Hello, Khaan E Khaaaaas?

(This appeared in The City Story a while ago)

(Here's another post (sorta) about Khaan e Khaas as well)

I've always been a Delhi-ite by fate and geography. A “Delhicacy” if you will. I never had my year abroad like all my friends seemed to do straight from undergrad to a post-graduate degree somewhere cold, where they learned life skills and how to speak precisely when they wanted something. I stayed fluttering and vague, making long jazz hands mixed with ballet arms when I couldn't correctly express what I wanted to convey. Delhi was where I moved to at three weeks old, after having been born in my mother's hometown in Hyderabad, and Delhi was where I stayed ever since—till the time I was twenty five.

And then I moved to Bombay on a whim. This was my “year abroad,” as foreign a place to me as Warwick or Hamburg or New York were to my friends. I entered the city with my eyes wide, gazing up at the big buildings where someone's light was always on, no matter what time of night. I learned to navigate a system completely alien to the one I knew. I was only one thousand three hundred and eighty four kilometres away from home, but it felt as new to me as it must have done for Vasco Da Gama arriving south of where I was a few centuries ago.

Of course I loved it. What 25 year old woman wouldn't? I was free, anonymous and cavorting about the city at a rate that belied my rapidly dwindling finances. (Turns out journalism isn't the kind of job that lets you not only live without roommates but also eat in fancy places, so Carrie Bradshaw lied to us all.) However, I had moments of abject loneliness. I dreamt real estate dreams—where one of the rooms of my tiny shared flat had a hidden door, and when I opened it, I saw more rooms, more space. Sometimes, I ordered kaali daal three days in a row, just for that Delhi feeling, only to get a Gujju, Maharashtrian or foreigner-spiceless version of it. I wanted the food I had grown up with, because sometimes you long for comfort food, and the only thing that can ease your homesickness is a kebab roll without a whole lot of masala in it—just a smear of green chutney, onions on the side, thanks.

It was one of those Sunday afternoons, on a particularly blue Missing Delhi day that I discovered Khaan-e-Khaas. Maybe “discovered” is the wrong word, after all, friends had been feeding me their prawn biryani in the middle of the night for several months. What I wanted though was a Sunday afternoon feeling, and how do you translate that into a menu? Turns out you can. While perusing the dishes on offer (long before Zomato, I used the paper version that came with a bag of home delivery) I found Punjabi mutton curry. Two years of finding kari-patta in all my curries, whether North, South or Chinese had made me wary, but I decided to give it a go anyway.

Reader, I married it. Okay, not quite literally, but this, this was what my soul and my stomach had been crying out for. It was so authentic, I had probably only eaten versions at friends homes, it came with hot steamed basmati rice, and plump potatos cooked in the gravy, the mutton so tender, it fell off the bone. I ate a big lunch, all on my own, and then napped all afternoon, the humid air outside feeling almost like I was in the middle of a Delhi summer with a water cooler rumbling in the corner of the room, the evocative smell of khus making dreams even sweeter.

I held that mutton curry as a secret weapon when Bombay got too much, and if you've lived there for a long time, you know the too much I refer to. I grew to love the sound of the male voice on the other end of the phone when I called to order, “Hello Khaan-e-Khaas?” saying it almost musically. My friends stuck to the rolls and the biryani, and I didn't think that mutton curry was for sharing anyway. It belonged to my own personal private store of memories, home food when you're away from home, a South Indian lady with Punjabi cravings in Maharashtra.

Today in Photo

Today was at the birthday party of a four year old friend and I saw this bench from a distance and thought it was dedicated to a beloved wife or father or what have you and then I went closer and saw what it said and I hope you're barking up by the rainbow bridge despite your terrible name Hustler, because I thought of you today. #parksandrec #petstagram #memorials

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Today in Photo

Man, cat and a book of poetry.

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Finally one of the Instant Pot meals pretty enough to share! I call it the Sorta Ramen Chicken and Spinach soup (with spinach, lemongrass and actual lemons from our garden!) Bruno didn't get any but we totally enjoyed it. With a few tweaks, I think we could add it to our regular meal schedule. #instantpot

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Newsletter: Garbage fires, strange but true stories and what's cooking

(This went out as my newsletter yesterday to subscribers' inboxes! Sign up here.)

Since I left Goa, I have been embroiled in a wedding. This was of my cousin--my mother's younger sister's son--someone I grew up with and have spent many merry summers with as a child. My mother used to travel quite a bit for work, and when she did, she'd pop me on a plane (as an "unaccompanied minor") and send me off to my grandparents and aunt and uncle in Hyderabad. I remember the first time I did this on my own quite well, I was only three or four I think, and it was an Air India flight and the stewardesses made a big fuss of me and gave me an entire bag full of boiled sweets to carry away with me. I felt quite grown up arriving with my sweets, doling them out to my cousins if they were nice to me. (Although this time they told me that I also used to carry a large bag of Hajmola candy and only give them one or two at a time instead of sharing it nicely. I countered that if I had shared it nicely, the bag would have finished before we had even started.)

At age 11, my mother was going to be traveling to South America, and she decided this was a great time for both of us to see the States. So off I went again as an unaccompanied minor, only at age 11, I was not a very attractive child, so not much fuss was made of me this time. I had a horrible "boy cut" my mother insisted on keeping my curls in and I was skinny with scabby knees and I wore boy clothes and everyone basically thought I was a little boy, which delighted me, because it was much more fun than being a girl. The stewardess who was in charge of me during the layover and transfer was black--the first black person I had ever seen in my life--and she kept joking that she should put a sign on me saying "It's a girl!" I wasn't insulted, only deeply jet lagged, and I could only follow around behind her in a state of surreal waking dream-ness.

The last time I was in the US, I realised, talking to another cousin last night, was right after school, age 18, which was also the year before 9/11. Getting around was fairly easy then, the embassy still gave you ten year visas, without much fuss, and my first impressions of New York were the Twin Towers against the skyline. I wonder when I will go again, but it's so FAR and I have so many other places I want to visit as well. Tickets are expensive, and life as a freelancer will just about get you a round trip to Europe which I love. Not to mention, at this wedding was this young American, a friend of a cousin of the bride's, and he kept asking me questions like "do people live together in India?" and "are there gay people in India?" which made me want to roll my eyes back into my head, but I didn't, I was very polite and answered his questions with the minimum amount of irony, but I think I had a glint in my eye, because he avoided coming up to us after that.

But the wedding was fun, even though after five days of party, I am not ready to face the world for a good long time yet. I've barely settled in to our flat, and next month, I am off to Trivandrum for a lit fest, back to Delhi, and then to Kochi for a party my father is throwing for us, then to Bombay for another lit fest, so February will be busy and I am TIRED already.

This week in crazy but true stories: I heard this one while I was waiting for a delayed flight in Hyderabad: an airline had been killing pets in the hold consistently for three or four trips. (There's a regular baggage hold and a special one for your pets, and you can't pressurise the regular one, so if you mix them up, your animal suffocates mid-air.) One flight, they took out a cat from the regular hold but the cat was dead. They freaked out, because hello lawsuit, so with some quick thinking, they acquired another cat to replace the dead cat and proudly presented it to the owner. The owner was like, "DUDE WTF. A) This is not my cat and b) the cat I put in the hold was already dead!" (This is totally a true story, I promise.)

This week in how to be eco friendly when the world around you is a garbage fire: In Goa, not only did I get my period, but I also left my menstrual cup behind in Delhi. This would not be a big deal anywhere else, but Goa has a garbage garbage disposal system (heh) and so, unless you contribute to the many landfills cropping up all over the place, it's hard to get rid of things like tampons. Luckily, I had borrowed some organic cotton ones from a visiting friend, but when I was done, I still had this whole bag full of used tampons I didn't know what to do with. We decided to bury them in the garden, but the stray dogs dug them up, so finally K said, "Let's just burn them" so that's exactly what we did. Two were still charred lumps of coal when we were done, but at least the rest disintegrated, and we buried the coal-y ones again. Things you never think you'll be doing on holiday: burning your menstrual blood in a bonfire.

This week in recipes: So happy to be reunited with the kitchen and the Instant Pot! I am really getting into cooking, and the garden went sort of crazy when we were away so we have kilos of spinach and aubergine plus some kohlrabi which looks like a satellite and which I am completely clueless how to prepare. But since I've been looking up the internet for recipes and things to do which are easy, I thought I'd share them here. (Note: I haven't made them yet since I'm waiting for some ingredients, but they look fairly fool proof)

First: a spaghetti aglio e olio but with SPINACH so I can use some of it up. Very easy recipe and you can totally omit the parsley and the parmesan if they are hard to find or too expensive. I always put some whole dried red chillis into my aglio olio and it tastes amaze. (You fry it with the garlic for full flavour.) \

Then some Instant Pot recipes which you can also make in your regular pressure cooker: this chicken and spinach ramen (did I mention we have a fuck ton of spinach?) I will be making this without the bacon, using water instead of stock (and one spoon of fish oil for the umami flavour), plus adding lemon grass and sriracha instead of chilli paste. It won't look EXACTLY the same, but it will be quite hearty, I think.

And finally this mutton curry, which looks really simple.

I've already made this paleo butter chicken (and replicated on stove top for my friends in Goa who loved it). Cauliflower soup (bumper crop of that too.) And some other things which were also good, but not as successful as those two.

Monday link list to start your week out right:


 

Because of the amateurish way the Babe report was handled (her wine choices; her outfit), and the way it was written with an almost prurient and unnecessarily macabre interest in the minute details of their interaction (“the claw”), it left the subject open to further attacks, the kind that are entirely, exhaustingly predictable. The usual subjects emerged with the usual opinions: within minutes, alt-right toad Mike Cernovich was dismissing Ansari as a “beta”; within hours, neoliberal icon Caitlin Flanagan had written a confused, disingenuous essay in The Atlantic using Ansari’s race as a rhetorical device for her disdain for #MeToo; within days, hardline carceral-state cheerleader Ashleigh Banfield was accusing Grace of harming the entire #MeToo movement. To no one’s surprise, The New York Times’s Bari Weiss weighed in on Monday night, rolling her eyes at what she considered to be Grace’s requirement that Ansari be “a mind-reader.”

MORE on the whole Aziz Ansari thing, but this time about the reporting which felt really salacious to me and most of my friends.

Our mom never thought that our blackness would hold us back in life—she thought we could rule the world. But that optimism and starry-eyed love was, in fact, born from her whiteness. It was almost impossible for her to see all of the everyday hurdles we had to jump, the tiny cuts of racism that we endured throughout our lives. For our mom, we were black and beautiful and smart and talented and kind—and that’s all that mattered. And in the confines of our home, it was all that mattered. But as we left home, and our mom began to see us interact as adults with the real world, she began to suspect that there was more to being black in this world than she had previously thought. I could tell that this made my mom uncomfortable, to know that the babies that she had birthed from her own body had entire universes she couldn’t see, so the more that my world and my career became focused on race, the less my mom acknowledged it. She just really didn’t know what to say.

How do you, a black woman, talk to your white mother about race?

For me, Patrick [Dempsey] leaving the show [in 2015] was a defining moment, deal-wise. They could always use him as leverage against me — "We don't need you; we have Patrick" — which they did for years. I don't know if they also did that to him, because he and I never discussed our deals. There were many times where I reached out about joining together to negotiate, but he was never interested in that. At one point, I asked for $5,000 more than him just on principle, because the show is Grey's Anatomy and I'm Meredith Grey. They wouldn't give it to me. And I could have walked away, so why didn't I? It's my show; I'm the number one. I'm sure I felt what a lot of these other actresses feel: Why should I walk away from a great part because of a guy? You feel conflicted but then you figure, "I'm not going to let a guy drive me out of my own house."

Sort of lost touch with Grey's Anatomy a few years ago--after they killed McDreamy---but this interview with Ellen Pompeo, the star, on how much she gets paid is really fascinating.

I remember going to one city, not particularly famous for its culture, and discovering it had two literature festivals. When I got there, I realised they were both happening at the same time and they seemed to be intent on clawing each other’s eyes out. One apparently was calling the hotels where the other had booked guests and cancelling the bookings. As the organiser handed me two drink coupons for the inaugural party, she complained that two of her writers had gone to the rival camp’s party. To add insult to injury, they had used her festival car, which she proceeded to recall with some relish. [...] Later that night I discovered my hotel bathroom came with one tiny sliver of green Medimix soap. My friend who was attending the other festival said his bathroom came with soap, shower gel and ear buds. I feared I was at the lesser festival. I just went down to the reception and asked if I could have a second Medimix soap, so I was not ferrying one sliver from shower to basin.

Going to Indian lit fests during lit fest season

Today in Photo

Portrait with the groom, my younger cousin where he has me in a headlock and right after he shouted into my ear, deafening me for the next hour so yes I guess we're totally grown up now. #readyforreddy #weddingdiary

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Harvest. Lettuce, spinach, radish and one sleepy sun kitty. #terracegarden #eatwhatyougrow

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Tsundoku: three books to begin 2018 with

This appeared as my column in BLInk in January

Happy new year, readers! I have just—for the third year running—set my reading challenge on a website called Goodreads. It lets you log and rate each book you read, and by the end of the year, you have a nice record of all your reading habits. It's been quite invaluable for me, since I read a lot, and often forget what I was reading a month or two ago. Another new habit I've started is a reading journal, a sort of companion to my Goodreads challenge, where I write down the books I'm reading, my thoughts and add lists of books I'd like to read in the coming month. With those resolutions in mind, this month's theme is new beginnings, and what better way to start than to inspire yourself with some books?

Water cooler: Even if you're not on the publishing circuit, it's very likely you would have heard about Sujatha Gidla's book Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India. It's been widely reviewed in the US, where it was first published, and even though it just came out in India a few months ago, the buzz has been building around it. Through meticulous research and lots of interviews, Gidla has managed to put together a fine portrait of a young untouchable man—her uncle—who grew up Christian but renounced religion when he joined India's nascent Communist party. There are stark pictures of poverty and injustice in this book, and I warn you, it is not an easy read, but it is a necessary one. Gidla moves down the generations, from her grandfather, who was a teacher, to this uncle who changed his fortune, and also manages a look at the life of her own mother, an intelligent sharp woman, who also became a teacher, despite an unhappy marriage and three small children. Make this the year you find out more about the varied histories of India, not just the stuff in your old school textbooks, and this book with its focus on the rise of the student movement and how it affected young lower caste men will give you the alternate view you never knew you were missing. Ants Among Elephants by Sujatha Gidla, Harper Collins, Rs 599.

Watchlist: I don't know about you, but this is the year I tried to get away from all the bad news by reading a lot more about people who survived in the wildnerness, alone. Something about being all by myself was greatly appealing to me this year: even if it was just reading about it. Perhaps your resolution is to exercise more, and what better way to inspire yourself than by reading Cheryl Strayed's gorgeous memoir Wild? The book is the story of how she trekked the Pacific Trail, a long hike that cuts across a large part of America, and has been written about often, most famously by Bill Bryson in A Walk In The Woods. Wild has also been made into a movie, starring Reese Witherspoon, but even if you've watched it, I urge you to read the book as well, because not only is it a walking memoir, it's also a grief memoir, as Strayed, who has just lost her mother and her marriage, resorts to walking eleven hundred miles just to make sense of it all. Her prose is almost like poetry, and even though her pack is heavy and her shoes are tight, it'll make you want to follow in her footsteps. Wild by Cheryl Strayed, Penguin Random House, Rs 399.

Way back: And perhaps, you're inspired by my own resolutions at the top of this column, and want to build up your reading habit. The first question is always, “Okay, but what shall I read?” For this, and for a love letter to books and reading, pick up Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris, a book I first read at age nineteen, but which I can still remember vividly, like an old, dear friend. In this slim volume of essays, Fadiman moves from subject to subject deftly and often, humourously. There's one about what happens when you mix your books with your husband's, what do you do with the spare copies? Another on the treatment of books: do you dog-ear to mark the page, or are you fastidious about bookmarks and never placing your book splayed across a pillow? And my particular favourite: the essay about books about food. Delicious. Fadiman says in her preface that she began writing the book when she noticed how books were being sold like toasters—one cheaper than the other, which one was a better one and so on. She wanted, instead to address the people for whom reading also lay in having a connection with your old books, not just which new book to buy. I think that still holds true. Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman, Rs 443, Penguin Random House

Today in Photo

Finally a #readyforreddy post (plus one gatecrasher) celebrations for my cousin's wedding in Hyderabad before we all fly to Delhi tomorrow morning.

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My niece and I have been bonding. I taught her all about good angles and good snakes and also told her 4 +7 was 13 until I was corrected by everyone else, but hey, she's four and not judging my lack of maths. #auntyminna

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Morning reading nook on a swing on a terrace in a flat in Hyderabad. That little red and blue thing is a Wendy House my aunt built for her granddaughters, and it is SO adorable I want to live in it. #terracegarden #itdontmeanathingifitaintgotthatswing

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Newsletter: Bad dates, dive bars

I'm assuming you've all seen the Aziz Ansari story yesterday about what a shitty date he is. I've been rewatching Parks And Recreation on Amazon Prime recently, and he comes up a lot--almost every single episode, and it's hard to watch scenes with him now without thinking back on his behaviour. Worse still was the set of episodes also guest starring Louis CK, because then you look at all these men who are known for being great actors and comics, and winning awards and what not, AND Parks And Recreation is also Amy Poehler's baby, and she's always seemed like an amazing woman to me, so how do you separate in your head the art someone creates with the way they are in real life? I find myself to be a lot more unforgiving of the men, even Aziz, who is this little brown guy winning awards and generally being charming, someone you WANT to root for, and when you learn about him being basically like everyone else, it's a little bit of a betrayal. Whereas with Margaret Atwood--a way more articulate person than Aziz or Louis--her saying that #MeToo was:

The #MeToo moment is a symptom of a broken legal system. All too frequently, women and other sexual-abuse complainants couldn't get a fair hearing through institutions – including corporate structures – so they used a new tool: the internet. Stars fell from the skies. This has been very effective, and has been seen as a massive wake-up call. But what next? The legal system can be fixed, or our society could dispose of it. Institutions, corporations and workplaces can houseclean, or they can expect more stars to fall, and also a lot of asteroids.

Which is kind of true, in one way: #MeToo would not exist if the legal system was perfect. But to dismiss it is unfair, because it is exactly what was needed. Maybe the legal system needs to change and embrace the way we can--each of us--go to the internet and say something each time something or someone has wronged us. I know from personal opinion that when you tweet at a company, they are more likely to fix something than when you just call them and sit for hours with a customer service representative. I've tried both. And the way women are taking down powerful men using their words goes to show that if you hold someone accountable in a public forum, they are far more likely to offer apologies for their actions, rather than just lame explanations. And hopefully, some man somewhere is reading all the testimonies and thinking, "Oh hmm, maybe it's a bad idea to put my hand inside my intern's shirt as she bends over." I think that's a win, anyway.

As for the people turning this into a "humiliation" thing, I'm not sure what their reasoning is, despite reading loads of tweets around the same argument, and this one long Atlantic piece I've linked to above. Is it just because the idea of a "bad date" doesn't gel with the idea of a sexual harasser? I have been on bad dates, and I have been on dates where a person doesn't listen to your body language (OR YOUR WORDS), and I can tell you that despite that, I still said goodbye to them with a semblance of a smile. Teeth gritted, face in an "I want to get out of here" expression, but still a smile, because politeness is drilled into us way more than saying no in a hard situation. So there's that.

This week in further meditations: I am still in Goa--leaving today for Hyderabad for a family wedding and then back to Delhi--and I have fallen into a comfortable routine. I write during the day, stopping for lunch and then a brief rest before writing again, and then go out to join friends. Which means my favourite part about Goa, its dive bars. Yes, you can keep your beach shacks and your fancy restaurants, for me, nothing says Goa more than rolling up to Siolim crossing and jumping into one red-walled bar where a man called Rock knows my drink order and always keeps the same table for us.

If there's one thing Delhi lacks, it is the character filled dive bar. I think it's also because of Delhi's attitude to women, most dive bars there have a faint attitude of seed. Like if you sat there alone too long you would inevitably become newspaper headlines on page three the next day. There are a few that I loved in Delhi but then 4S became too popular (the idea is you can dress how you like to go to a dive bar), Saki bar in Connaught Place is too far (Hotel Alka, I wonder if it's still a thing) and while I like Road Romeo, it doesn't really begin to compare to Rock or Paulo's in Goa in terms of sheer atmosphere.

A true dive has all of the following: a) cheap drinks, b) small, too-close-to-each-other tables, c) a regular clientele so you always run into the same people, d) something to distinguish it from all the other dive bars next to it, so you're justified in picking your favourite. In the case of Rock, I actually like the food, and I like how friendly the owner is, and I like almost sitting in the street as I drink. In the case of Paulo's, it's full of leathery old hippies who sit there, one imagines, from morning to night, and who are almost as much a part of the decor as the old prints of famous musicians on the wall. Paulo's has gotten a little trendy now though, they even gave me a laptop decal the last time I was there, and one Iranian lady will come around selling sandwiches off the back of her scooter. That's Goa for you. I return to Delhi drawing rooms soon enough.

This week in endorsements: Lots of love for Before, And Then After on the interwebs this week, and here is a screenshot from one reader on Twitter who loved it.



Then, to my complete surprise, I see Confessions of a Listmaniac/The Life And Times of Layla the Ordinary is on this list of the 121 best Indian books in English OF ALL TIME. So that's very flattering and nice, especially for one of my young adult books which I always feel get a little lost in the shuffle. Just the sort of motivation I need to finish up my next book. (Here's a link to buy my books in case you're curious now.)

Monday morning link list:

When Nathalia brought two new poems to her father a few days after her mother’s faux pas, he was very impressed, as he told it, but wanted a more expert view. He suggested she send them to an editor at the Brooklyn Daily Times whom he knew vaguely from his short stints at various copy desks before reenlisting when the United States entered the First World War. There was a flurry of attention at the Times, and Nelda started sending out more of Nathalia’s work, some of which was apparently published without further fuss. So a year later, when Edmund Leamy, the poetry editor of the New York Sun, accepted a poem that Nathalia was said to have sent on her own, he had never heard of her. He assumed the author was an adult. After all, in his experience, no “child would ever submit any work from his or her pen without adding the words ‘Aged __ years.’” And “The History of Honey,” rhythmical and ingeniously rhymed, bore no obvious literary mark of immaturity. Nor was there girlish handwriting to supply a clue. When Leamy invited this new contributor named Nathalia Crane to drop by to confer about another poem and have lunch, he mistook her mother for the poet. Flustered to learn that “Miss” Crane was the “little, long-legged, bright-eyed child,” he forgot about the promised meal, as Nathalia noted years later.

- This story about a child-poet genius (including her rather excellent poetry) is a fun and sad read.

 

But online, we inhabit an unrelenting present, where artificially spatialized time appears severed and successive. The present is announced by the externalized whims — notifications, replies, mentions — we swipe at, scroll past, click through to. On Twitter, for example, each tweet’s timestamp — 17 min, 42 min, 3 hr — announces time since. Time, rather than passing, continuously refreshes. The latest is, of course, predicated by news, or by whatever resembles news. The unrelenting present is continuously under threat of assault from the caprice of one man’s sleepless whims. A new sense of dread accompanies checking one’s phone in the morning. It can feel like waking up and tuning in to the apocalypse.

 

- The more I stay off the internet, the more sense life makes to me.
 

Also, remember if something is making you miserable, you do have the power to change it - in work or love or whatever it may be. Have the guts to change. You don’t know how much time you’ve got on this earth so don’t waste it being miserable. I know that is said all the time but it couldn’t be more true.

- Before she died, Holly Butcher wrote a letter to the world.
 

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

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On Thirteen Reasons Why, the show & the book, and why we still need our really good teen suicide book

(A version of this appeared in Scroll.)

Do you remember where you were when your life hit a crossroads? I do.

For a brief period, which felt like eternity at the time, I was bullied. It wasn't even the dramatic stuff you see on TV or hear about, it was mostly just occasional put downs (“you're so ugly”) or exclusions (not being invited to a party everyone else was.) It wasn't a big deal, and yet, it was the only deal. My life was consumed by this—I was about thirteen, a difficult age anyway—and I did so badly at school that I had to repeat the year. This was when the crossroads happened: I begged to go somewhere else for school, my parents agreed, and I was sent off to boarding school, where I made the first tentative steps at becoming happy with being myself again. I guess some inner reserve of mental strength I didn't know I had was keeping me afloat—I was deeply unhappy, in the depths of despair and yet, I still welcomed each new day as the gift it was.

Reading (and watching) Thirteen Reasons Why reminded me a little of that time. Every year, around this time of the year—CBSE results, exam time—I read about teen suicides. In this age of live streaming, we can even watch suicides, people broadcasting till the very end. Though Thirteen Reasons Why (the book) was published in 2007, way before live streaming was even dreamt of, the victim, the girl, the second narrator in the book, Hannah Baker, broadcasts her own death on thirteen tapes, naming and shaming the people who drove her to this decision. 

 

The TV show is a bit more disturbing. While in the book, the boy listening to the tapes; Clay; thinks to himself several times that Hannah could have asked for help, in the show, the shades of grey are less defined. Hannah is hounded with relentless bullying that would make anyone break down, painted in TV screen colours, lingering lovingly on each slap, on each sexual assault. In the book, Hannah's parents are a little absent, all-absorbed in their business, but in the show, her parents are frequently present, talking to her, eating together and yet, she never turns to them. In the book, Hannah takes some pills, the narrative doesn't go deeply into how she dies, but the show has the camera pause on her scared face, her trembling fingers, the lift of the razor as she slashes at her wrists and the blood pumping out of them. (That's not a spoiler, you already know that she dies in the end, don't you?)

A while ago, Instagram banned the use of hashtags that promoted anorexia, like #thinspiration or #proana. It didn't work the way the social media site might have wanted it to: people began to modify their hashtags, like for example, #thinspooo instead of the banned #thinspo. At least they have a dedicated section in their help centre where they address what you can do if you see someone posting threats of suicide or self harm. (You can report the post and also share links they've provided of suicide helplines.) But after reading (and watching) Thirteen Reasons Why, I saw it as a sort of glorified suicide video, except it was pretending it was not. At least in the book, the common markers of a suicidal individual are spelt out (they change their appearance, they start giving away their things), but at the end of the show, you are left feeling as despairing as one imagines the characters must be after listening to the tapes.

In a survey done by the WHO in 2015, India is one of the top 25 most suicidal countries in the world. 17% of all world-wide suicides are Indian, and our rate of suicide for women is the sixth highest in the world. Hindustan Times carried a story with an alarming statistic: every hour, one student commits suicide in India. For not quite the same reasons as Hannah: these suicides are usually related to academics and failing exams.

But books about teen suicide (few and far between) usually deal with love or bullying or some such trouble, starting all the way from Romeo and Juliet, the original suicidal teens. Maybe that's why I'm somewhat disappointed with Thirteen Reasons Why. I wanted it to be more... something. More inner thoughts and less “this is why it happened.” More about the numbness that hits people with depression, teens more than others. I wanted it to address the big black bird of despair that settles over their entire lives. I wanted it to talk about how it feels like an effort to just wake up and face the day. The book makes it too neat—there was a girl, people bullied her, she killed herself. Bullying is awful, a lot of people are driven to suicide through bullying alone, but there is a step three in the middle where your brain says, “Anything would be better than this. Death would be better than this.” Thirteen Reasons Why touches on that just briefly and towards the end, not going much into how a person who was upbeat and cheerful just three chapters ago could become so hopeless.

That's the teen suicide book—and show—I'd like to see.

A Happy (Feminist) Marriage to You

(This appeared as a version of my Aunty Feminist column in Youth Ki Awaaz in October 2016) 

T asks: I am 27, and am planning to have an arranged marriage. Tinder, OKC, Aisle etc, failed to find a match for me so I have never been in a relationship. Could you point out the sexist things men do in a relationship and how to resolve it? Also, what can I do to empower my future spouse?

Dear T,

These are both excellent questions, and I congratulate you on wanting to be more informed before you make these hugely important decisions. So many people don't. It's basically the equivalent of reading the user manual before you begin.

I think this is a good first step to answer the second part of your question. What can I do to empower my future spouse—you do what you've just done. You ask. You make it known that you are going through life as her partner and companion, not her boss or her jailer. If she's feeling like she hasn't got what she needs from you, in terms of support, you need to foster an environment in your home where she's okay asking. And you're okay asking too! This is not a one-way street: marriage is about two people (and only two people, not four or five or twenty, like Indian extended families seem to believe!) having each other's backs. Those are the best relationships I've seen.

You also need to live by that millennial phrase (which the New York Times called “narcissistic” but still good advice) “you do you.” Let your wife be herself. Allow for a relationship with no judgements, and safe spaces to talk about yourselves. It is possible to have a relationship with no judgements at all, and that will happen once you are both secure enough to speak your minds freely.

As for the first part of your question, it got me thinking. Women object to sexist remarks primarily when they can be avoided. Like, for example, I'm having a fight with a male colleague and I tell him his work is not up to standard and he really let me down by missing this deadline. And instead of responding with either a justification or a critique of my work (“well, your deadlines haven't been that great either!”) he says, “Why are you being so emotional?” That derails the whole conversation because it brings it from a conversation about work to a conversation about how I'm feeling and how I'm reacting, which is really not the point in question here. That automatically puts the woman on the back foot. Similarly in a relationship, when you're having a fight with your male partner and he puts your entire fight down to the fact that you might be on your period. A) Women can get mad without hormones being involved. B) Someone being on their period is not a Get Out Of Jail Free card for the other person. 

 

When you are with someone—whether man or woman—you need to think of them as a whole person and not just a supporting character in a play you're the star of. This may seem pretty obvious, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to forget. That person you're bringing down has a whole play going on that's just about her, and so on and so forth. So when you say something guaranteed to slice at her sense of self, her ego, little paper cuts guaranteed to bring her down, take a moment to remember that you, a supporting character in her play, have just turned her plot into one about how a man was determined to believe that all her flaws were because she was female.

Another thing to bear in mind before you embark upon marriage is the very essential and often overlooked conversation about gender roles. Who does what? What do you expect and what does she? Honestly, if you're both arguing about cooking, either take turns or hire someone to help out. Or put aside a large chunk of your monthly budget on home delivery. If you think the laundry should be done once a week and the beds made every day, do these things yourself or offer to take turns. Similarly with the stuff that's important to her. This may seem like a small step, but it's leading up to bigger ones: dividing child care and elder care fairly and responsibly.

But you know what, dear T? I think even though you've never been in a relationship before, that you'll do great. Because you're not afraid to ask difficult questions, and I hope, you're not afraid to hear the answers as well. And that's really most of what it takes.

Love,

Aunty Feminist

Short review: The Leavers by Lisa Ko

Such a lovely book about a Chinese American boy who goes into foster care after his mother vanishes. A meditation on international adoption, growing up an immigrant and well meaning people who are nevertheless not your family. I'm enjoying it, especially since I recently read Behold The Dreamers and am feeling very immigrant lit in my novel choices. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub#nowreading #158in2018

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Newsletter: On the road again

That's right, friends, we're in Goa yet again, in a desperate attempt to get the most out of our rented house before we give it up for good. Because I think that's what we're going to do--give it up. Our Goa experiment was great, we loved getting to know the place as actual CITIZENS, but I find myself slightly annoyed this time that I'm not given the choice to go somewhere else instead, like Gulmarg for more skiing for instance. Or rather, that I feel obligated to make Goa the choice, since we have the house there and everything. (I know right? This is the DEFINITION of first world problems. Uff.) But the next two months are potentially heavy travel ones for me (literary festivals) so this is likely to be our last time in Martha's house. Not our last time in GOA, it's under our skin now, our second home, but I look forward to a short term let, where we don't have to worry about the house being empty for so many months and all the wildlife coming in.

However, it's going to be a short visit, as a cousin of mine is getting married in Hyderabad and Delhi, so we will be hopping across the country like skipping stones. (Which reminds me of the only good Black Mirror episode of this season: Hang The DJ. Did you watch it? Did you like it? Send me your thoughts.)

This week in DIY: Cannot take any credit for K's automated cat feeding machine, since I mocked and groaned pretty much the entire time. He is the mad scientist in our relationship, while I am the Doubting Thomas. (Which is a sort of USEFUL role, if you think about it. He hears all the critique and can improve himself accordingly. I'm rather invaluable, I would say.) Anyhow, he wanted a way for the cats to be able to feed themselves when we travel for short periods of time. Najma, our housekeeper, will still be coming every day to feed, water, and check on them, but this way we stress less. Presenting... the first ever Ganz Automated Cat Feeder.

There are two of those spouts on either side, to keep the food regulated as it comes out. Out of our three cats, only one has figured out how to work it, and he is overeating so much, he keeps throwing up. The other two are wary--Bruno has almost mastered it, but Olga refuses to, preferring instead to come and twirl around my ankles or press her face against mine and make little encouraging chirps so I'll get up and feed her. I always thought she was the smartest cat because she keeps escaping and making a life for herself outside, but it turns out she would actually starve without us. Comforting... ish.

This week in books and reading: Which all begins from my slightly-before-New-Year's resolution to stay offline more. I use an app called Internet Off, which is an open source version of the paid-for app Freedom for Mac. Internet Off lets you turn off your internet--duh--but you can also schedule it, so you have to stick to a certain number of offline hours a day. If you don't trust yourself, there's an option of putting in a password, which you can get your friend or lover to set, taking the control away from you. But now it's been a week, and I can honestly say, apart from days like this one where I'm using the internet to send out this email to you, I don't miss it. I check my email/Twitter/what have you from about 10 to 11.30 and then the computer goes offline and I turn the data off on my phone as well, so what I have is a very quiet and peaceful time. I am doing more writing, but what surprised me is how much better my reading got as well. I always read, it's not new, but now I read with concentration, not distracted by pings and bings, letting my mind wander whenever it wants to, jumping up to check my bookshelves every now and then, because I am at that glorious time as a book collector--I probably own the book I'm thinking about. My little Book of Books is filling up as well, because I make it a point to note what I'm reading and my thoughts on it. And as an additional experiment, I'm posting every single book I read on Instagram, you can find the ones I actually recommend under the hashtag #mrmbookclub

  Which brings me to what I was reading; a Japanese crime novel called Six Four. Ever since I read Louise Penny, I have been filled with the desire to read crime literature from around the world, making it both fun AND a learning experience. I do love crime books though, I'm not sure I'd ever write one, because the mystery I'd write would have to be crazy and intense, full of red herrings and you'd gasp by the end when I reveal the killer, and I haven't yet invented that sort of mystery, but in all my readings so far, I think I'm getting better at spotting the murderer before the book is over.

Also a reading resolution: more Daphne du Maurier! Just read The Parasites last week, and was struck by her observations and how human all her characters are, which is the sign of a rare talent. Next on my list: My Cousin Rachel.

I also watched the first episode of Alias, Grace on Netflix recently and enjoyed it so much, I am going to read the book side by side. Oh and here's my first books column for the new year, including Ants Among Elephants, which I deeply enjoyed.

Wednesday link list which is extra long this week because these are LAST WEEK'S links as well. What a treat!

It’s hard to see sweet, loyal Meg marry a man so self-involved that when they have twins, he starts frequenting a very dodgy sounding establishment (it’s not entirely clear how dodgy) to avoid nights “broken by infant wails”. Marmee advises “captive mamma” Meg to remember she’s a wife as well as a mother (thanks, Marmee), but eventually Meg’s husband takes matters into his own hands by letting the babies cry it out. And it’s hard to see Jo’s roguish best friend Laurie marry the selfish Amy, and perplexing that Amy seems to get the happy ending after she has been so mean as to burn her sister’s manuscript, the work of years, out of spite.

- While I'm slowly coming round to Jo and Professor Bhaer, I will NEVER like Amy. Here's a piece on the upcoming adaptation, which I'm still totally looking forward to.

“We hear calls in our sleep, in our dreams,” Anu, who has been with the call centre for just over two weeks, says. “Sometimes my family calls me on my mobile and I pick it up and say ‘Namashkar, PCR channel number’…and they say, ‘Have you gone mad?’”

- Lovely story on what happens when you dial 100

 

By analyzing enough Facebook likes, an algorithm can predict someone’s personality better than their friends and family can.

 

- I didn't know which of these 74 "things we learned in 2017" things was the most interesting, so I picked the most disturbing.

When Sia’s Cheap Thrills evoked everyone’s inner Bharatnatyam dancer.

- Again didn't know which one to pick from Ladies Finger's list of 100 times they were happy to be women in 2017, so have my favourite.
 

Three years ago, a cat called Raja didn’t come home. He didn’t come home the next night, or the one after that, or the one after that—until his family, the Tuttles, who lived in Florida, eventually gave up hope. Then, three years later, Raja turned up at an SPCA shelter in Georgetown, Delaware. A microchip helped identify him, sparking a multi-state search for his family, which had since moved to Virginia. A week ago, finally, they were reunited with their pet. The cat, Delaware Online reported, had little to say about his dramatic journey—beyond a throaty, enthusiastic purr.

- And, the luckiest people of 2017 will make you "aww" a little.

 

The job was easy, he said. All he had to do was call people in the US from a list, introduce himself as Charles, and tell them they were under federal investigation for tax evasion. One out of 10 people would freak out, he said. At the first hint of panic in their voice, Saluja told them he was going to transfer the call to a different department, where one of his seniors would help them pay their taxes through an online money transfer.

- Very much looking forward to Snigdha's book which comes out this month!

. “See, if someone is online at twelve in the midnight, it means either they have no social life, or they are lonely,” Vinay told me. “In such a scenario, I have the option of posting either serious stuff, or inspirational stuff about life, love, friendships. And you, as a reader, would choose from one of them and share. More often than not, it’s the latter that helps and has more chance of going viral.” Similarly, Vinay said, someone waking up in the morning to commute to work is also not likely to want to read serious material. The company, he told me, has a good idea of what kind of material should be shared at various points of the day.

- If you like schadenfreude (and who doesn't?) this is a delicious deep dive into how ScoopWhoop is fucking up.

This Curated Life

(This appeared as an F Word column last year. Happy to report I no longer check my phone first thing in the morning)

My first thing in the morning practise is a bad habit I'm trying to get over. I open my eyes, I roll over, reach out blearily for my phone and flick-flick-flick, within moments of being jolted out of dream world, I'm out in the public eye, in the middle of a crowd, learning what everyone is up to. Usually, nothing exciting has happened, nine times out of ten, nothing exciting has happened, but the tenth time, that's the time we live for, the time when one of your posts blows up, when one of your photos gets so many likes, you wonder what's happened, when one of your tweets has been shared across the globe. Can you imagine going for a party as soon as you wake up? No coffee, no brushing your teeth, your hair fanning Medusa-like around your face?

When did we start living our life just so we could curate it?

I recently read an article that talked about how, out of all the social media apps out there, Instagram was the most likely to cause depression. Apparently, the young people polled for the study said that the photo-sharing app caused feelings of low self-esteem and negative body issues. I'm probably too old for that study—being able to remember a time before the internet officially puts you out of the running for “young people polled” but I do know on days like today when it seems everyone is on their holiday and have beautiful bodies, that I feel—not depressed—but like my life is somehow lacking.

Just a quick flick through of my Instagram feed at the moment reveals the sort of life that we would all like to live. Since it's World Yoga Day, there are women in sports bras and tights bending over to do poses, their stomachs flat and unwrinkled. Beautifully plated food appears, mine never comes close to this sort of powdered sugar perfection. All my food photos in fact seem to break down the dish in front of me to the ugliest colours—brown and yellow, with no hints of what makes it tasty. Even the books posts are aspirational—against very white bedsheets, next to stem vases with a single rosebud.

I'm guilty of the same crimes. Why take the full scene in front of you when you can focus on the small and delicate? Why post the first picture you take of yourself when you can take several, and pick the best one? My phone even comes with a “beauty mode” for selfies: it makes my eyes bigger, and my skin flawless. I forget that isn't me, and when I look in a mirror after, I'm often taken aback, aghast: is that what I look like?

But then I'm in the habit of it, and then also, there's a small part of my brain which is judgemental and petty. This is the part that laughs at ugly babies, that feels a sense of schadenfreude when something unfortunate happens to someone else. It is the id, the part of my brain that determines sexuality and “I want” cravings, it demands instant gratification, it gets to choose what dreams I have. As an adult, my ego and super ego are supposed to be stronger than my id, I am, after all, a rational, empathic human being, but I'm afraid, so afraid, that all this Facebook-Twitter-Instagram stuff is making my id stronger and stronger, and soon the other parts of me will be subsumed entirely, leaving no place for rational thought just “I want” and more “I want it now.”

I think we are doing each other a disservice when we post beautiful pictures. I mean, I get it, I really do, taking a good photo is part of the art of photography, I feel the same sense of achievement as when I write a good sentence, but the selfies, the clothes, the curated life, it's harmful. I'll illustrate: take two friends: Shobha and Neha. Shobha is stylish, travels a lot for work and loves putting up photographs featuring herself in Greece, a glass of wine in her hand, the sunset behind her. Neha wants that life, who wouldn't, but is stuck in a job that ties her to the city and is seldom very social. Neha used to be happy with her life, but now all she sees is Shobha's world, Shobha's manicured fingers, Shobha looking thrilled as she globe-trots, and Neha is stuck with a feeling of dissatisfaction that soon turns to despair. What is the point of her life if it isn't like Shobha's? Neha is no longer happy or content where she is. You could argue that this is an age-old problem, that even before the internet there were Shobhas and Nehas, but then they would have seldom met, not having that much in common. With the internet, everyone is our best friend, and everyone seems to have a better life.

In the end, it seems the only solution is one many people I know are turning to. Deleting the apps, putting down their phones and going back to their ordinary-extraordinary lives.

Short review: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

A late flight but we're off to Goa again! And keeping me company on my trip is my beloved Margaret. I just watched the pilot of Alias Grace on Netflix two days ago and LOVED it so I'm doing a readalong. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #nowreading #158in2018

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Short reviews: Every Heart A Doorway by Seanen McGuire and Behold The Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

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

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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 Things on 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.”