If it's Sunday, it must be Bangalore

Time for more book tour related travel!

This time, I'm heading down South on Friday morning, to my fatherland on Friday, and Bangalore on Saturday. Here are some copies of the invites, please share WIDELY.

Cochin, FRIDAY, MAY 3!!

6 pm

Penguin Store, Bay Pride Mall, Marine Drive, Shanmugham Road, Ernakulam

I'm excited about this, because my father says it's one of the prettiest bookstores ever--it's right on the sea front with a huge glass window you can watch the ships through. So I really hope readers in Cochin will be able to join me.

BANGALORE, SATURDAY MAY 4

6.30 pm!!

Oxford Bookstores!!

1 MG Mall, Upper Ground Floor, 1/2 Swami Vivekananda Road!!

Opposite Taj Vivanta!!

Psyched about Bangalore also, because a) the Good Thing is going to be there so it'll be a book launch reunion (yay) and b) I've been looking forward to having a chat with Sumeet Shetty for a while--he runs the biggest corporate book club in the country, and yes, I didn't know 'corporate' and 'book club' could go together either, so I'm wondering what his secret was of getting shirts to read. Plus, in Bangalore, I'd love to go out for drinks or whatever after, if anyone is free. (Cochin, I'd offer you the same deal, but I need to go see my gran.)


In both cities, I'll be giving writing tips, so aspiring authors and shy owners of manuscripts, please come with any questions you might have and I'll do my best to answer them.

This is when I miss you

Notes to my sibling who could have been, but wasn't.

 I've spent my whole life justifying your absence. I make out that one is far better, far superior to two, and oh my god, don't get me started on three or four. Sure, it works for you, I say flippantly to my friends with sisters, friends with brothers. But think of all the advantages I had--my parents and I like a unit, the absence of you led to the three of us being a family very different from other people's families. I had pets---pets are better than you. I told myself stories on lonely afternoons---if you had been born, I never would have been a writer.

But maybe I would have told you stories. I can imagine you, you'd be younger, of course, even in my wildest imaginings, there's no room for an older sibling. You'd be younger, and you'd be a girl, and during our summer holidays, when it would be the period between lunch and Outside, as our parents napped, I'd make up stories for you. I'd pretend to be annoyed that you were always there, but I'd secretly sort of like it.

Three Great Camera Apps For Android: A Bad Photographer Blames Her Camera Phone

Let's face it, it's hard to be a camera phone owner when your camera phone is just okay, and everyone around you has these dazzling 8 MP cameras or iPhones which could make even snot look pretty with the right filter. I have a practical, budget Android--I've been an Android user for the last five years--and while they don't last well for years and years (slow processors, bad battery life and so on), they do have some pretty cool free stuff that you can use to make your pictures pop and be the envy of your iPhone-y friends. (Okay, not the envy. You try explaining to someone with an Apple product how your thing may be just as nice as their thing. It never works.) I have the Sony Xperia Tipo, a perfectly nice phone, on which I have three camera apps which I use to edit my stuff. I've tried out several, and these seem to me the best.

The Con Master: An Update

If you cast your eye gently to the right, you'll see my number one most read post is about Anirudh Aiyar, called Do You Know This Man? Since that post was written in 2010, I have received SO. MANY. EMAILS about him, basically telling me what he's been doing all over the place, that I thought it deserved a part two.

So, here's what happened since the last time we spoke about him  deceiving a friend of mine.

Somebody left the gate open, you know we got lost on the way

(listen to the song as you're reading this post)

At 28, I found myself back in Delhi, minus one fiancé and a city I still loved. Now, nearly three years later, I look back at that person with a certain wonder. I can remember the heartbreak, the emotional exhaustion, but it seems as if it happened to someone else, in a different story entirely. That wasn't really me. 

I like to say Bombay is my spiritual home, but it was in Delhi that I began to find myself once more, Delhi that smoothed the edges, Delhi that lent itself to dates and more work than I could manage and a full-to-bustling social life, even as I complained about the city, missing Bombay with more passion than I ever missed my ex. And it was in a small annexe in Delhi, an upgraded servant's quarters, that I decided to stop waiting for The Future, and make it happen right now.

Things

Things that are free:

1) A vast portion of the internet, including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, THIS blog (yay), and if you look hard enough, television, books and movies.

2) Nice walks.

3) 5 pm music time.

4) Smells.

5) The joy of a good parking spot. The joy of holding hands with someone whose hands aren't sweaty or flabby or pulling you along. The joy of seeing a friend after a long time. The joy of having nothing to do on a Sunday. Joys.

6) Sadness is also free, but expensive in the long run.