Today in Photo

Confronted with my own baby face every morning. Looks like I was born with my same exact eyebrows. #waybackwednesday #babyphotos

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Deep in the caverns of Noida is Indira Market, a warren of stalls selling export surplus kurtas, crockery, random things for the house as well as an outing for people who live next door. It's also home to several fabric shops, and a favourite of my mum's friend who lives next door and told her all about it. I also wanted to go so we made a date and there like Aladdin's cave, vast quantities of fabric piled up to the ceiling and me deciding what I needed to get made over the next few weeks. Shorts definitely. Co-ords. A shift dress. A tank top. Shopping for fabric is in many ways more fun than regular shopping because it exercises your creative brain but obvs there's delayed gratification and you have to wait and see if the tailor can pull off your ambitions. Also bought some ₹100 t-shirts for days like yesterday, going to local markets and exploring new things. #fabricshopping #tailormade #diyclothes #handloom #exportsurplus #indiramarket #noida

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Worth leaving to come home to reunions, in my humble opinion. Nice Sunday in GK2. #femalefriendships #delhidiary #sundayafternoons #happyhour

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Same dress from my profile picture (which is the only time I've worn it before!) Didn't bring any clothes from Berlin because I want to make the most of my luggage allowance on the way back. But left a bunch of clothes with my mum and honestly, after an entire winter of layers and leggings and snoods, I'm happy to see anythingggggg that lets me have bare skin. Quite pleased with this dress though, worn to a party last night, shoes are my new Birkenstocks, which also I love but the cork sole takes a little getting used to before it stops being hard against your feet. That being said, I was standing for a large part of the evening and my feet feel fine this morning so hurrah for arch support! The pandemic made me realise I'm never even going to PRETEND to wear heels again. #whatiworetoday

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Meanwhile in Berlin.... #catsofinstagram #squishytheblackcat

via Instagram

What I'm Reading

I promised you a review of the best book I've read in a long time and dun dun dun: here it is! Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski has a terrible title and a vague photo-of-someone's-feet book jacket and would've been a pretty overlooked book if a famous gut hadn't just randomly picked it up off a bookshelf (this is why we need bookstores). Said Famous Guy is Stephen King who loved it so much he wrote a scorching letter to Publisher's Weekly saying it was criminal how little the publishers were doing to promote this book because it had, as he put it, "a mother of a story." This is what made me pick it up last year and I never got around to reading it until I was travelling recently and was looking for something new. It was so incredible I've had a book hangover ever since, but sadly I think it's one of its kind. What's it about? Well, there's a woman - - an American - - who dies in a jail in Thailand and she's this anthropologist see? And she's been doing research into this tribe and living with them for years. And then relatedly, there's this American family of missionaries, who have been missionaries for GENERATIONS. And then there's this young journalist (also called Mischa but the book is a novel) who lives in Thailand with his girlfriend and is investigating the story. Broad strokes but you'll get so pulled in. Read it! I wished I was an anthropologist after I finished. #mrmbookclub #100in2022 #bookstagram #fieldwork #mischaberlinski

Today in Photo

Went partying to the Asian side of Istanbul yesterday, this neighbourhood called Kadikoy which is super hip. We were at a coffee shop a few days ago & saw a little poster with DJ events at a venue that looked cool but was across the sea, so we headed there slowly. The DJ was terrible, all pretentious minimal techno but later they got out another DJ who played some nice things and we were drunk by then so we danced, caught the last ferry home and walked up such a steep hill that my thighs literally cannot move this morning. Photos from a coffee shop on the ferry station, a view of Asia from the boat and an unrelated breakfast cat. Delhi day after. #istanbul #traveldiaries #turkey #catsofistanbul

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Snowing again today and K is working so here's a colour coordinated cat against Louis Vuitton bags and a street scene from yesterday. Went for SUCH a long walk, and it was also the second day of my period, proving conclusively that I could've joined in PT class when I was bleeding, I just didn't want to. 🤫🤫Had a gorgeous lunch (not pictured) at a cafe we just stumbled unto with a daily changing menu and super small seating space. Getting a little tired of Turkish food (I know! Blasphemy!) so seeking out new things. Will I succumb to my desi food craving before I return to the motherland next week? Probably. #istanbul #catsofistanbul #traveldiaries

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Vintage clothes (and second hand books, natch) are the best souvenirs. And now I live in a city where I can kinda wear a coat all year round (light summer jacket, hoodie, autumn coat to wear over a thin sweater etc etc) I've been longing for a trench. My Uniqlo heattech down jacket is GREAT, it's ridonkulously warm and has saved my life on many occasions but it's not what you'd call stylish. This old lady trench is from the 60s and I love everything about it, how I feel like Sherlock Holmes off on a mission or like Meg Ryan with her tiny curvy body under huge coats in When Harry Met Sally. It needs some TLC, seams are loose and linings are slightly ripped and there's a stain on the pocket which I hope will come out with dry cleaning but the shop girl gave us a 50% discount (K bought an ancient corduroy jacket too) so it was really a BARGAIN. #bargainhunting #vintageclothes #houndstoothtrench #traveldiaries #istanbul

via Instagram

What I'm Reading

Of course I stopped at the second hand book lane in Istanbul, of course I bought this book. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #shortstories

Today in Photo

Isn't the Hagia Sofia BEAUTIFUL? my photos absolutely do not do it justice but I think it's the most majestic place of worship I've ever been to (formerly in first place was the Golden Temple which is gorgeous but lacks the soaring roof, the sense of vastness.) Ir used to be a cathedral during Constantine's time, then the Ottomans turned it into a mosque, then the old secular Turkish government turned it into a museum then the new religious government turned it into a mosque so now you have to shoes off but it's so beautiful I gasped, like literally. The other photo is just seagulls, my favourite bird. I realise I have a favourite bird now. What's yours? (this is not an engagement metrics kind of question, I'm just curious.) #hagiasophia #istanbul #seagulls

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Swipe for a bunch of great cats. Couldn't even fit all my Istanbul cat photos into one post but here are some. Imagine me going "cat! Caaat. Catttttt. Oh hi dogs. Catttttttttt." through the whole thing. Very friendly, seem well fed and neutered, I'm spending most of my time telling myself that cats are happy in outdoor colonies as well so I don't take them all home to Berlin. (Well, send them with K while I finish visa paperwork ie.) caaaaaat. Cannot promise this will be my last cat post, still here for some time. #catsofistanbul #istanbul #catstagram #traveldiaries

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Snowstanbul. Quiet in these parts because we got the dreaded c+ (I blame Hungary which just removed their mask mandates, everyone coughing and sneezing all over me). We've been isolating since we got here and finally tested negative over the weekend which is also when there was a massive snow storm. So gorgeous! We went for a walk in it last night, cold and white and still. #istanbul #traveldiaries

via Instagram

Today in Photo

See ya Budapest! (see ya also being the Hungarian word for hello and goodbye, spelt differently of course.) we are now off to Turkey for two weeks after which I will return to the Motherland so let me make the most of the last winter I'll have for the season. From yesterday's walkabout, coffee and a sandwich in an ancient coffee hall, ferris wheels against the sky and a walk across the bridge to the Buda side of the city. Ending with (not pictured) a nightcap at the city's most famous ruin bar (ie a bar in an abandoned building but in this case turned legit) where every night we saw long crowds of tourists queueing to get in and got around that by going in at 7.30 pm like old boring people. At least we saw the inside! It was cool. #budapest #hungary #traveldiaries

via Instagram

What I'm Reading

I reallyyyy enjoyed this twisty dark book. We begin when a woman is asked by a researcher to give an account of her aunt's life, an aunt who has been hanged for murder. We go back and forth through time, strange family dynamics, siblings and the parent-child relationship, all unfolding during WWII, so if you've been keeping track of my reading, you know it checks all my boxes. A Dark-Adapted Eye is my first Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell writing under a pseudonym and I read it all in three days (it's very long so will take a while!) Give it a go if you're in the mood for strange people, which should be your forever mood to be honest. It starts slowly but I think that's part of what makes it so brilliant. #bookstagram #mrmbookclub #100in2022 #ruthrendell #barbaravine #adarkadaptedeye

Today in Photo

The Hungarian National Museum which we went to just on a whim turned out to be one of the best "history of a country" museums I've ever been to. You walk up through the Paleolithic age (Hungary is the site of a lot of archaeological digs), make your way through various invaders, get to the royal families and then end with just after the Nazis and Communism, early 80s. (when I was born so seems fitting 😁). We've definitely been taking it easy, a little tired from too much Berlin perhaps, so managing to do one thing a day, and last night spent my entire evening in bed with a book. My perfect vacation is lots to do outside but also the option to turn it off and rest whenever you feel like it. No pressure basically. #hungary #hungariannationalmuseum #budapest #traveldiaries

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Only found out this morning that if you rub the Fat Policeman's stomach, you'll be lucky in life and love. Sadly all I did was stand next to him with an expression of relief because coming across him on a dark evening meant we both thought he was real, standing there as part of a busking act or something. Couldn't therefore take any liberties with such a fine gent. #budapest #hungary #traveldiaries

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Budapest is a revelation. The food is actually good? The wine is from this region? The people have energy and very little time for tourists? If I didn't live in Berlin, I'd live here I think. Photo from last night, we got off an eight hour long train and made our way into Pest (the city is divided by the river: one side Buda, the other Pest). You must visit, it's an energetic city, lots happening and Eastern Europe is so different from Western Europe while being the same in many ways. #budapest #hungary #traveldiaries

via Instagram

Today in Photo

Prague is like a cliché of a beautiful European city and I enjoyed all of it despite being slightly under the weather (bad allergies, not cro). Two Kafka statues, lots of pretty buildings, lovely sunny day, the big astrological clock, we walked for like nine kilometres yesterday. Definitely worth coming back to for me, for now it's off to Budapest with us on a day long train to finish off the rest of this winter's Schengen. #traveldiaries #czechrepublic #prague #kafka

via Instagram

Today in Photo

So long my little fatties. So adjusted to the heat now that when we took them into the enclosed back garden yesterday thinking they'd delight in the fresh air and freedom they spent the entire time shouting at the door to be let inside again. Then we took them back upstairs and they slept for several hours and woke up to demand more designer organic food so yeah. They don't miss Delhi. Will they miss me? I like to think so but at this point it's a toss up. #catsofinstagram #olgadapolga #squishytheblackcat #berlinna #catsofberlin

via Instagram

The Internet Personified: I scream, you scream, we all scream at the second year of the pandemic

Sparkling speckled guinea pigs,

We’re coming up on our two year anniversary of the pandemic. Griefbacon (a newsletter I enjoy) reminds me, but do I need reminding? March 2020, the month the world suddenly cluttered to a stop, our stupid little human lives suddenly useless in the face of this mysterious plague, like what use was it being powerful, being rich, being famous, being on the other side of the world, being able to escape the planet entirely and go into space, we were all going to get sick, no exceptions, unless you wore a mask and stayed inside and didn’t do anything.

Except. I did that, we all did that for a whole year, urging patience and judging people who went out, and hard judging people who travelled, like “it’s all their fault we’re still sick.” The anti vaxxers who raged and protested, the anti-maskers we rolled our eyes at and hated, they were all Them, the people who wanted the pandemic to go on forever. Except as one month turned into six into eight into a year into two, we had to all leave our houses eventually. We had retired so abruptly that like children set free from curfew we wanted to do everything at the same time: party late and travel everywhere and smoke endless cigarettes and earn lots of money and quit our jobs and see the world and move back home to be closer to our parents and have a child and adopt a dog and buy new shoes that pinch our toes and declare widely that we’ll never wear heels again and turn 34 and have a huge party at a wildlife sanctuary and turn 50 and be so scared of moving that the only celebration we have is a Zoom link and friends from around the world lurking and we think about friends more and more, we write think pieces about friends, we let some go with relief, thanking the excuse of a pandemic but we reach out to others, friendships that somehow floundered because you were both in different cities at different parts of your lives suddenly brought together by this shared experience, you begin by checking in during the worst of it and when, months later, you’re both out and about again, you still send a joke, a link, a note, a life update. Your friends are dearer to you than they ever were and you don’t think you’ll see some of them for a long time because the world used to be small and now it’s very very big and you are on one side of it and they are on the other and the countries you belong to don’t seem to care that you are a living breathing person with a living breathing history, they treat you like a file number. But to be fair, to them, overwhelmed, you must be a file number, otherwise how would they manage, you think to yourself, even if you sort of kind of want them to make an exception for you?

I’m writing this on my Last Berlin Day, it is the last for this season because of those visas. I’m having a hard time getting an appointment to apply for a spouse visa, so here I am on a tourist visa and now it’s over so I must leave again and try again and hope that they see me the person not me the email annoyance (and boy, have we written many emails. A book’s worth of emails!). Before that we travel on the last week of my Schengen to Prague and Budapest, yes, close to where the world is starting to end all over again, but far enough away for now, we hope, that we can just have a pleasant time and then fly to Istanbul for a few weeks. It seems odd to talk about pleasant times when there’s a war on, but I’ve talked about holidays before and there have been wars on before, it’s just that this one is next door and involves white people so are we to change our behaviour? War is terrible and Putin is in the running for being the Worst Man In The World (so is our very own Worst Man but he’s a bit toothless at the moment with the UP elections on) and I hope all the other more powerful countries put their might behind Ukraine and shun Russia, I really do. But I can’t help. No visa, no car, no network of people to use to collect clothes, no spare clothes either since I just moved here, so all I can do is hope, I guess, and then also have my own separate pleasant times by talking about which I hope I do not detract from the very real war/s that are going on across the world.

So one weird thing that’s happened these past two years, and I suppose not weird so much as inevitable is that we have all four—cats, humans—become increasingly dependent on the others being around. Our cats hang around us more, and I hang around them more, and this is the wrench about travelling: leaving them. Before, I remind myself sternly, I left them for like six weeks with the maid coming in to check on them daily, now I can’t sleep unless someone is actually staying in the house with them and even then, I will be a nervous wreck until next week when I know for sure everyone has settled in. (In this case I was lucky enough to make friends who like cats so I asked one of them to come and stay at our house while we’re gone. I think it’ll be okay? We’re also friends with our neighbours which is both lucky and nice, so in an emergency, they’re there.)

(Startled suddenly by spotting someone on the road in tiny shorts and a t-shirt. Berlin is sunny today but also like 1 degree, so it’s not warm, just bright. No one is wearing a mask outside. No one does. In a few days, clubs will open again and Berlin will go “back to normal” because they believe here that the pandemic will come and go and there’s no point stopping lives over it. From India I would disagree, sitting in Berlin I agree. Did I tell you that during my language class my entire table got COVID, sitting right next to me, breathing into my face, and I didn’t? I have a booster shot and a N95 mask and I feel like ok, if I get COVID, I get COVID. Obviously, I don’t want to get seriously ill, but I don’t want to live my life right now as though I am already seriously ill so why not resume?)

This might be a controversial view for some of you, na? But I’ve seen two countries respond to a pandemic, up close so my opinions are in this big soup of ideas, and I keep trying to fish out solid bits and examine them closely. Do I think everyone should take the vaccine? Yes. Do I think the government should have the right to interfere with people’s health decisions? No. Will I get another booster? Yes. And another one after that and after that? I don’t know. But if you fight me on any of these things, if you say, “Oh M, noooo what about blahdiblah?” I’ll agree with you. I’m really very wishy-washy about my pandemic opinions. That’s also a strange thing: to have lived with something for two years and not have a solid opinion about it. It’s like once I got vaccinated I just gave up thinking about it. I think I’m just bored of it, and that’s a luxury too, being bored.

The thing is also I don’t think things are going to “go back to normal.” This is just life now, masks and tests and flare-ups and sickness. We had several solid years of no-pandemic, just human beings touching and coughing and bumping into each other, and those were great years. Do you remember your first flight after 9/11 made airports around the world change their safety protocols? Do you remember how the security queue snaked around the room and everyone sort of half-laughed at this new nonsense and hoped life would return to normal soon? Do you remember the first time your bag was checked at a hotel after 26/11? Do you remember when there were garbage cans on the streets of Delhi and Mumbai and then they were all gone because people kept putting bombs in them? What I’m more worried about than “omg will we have to wear masks forever” is that the rich countries (yes, like Germany) will somehow move forward without us. That they’ll leave us* behind again, struggling. That there will be a post-pandemic world and it’ll only be populated by the West. The thing about the pandemic that made everyone take it seriously was that it happened to everyone, wasn’t just a third-world, brown people problem.

(*including me in “us” because come on, I may live here from time to time (please let the visa gods be on my side soon!) but you know. India.)

As my friend said to me on Saturday, “First there was 2020 I: The Pandemic. Then 2020 II: The Vaccine, and now we’re on 2020 III: The War.” Ugh. But I’ve had a good three months, and I finally have my next project in sight so even though I’m flitting around the world like a mosquito at least I have something to keep me grounded through it all. I’ll be back to Berlin before you know it, and in the meanwhile I’ll write to you soon. Probably from Delhi, but maybe from Istanbul. Send me tips! (I have about 18 hours in Prague including sleeping), four days in Budapest and two and a half weeks in Turkey.

Leave a comment

---

This newsletter runs on love and tips, so buy me a coffee she says shamelessly.

Buy me a coffee!

---

LINKS!

That think piece about friendships as you age which I love!

About writing in my favourite font! (obviously I have a favourite font.)

Ann Patchett doesn’t shop for a year!

Akhil Sharma becomes a really old parent!

George Bernard Shaw is all of us trying to decline invitations except his rudeness has panache!

My new Voice of Fashion column is about Marian Keyes and the colour pink!

That’s all I’ve got. If you liked this post, here’s a handy-dandy share button.

Share

Have a great week! Speak soon.

xx

m

Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. (Plus my book recommendation Instagram!)

Got sent this newsletter? Sign up here to subscribe!

Forward to your friends if you liked this and to people making you feel guilty about any of your life choices on social media if you didn’t.

Also, write back to me! I love to hear from you.