, but I love it anyway. Delhi hairdressers don't get the curls, they're always urging me to straighten my hair so it can fall flat and sleek, but this young lady was so enthused about the curliness and the amount of hair that she got me enthused as well and it looks really good, I think.

We've been watching a lot of TV

It's too hot to do much else, but this Sunday, I had a party to go to, and it was filled with a lot of people I hadn't seen in some years and it felt very flashback. Also, there was an impromptu jam session of sorts with this Pilate's ball style drum and I jammed, and that was kind of awesome.



The wheels on the train go round and round

Thanks, in no small part, to my current state of finances, I've begun taking the train more. The more money you earn, the more expensive flights seem to be, it's really odd. I like flying because it gets you to your destination so fast, but left without a choice, I've rediscovered the magic of the Rajdhani.



Cellphone picture, which is why the bad quality, of the scenery whizzing past the train

I have a long history with trains, mostly with my mother. When we lived in Trivandrum for two years when I was about six or seven, we took a long train, a "first class coupe" from Kerala up to Delhi. A few things stand out about those journeys, one was when we were in Agra (because the train routed from there in those days), we'd get "khullad" chai, smelling of earth and tea spices which we could drink and then discard with a smash on the tracks. The blood red oranges of Nagpur, along with the puri-aloo. Another was transporting our Alsatian, Bobo, from Trivandrum to Hyderadabad. We were moving to a small flat in Delhi and it seemed kinder to him to give him to my grandfather who wanted a dog for his huge farm. Every long station stop we'd get off and go to the guard van, where he was kept and take him for a little walk.

Coming back from Hyderabad to Delhi, we'd always have the same snacks. Funny, how most of my train journeys are reminiscent of food. My mother would have packed the South Indian curd rice, which actually keeps quite well, and because I loathed the smell and taste of curd, she'd call it "white upma" and I ate it quite happily. I mean, I knew what it was, but somehow, not calling it curd made it easier to stomach. I remember watching a little girl, in one of the top berths, steadily and methodically eating her way through an entire tiffin container of chicken biryani. Just sitting there, feet dangling, and eating.

One time, when I was older, in my late teens I think, again, we were on a journey to Hyderabad, and this one guy kept crowding me in the corridor while I waited for the coolie and my mother to finish negotiating the luggage placement. I moved away from him, but he persisted, and then reached out, without warning, and fondled my breast. I said nothing, but turned around, grabbed his collar (he was about 6'7" or something) and started wildly lashing out at him. It was all so silent, my mother and the rest of the passengers who were watching her were quite shocked when they turned around and saw me. "What happened?" she said, and I finally found my voice and said, "He touched me!" and then the rest of the passengers surrounded him and seeing himself trapped he broke free of my grip and dashed out on to the platform. I hope he missed his train.

But that was pretty much the only grope-y experience I've had. I've heard horror stories, of course, and I always make sure I'm sleeping with all bits of me covered and tucked in, but on the most part, people leave me alone, I sit there with my  book, wearing something loose and nondescript, and try to blend into the background.

I complained on Twitter that no matter what kind of passengers I have around me, if I ever have a lower berth, I feel the stretch and tug of an impending fight settle in my belly. Because invariably, someone over the age of 40 will ask me to exchange with them. "Bad legs, beta," they'll say, trying to smile at me, ingratiatingly, and I will grumble and moan and feel cheated, but change with them anyway. Nowadays, I give them the once over, if they seem sprightly when they enter and do lots of bending and stretching (or if they annoy me, and some of them can be REALLY annoying) then I claim a bladder infection that makes me need the loo several times at night and let them try their luck with the person in the other lower berth. Somehow, maybe because I'm a woman, maybe because I look younger than most, I'm always asked to be accommodating first. I like my lower berth, I specifically request it, because I like to wake up early in the morning, and don't want to have to wait for other people to get up, and I like watching the world go by with my cup of coffee. Once this even happened to me on a plane, where this dude claimed he had bad knees and wanted to swap his middle for my aisle. Of course, being a sucker, I did, but as soon as we were in the air, I pointed to the row of empty seats beside us and he looked martyred and said, "I was moving ANYWAY." and I said, "Good" and he did and yay, everyone won.


You can predict the schedule of the Rajdhani, at 4.30 when you get on, you get a little tray with a sweet, a samosa or something and a vile cheese sandwich. Also a coffee kit, which is quite sophisticated, a little paper bag filled with your coffee acrouments. At around seven, you get a breadstick and some butter and some soup. It used to be tomato, but now it's some kind of veg thing. Then at eight, you get your dinner, I usually get the chicken, which is greasy, but I like the routine of getting the same meal each time I'm on the train and then at nine, you get your ice cream and at 9.30, people are making up their berths, and if you're lucky, you'll get another passenger who likes to stay up later than 10 pm, so you can read, but usually, it's lights off, and you toss and turn in the dark till you finally fall asleep a couple of hours later. It's nice because it's so predictable. Most people don't bring reading material, so you can eavesdrop on their chats, while you read. Sometimes, they'll ask you questions, but I solve this by plugging myself into my iPod from the moment I get on. I don't know, I like my journeys to be full of silent contemplation, no more chatting than is necessary. Is this weird? It's the one thing I like about travelling alone, the chance to be alone.

There's a romance to trains though, the steady clack-clack-clack as it rocks you to sleep, on lesser trains than the Rajdhani, a chance to smoke a cigarette by the open door, feeling very daring and risque, while the wind blows your eyelashes back, making your eyes sting. On the Rajdhani, they helpfully leave their loo windows open, but you have to make sure you go during a non busy toilet time, otherwise people start knocking. It's nowhere near as efficient as a plane, but it reminds you to slow down and take it easy and "we'll get there when we get there."