Newsletter: Daydream Believer

Wow, I am behind hand on crossposting these newsletters to my blog! But here's a link to subscribe and stay current.

August 2nd, 2018

Darling potato cutlets, I went away last weekend to review a spa retreat/wellness centre in Sonepat for Conde Nast Traveler, and since it is a review for them, I will not be expanding on that any further. I'll pop a link in here when it's up and you can see all for yourselves. It ended a very heavy month though, and was my first time in one of those places, which was an interesting experience. I have returned finally having slept my fill for the first time in ages. I keep thinking about sleep because of this fantastic deep dive into the science of sleep I just read. It's all about how your brain reacts when you sleep--how you literally go mad during one stage of sleep which leads to the hallucinations we call dreams.

Speaking of mad, I have been rewatching Mad Men on Netflix for the last few months--each episode is as rich and long as I remember it, meaning that you can only binge watch up until a certain point, and then there's too much information happening. I missed the last two seasons when it first aired, and now I'm curious to see what happens to everyone since I'm almost all caught up with what I had already seen. It's such a gorgeous show, and it features one of my favourite man/woman non-romantic pairings in the history of television: Peggy Olson and Don Draper.

Other non-romantic man/woman pairings I've loved:

1) Joey and Phoebe on Friends. They never sleep together (even though he kisses her once) and it seems they are the only ones free of the sexual roundabout the other four put themselves on. Even Monica and Ross, they are so weird with each other, right? Mostly this is because of Phoebe, she refuses to get dragged in, and if it weren't for Lisa Kudrow's character, I think the show would have been much less charming. I like that Phoebe acknowledges Joey for being who he is: dumb but with a good heart and the soul of an innocent. (Joey doesn't begin this way though, his character just gets more stupid as the seasons go on.) And I like that Joey is also fully supportive of Phoebe, he doesn't get her, since she doesn't fall into the traditional Monica/Rachel genre of woman, but regardless, he is never patronising of her as the other men on the show tend to be.

2) Leslie and Ron on Parks and Recreation. This is a more Peggy/Don relationship, but unlike Peggy holding herself back and being awkward around praise, Leslie pushes herself and her friendship forward on Ron Swanson, making him be friends with her whether he wants to or not. There's this one episode where Ron is all like, "I know you plan a birthday party for everyone and I hate birthday parties" and she's all "but it's your birthday!" and you think she's going to have a big thing for him, which he also thinks so he avoids her all day, but in the end, his birthday "party" is just him locked in his office, no one disturbing him, a steak and a bottle of whiskey. Even as he's eating that steak, he's smiling to himself, and you're thinking, "Aw, she really knows him!"

Last week in food and drink: Went out with my mum to a new pizza place called Evoo which has just opened up in Shivalik. Actually, I say new but a lot of my friends have not only been, they were all raving about it, so I was damn excited. However, it seemed like the whole city's friends had been raving about it, because at 12.45 on a Wednesday afternoon, we had to wait for FORTY MINUTES for a table. It's a small place, they don't deliver, they don't have a bar, but MAN, is that pizza good. (They also gave us a free panna cotta for our waiting pains.)

Every time I say I went to Evoo to someone, they're going, "Oh yes, it's fantastic, and have you been to Leo's?" Which is in Vasant Kunj and ALSO meant to have insanely good pizza, so that's next on my list. We've only had pizza home-delivered and recently, I sort of lost my love for pizza in general, it just hasn't been what I want it to be. However, now the love has been kick-started once more, which is good! Pizza for everyone!

This week in Home Hacks Inspired by Queer Eye: I've gotta thank my friend Meghna for the first hack: when we were watching Queer Eye together in Goa, and I saw the way Bobby was putting these little boxes in drawers so the underwear, socks etc would stay separate, I said, "Oooh I should get some of those" because my drawers are a grab bag of chaos. It is only through memory that I know some stuff is in there so I rootle around like a truffle pig until I find what I'm looking for. Meghna suggested using Amazon delivery cardboard boxes, and I was struck by the simplicity of that idea. Sadly, not all Amazon boxes are created the same--some are just the wrong shape, but I have two of approximately the right shape and size right now which are holding my underwear and my socks respectively in my drawer, and they look so NEAT, I spent a while yesterday just looking down at my little panty nest like a proud mother hen. I need more boxes though! Going to use the cardboard to divide up my t-shirt and skirt drawer as well.

The second hack also has to do with my closet which is literally overflowing (and yet, I spent all of this morning on the Ajio app, going through their EOSS and finally, after two hours of work, my cart had two measly items in it which I haven't even bought. Online shopping is a real addiction.) Anyway, my handbags are all over the place, I do have a drawer for them, but it's a pain to put them back there when you're using a rotation of three anyway, so I bought this set of hooks attached to a long belt thing which hooks above and below your closet door, which means all my bags are neatly hidden from public view.


This week in stuff I wrote: A new mythology for the millennial column! This fortnight: bad mother figures and what that says about the ancient Indians.

Excerpt: But Krishna wasn’t in the clear yet. Putana, pretending to be a beautiful woman, fully planned to kill Krishna by rubbing poison all over her nipple and offering to feed him for a bit to his foster mother. Back in ancient India, I suspect that having a little feed swap, where other people suckled your child as you worked and vice versa was an an obvious solution to day care, though in this case it may also function as a little warning about disease control, rather than an argument for bottle over breast.

This week in stuff other people wrote which I found interesting:

Have you ever wondered why teens on American shows just look so much more... grown up than you did at their age or were you never as naive as I was? Either way, this is a fun read on casting adults as teens.

Excerpt: This long-standing Hollywood ruse of casting definitely-not-pubescent adults as teenagers is seemingly ubiquitous; if an alien were to learn about the human aging process by simply watching mainstream film and television, she would be bewildered to arrive upon Earth's surface and realize that adolescents are not all gorgeous adults, and that many have braces, acne, or both. The fact that adults play teenagers has become such a commonly recognized trope that the internet has named the phenomenon "Dawson Casting," in reference to the much-older-than high-school-aged cast of Dawson's Creek.

How your adult friendships are different from your younger ones.

Excerpt: As they move through life, people make and keep friends in different ways. Some are independent, they make friends wherever they go, and may have more friendly acquaintances than deep friendships. Others are discerning, meaning they have a few best friends they stay close with over the years, but the deep investment means that the loss of one of those friends would be devastating. The most flexible are the acquisitive—people who stay in touch with old friends, but continue to make new ones as they move through the world.

A beautiful essay on menopause. (Hmm, I was clearly thinking a lot about age this week as I clicked on links.)

Excerpt: No matter how attractive or unattractive you are, you have been used to having others look you over when you stood at the bus stop or at the chemist’s to buy tampons. They have looked you over to assess how attractive or unattractive you are, so no matter what the case, you were looked at. Those days are over; now others look straight through you, you are completely invisible to them, you have become a ghost.

Arundhati Roy on writing in English and the moral appropriateness of this.

Excerpt: Guilt in this case is an unhelpful sentiment. India as a country, a nation-state, was a British idea. So, the idea of English is as good or as bad as the idea of India itself. Writing or speaking in English is not a tribute to the British Empire, as the British imperial historian had tried to suggest to me, it is a practical solution to the circumstances created by it. Fundamentally, India is in many ways still an empire, its territories held together by its armed forces and administered from Delhi, which, for most of her subjects, is as distant as any foreign metropole. If India had broken up into language republics, like countries in Europe, then perhaps English could be done away with. But even still, not really, not any time soon. As things stand, English, although it is spoken by a small minority (which still numbers in the tens of millions), is the language of mobility, of opportunity, of the courts, of the national press, the legal fraternity, of science, engineering, and international communication. It is the language of privilege and exclusion.

Sorry folks, there's no way to live a completely ethical life.

Excerpt: In order to develop more moral behavior, it’s much more important to focus on the things we do right, and the good we can bring about—even if that’s just redress after making a wrong. The ethicist contends that there’s no need to get “snooty or grumpy” about morality. A truly ethical life is joyful, lived with a clear conscience, “knowing that we are doing the best we can, even if that means our behavior may be unsatisfactory at times,” she writes.

Baba Ramdev and his Ramdevishness continue to make excellent longform profiles.

Excerpt: In his own way, Ramdev is India’s answer to Donald Trump, and there is much speculation that he may run for prime minister himself. Like Trump, he heads a multibillion-dollar empire. And like Trump, he is a bombastic TV personality whose relationship with truth is elastic; he cannot resist a branding opportunity — his name and face are everywhere in India. In May, he announced plans to add swadeshi SIM cards to his ever-growing list of products: packaged noodles, herbal constipation remedies, floor cleaner made with cow urine. He has a gift for W.W.E.-style publicity stunts: Last year he “won” a televised bout with an Olympic wrestler from Ukraine.

Newsletter: May the odds be ever in your favour

(Last week's newsletter. This week's just went out so you know what to do.)

Pop quiz #2: This week's newsletter title is an easy guess, but humour me anyway. (If you're curious "Some Pig" is from Charlotte's Web, which features my favourite literary rat character (even more than Rat in Wind In The Willows) a wisecracking every-creature-for-himself glutton called Templeton.)

This week in the Lives of People Who Are Dead Now: I am very late to the Nancy Mitford party, but I just began reading her very thinly veiled "novel" about two young girls in Britain living the U-life (U meaning upperclass, a thing that was being written about in Mitford's time, vs. of course, the Non-Us). There's a reference to the Us and non-Us in The Pursuit of Love as well, as the children belonging to this large extended family are all daughters of lords, so they get to have an "Hon." before their names, and so form a society: Hons vs Counter Hons. You don't have to be born an Hon to be an honourary Hon, a hon-Hon if you will, but Counter Hons say things like "notepaper" for writing paper and "dentures" for false teeth.

I looked up Nancy Mitford yesterday, and while she was quite fascinating, what I found most interesting was the life of her sister, Unity Mitford. Unity VALKYRIE Mitford, a first world yoga name if I've ever heard one. Here is a picture, she was quite lovely.

 
If you've watched The Crown on Netflix, you know that every old established rich British family has some Nazi lovers closer than you think. In the Mitford sisters' case, there were about three of them who were reasonably sympathetic, but Unity really took it to a new level. If she had been born today, she'd be dangling off Trump's arm, talking about white pride with gusto and poise on television, but since she was born in 1914, she took up a pro-Hitler stance, primarily just to get some attention from her family, being a middle child.

However, she traveled with a sister to Germany, and there she saw Hitler and decided to take her fandom to a completely different level. She basically found out all his hang out spots and went and sat at the same cafe as he had lunch at every single day. TEN MONTHS LATER, Hitler finally asked her to join him, so this was a pretty dedicated case of stalking. He was completely charmed by her, her Aryan good looks and her connection to Wagner, who Hitler loved. (Unity's grandfather was a close friend of the composer.) Anyway, Hitler was quite superstitious so he considered Unity a sort of "sent from heaven" reward or something, and also, was quite happy to play her off against Eva Braun, because it's not enough to be a monster, you must also be an asshole boyfriend.

She wanted very much for Hitler to reach some sort of deal with Britain and threatened to kill herself if a war ever happened. War did happen, and she shot herself with a pistol, only she survived the impact and the bullet stayed inside her skull, after which Hitler paid her hospital bills and arranged for her to go back to England. She was changed, apparently, a bit like she had had a stroke, incontinent, like a large child, but she still remembered being a Nazi, and said she wanted to have many children and name the eldest son Adolf. Eventually she died of meningitis because of the swelling of her brain around the bullet. She was 33.

Here's another interesting fact about Unity: she was conceived in a town called Swastika, Ontario. I wonder if she thought about that and about the Nazi party and decided that was the way her life was going to go since she was born to it.

(There is a biography of the Mitford sisters that looks quite good: The Mitford Girls by Mary S Lovell, which is on the Amazon store in India. Will get a copy and let you know how it is!)

This week in stuff I wrote: My review of Yashodhara Lal's How I Became a Farmer's Wife. "Was it really that good?" asked someone to me skeptically, and yes it was. I'm not polite at all in my reviews, if I don't like something, I will say it, as you will see in a review that should be out next week. I do sometimes try and find a redeeming thing though, and there usually is a redeeming thing.

Excerpt: Lal is, by her own description, a “romance” writer, and this book is meant to be a sequel of sorts to her first, which was similar fiction-ish, memoir-ish story of the first years of being married. Romance writers can definitely plot, even if they are somewhat condescended to by the greater literary establishment.

This week in television I recommend on Amazon Prime: I made this list for Twitter, but I'm finding my engagement on that platform is way down from even a few months ago. No retweets at all, and maybe one or two likes? It's odd, because nothing else has changed, not my tweets, not my follower count, so I'm just putting it down to faulty algorithms and not just that people aren't finding me interesting any more. (the horror!), So I thought, let me just migrate the things I would tweet about to this newsletter, and give up on Twitter for a little bit. Of all the social media I use (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) I'm getting the least interactions out of Twitter, so I think I might start to wind down there mostly. Are you having the same problem or is it just me?

1) Parks & Recreation: brilliant, government office mockumentary with one of the FINEST feminist protagonists you'll ever see on television, Leslie Knope. In the same vein, and inspired from, The Office (US) also on Prime and it is also amazing.

2) The Magicians is a subtle satire-y sci-fi show that just goes from strength to strength every season. There's pop culture, there's magic, there's humour, there's pathos, you'll love it.

3) Parenthood: If you liked Gilmore Girls or Brothers and Sisters or anything with a big messy family and their interactions, this is a MUST MUST WATCH show.

4) Friday Night Lights: It is about American football, yes, but I, an avowed sports hater ("so boring ya!") am still binge watching it like it is going out of style.

5) The Mindy Project: will take you two or three episodes to fully get into but after that it is just like candy. So funny and refreshing.

This week in stuff I read on the internet that was cool

I have a Dom character in my new Girls of the Mahabharata book, so this long read (and winner of a journalism award!) about a modern day Dom was truly fascinating.

Excerpt: Mithun spends hours performing the back-breaking work of sifting through mountains of ash to cull tiny pieces of melted gold and silver - remnants of jewellery the deceased were wearing - to later sell for a meagre sum of money. Out of respect for their dead, families leave the jewellery (often a necklace, a few bangles, a gold nose-ring, or a gold tooth) on their relative before performing the last rites. For the Doms, the competition to find these tiny, precious pieces is cut-throat. As soon as the ash from a burned out pyre is swept into the river, an army of men - with pants rolled halfway up - rush in, wading through the murky water. To reduce the competition, some throw in broken glass and razors to make the process more arduous for others.

My mum (whose birthday it is today, happy birthday!) has a copy of Cook and See which she procured with great difficulty, and I've always found it ridiculously charming. Here's a piece on learning from it.

Excerpt: Strangely I can hear my dad in this book, perhaps because “third rate” is a word he uses quite often. And also because the book reminds me of his particular brand of “strict reassurance” – this will annoy you but this is ultimately good for you. For instance, there was a time when my father would find me dreaming serenely on Sunday afternoons and attempt to break my reverie by asking me stuff like, “what is 167395 minus 578?” His is a lifelong mission to make me alert, either by shocking me with mental mathematics or dark warnings of potential accidents that would most certainly occur thanks to incessant day dreaming.

Gorgeous piece on a man who turned his entire house into a shrine and a work of art.

Excerpt: When visitors come, they often cry. Others are overwhelmed by inspiration, or a sudden feeling that everything makes sense and they know just what they need to do. By the end of their visit, they want to speak to, confide in, or be counseled by Wright. It feels like there is a magnetic air of wisdom around him that you can’t help but want to feel close to. Wright listens and hugs, he understands.

Since 40 is three years away, here's a fun piece on how to get there. (Note: I feel a midlife crisis coming on just at the thought of it.)

Excerpt: What have we aged into? We’re still capable of action, change and 10K races. But there’s a new immediacy to the 40s — and an awareness of death — that didn’t exist before. Our possibilities feel more finite. All choices now plainly exclude others. It’s pointless to keep pretending to be what we’re not. At 40, we’re no longer preparing for an imagined future life. Our real lives are, indisputably, happening right now. We’ve arrived at what Immanuel Kant called the “Ding an sich” — the thing itself.

What would a world without Star Wars look like? I'm really not into the franchise, but it affected things that eventually brought me Netflix, SO yes.

Excerpt: At the end of the decade, Vice President Al Gore edges George W. Bush in one of the closest elections in American history. Observers credit his win to the positive influence exerted on his campaign and the election by CNN — which is the only major 24-hour news network. Rupert Murdoch watches from the United Kingdom; he’d failed to find a solid entry point into American media in the mid-’80s, Fox having collapsed years earlier, and his dreams of a conservative challenger to CNN remain unrealized.

When EB White wrote Stuart Little there was a librarian who basically RAN the children's book industry and she was not happy with him. This article should be made into a movie.

Excerpt: Today, children’s book publishing—an industry richly described in Leonard S. Marcus’s excellent new book, “Minders of Make-Believe”—is one of the most profitable parts of the book business. But that industry exists only because, in much the same way that the nineteenth-century middle class invented childhood as we know it, early-twentieth-century writers, illustrators, editors, and publishers—and, most of all, Anne Carroll Moore—invented children’s literature. It would be convenient if White and Moore stood on either side of a divide between antimodernist and modernist writing. But things don’t really sort out along those lines. A better way of thinking about it might be to say that Anne Carroll Moore did not like fangs. She loved what was precious, innocent, and sentimental. White found the same stuff mawkish, prudish, and daffy. “There are too many coy books full of talking animals, whimsical children, and condescending adults,” White complained.

I'd watch all these Sex and the City in 2018 plots.

Excerpt: Miranda arrives late to brunch because one of her favorite male colleagues was just fired, following #MeToo accusations. She’s conflicted because, despite her feminist convictions, she loved this guy and isn’t sure the accusations warranted his dismissal. Samantha says that she, too, is being sued by a former assistant for sexual harassment, which she doesn’t feel is warranted. Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda share their #MeToo stories, and Miranda is particularly horrified to recall several experiences she had as a teenager — the same age her son, Brady, is now. Miranda reconsiders how she’s raising her own son; when he tells her he’s taking a girl on a date, she insists on a sit-down with the two of them, during which she goes embarrassingly overboard and scares them out of their date.

And finally, Prayaag on football, his football-averse partner and the fact that their first child is due during the first week of the World Cup.

Excerpt: Perhaps fitting, given her deep distaste for the sport, that my wife is scheduled—if all goes well, please keep your fingers crossed—to give birth to our first child in the first week of this year’s World Cup. She’s happy because she believes this means I will not be able to watch any of the games. I’m happy because I believe this means I’ll be able to watch them all.

How 'The Good Wife' is also the story of my relationship (sorta)

(A version of this piece came out in May 2016 in Arre)

Alicia Florrick came into my life as a present from my partner, who I had just begun dating at the time. He told me I might like The Good Wife—he had already seen the first two seasons, but didn't mind watching them again. He had seen the previous two seasons with his previous girlfriend, a fact which was left unsaid. I wondered if he would think of her each time the show's credit came on, a pixellated close up of actor Julianna Marguiles' face, each speck of her eye revealing nothing. We have a thing with credits of all the shows we love, we sing the theme tune when we can or make gestures with our hands. “The WIFE that is GOOD!” is our Good Wife chant, as soon as the music comes on.

It became a show that bound us together—two years of long distance, with a minimised Skype window at the bottom to watch a series premiere. Or saving them all up to binge watch together in bed when we were together again. We blazed through Breaking Bad the same way, had a weekly Game Of Thrones date, but when it came to The Good Wife, it was a softer, simpler pleasure—not set in a world of violence or rape, not with terrible things happening to people all the time. And as Alicia grew into her role, so did I.

WWAD: what would Alicia do? Alicia was always classy, never compromising. I took mental notes about the way she held herself, her peplum suits, the way she had of shutting down a conversation that didn't suit her.

Let's be clear though—I am the opposite of Alicia in every single way. I recently read an article on a trick to make you feel more confident: stand in a superhero position, arms akimbo, hands on your hips. I do this a lot, even before parties, especially before phone calls I don't want to make. Alicia would never have to stand in front of the mirror like this, making eye contact with herself, feeling a bit foolish for the exercise. 

Diane is an unsung hero & need her own article though

 

Similarly, it took me the better part of one year to completely relax into my relationship, to stop crossing my fingers and knocking on wood. As Alicia rose through the ranks of her law firm, so did I become more confident in my new role as a happy attached woman in an adult relationship. The men up until then had been versions of each other, emotionally unavailable in deep, hidden ways, delighting in playing guessing games where I always felt like everyone else had the script except me. I wanted to be mysterious, heavy lidded and bad-ass in a way that would make people wonder about my past, but at the same time, it felt like a fake profile I was trying on. I essentially was trying to emulate The Good Wife's other ass-kicking female character. I'm talking of the late, great Kalinda Sharma, bisexual, weapon ready, and who always answered questions about her identity with a simple, “I'm Kalinda.” Kalinda took no prisoners, Kalinda wore a leather motorcycle jacket, and Kalinda had affairs with beautiful FBI agents and Alicia's husband, both. We never knew very much about Kalinda, and before we could explore her further, she vanished—from Alicia's life and from ours. Kalinda felt like she was being held up as a role model, but it's hard work, being mysterious, and I think the show runners felt that way too, because after one tantalising glimpse of her past, she was out.

For another reason why, we need to move away from Alicia and examine the woman who played her—Marguiles. Rumoured to be a difficult person to work with, she had a falling out with actor Archie Panjabi, and as a result, Kalinda got a truncated story arc and disappeared. Do we blame Alicia for Marguiles' failings? I did. Alicia herself would have never let a “feud” whatever it was, get in the way of her professional life. Marguiles did.

By then it was season three or four, two years into my relationship with my partner and with Alicia herself. I grew intimate with both, letting my guard down and letting them in. In the case of my love life, things grew brighter, we wrapped ourselves around each other's lives and got cats. We worried about their health together. We merged two flats into one. We discovered flaws and kinks and loved each other even more for it. With The Good Wife, my relationship soured. I didn't want flaws in my television show, let alone from my beloved Female Lead Character. I began to mock them, “the only firm in the entire United States,” I'd say as I watched, rolling my eyes at the case of the week. I watched Alicia chug glasses of wine in scene after scene, watched her daughter become a fundamentalist Christian, watched her son be written off practically, all the while primming up my mouth. I did not approve. I strongly did not approve. I was ready to cut her loose, like a friendship that has run its course.

In the end, we still had a weekly The Good Wife date, but only because we had been with the show for so long. It's a bit like that friend you have on Facebook, someone you haven't actually met in years, but whose life pops up on your newsfeed—first they got married, then they had a baby, then another one, and then the children grow up—and you can unfriend them if you choose, but it's not worth the effort, besides you still have a sneaky interest in their lives, because you've been a spectator for so many years.

I sort of miss her. We grew together, Alicia and I, before we grew apart.

Newsletter: Goa Returned

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me trying to get back to work

 


The Christmas music is on. I repeat: the Christmas music is on! December in Delhi is as delightful as it always has been, even though the pollution is making our noses run, and I have had a weird red eye for the past three days, which is probably also pollution related. Around us, there's the sound of coughing, but also last night at a birthday party, there was definite Good Cheer. It's a great time to be in this city, if you stock up on antihistamines. Personally, it's my favourite month of the year, since it's also my birthday month, and the run up to the party I throw myself every year is still--if not AS exciting as when I was ten years old--something to look forward to.

I actually don't have much to update you about this week. Leaving Goa was a bit of a wrench, but it always nice to be home. When I think of Delhi, I think mostly of our flat. Even though when we walked in, fresh from our dilapidated mansion, it looked very small with low ceilings, but now I have stretched into it, and it is as perfect as I remember.

This week in television: I had a real weekend of lounging. We pulled out the electric blanket from where it lay--this is our first year in this house using it, since we were away during the coldest months last year--but the problem with pulling out the electric blanket is now no one wants to leave the bed. It's the coziest spot in the house, and if you don't have one, I highly recommend it. (Easily available on Amazon.) I might have to replace ours, bought on skiing holiday in Gulmarg, because now only one side is working, but when done right, the whole bed is heated and glorious. We haven't needed to pull out the room heater yet, because as soon as it gets cold, we go back to bed. And I had the perfect show to keep me company. My beloved Amy Sherman Palladino (creator of Gilmore Girls and the fantastic but sadly cancelled too soon Bunheads) has a period drama out on Amazon Prime called The Marvellous Mrs Maisel, and if that doesn't keep you cozy on these cold nights, I don't know what else to say to you. Set in the late 50s, with costumes that rival Mad Men, it's about a upper West Side housewife who is suddenly left adrift when her husband leaves her, so she turns her hand to stand up comedy. It's absolutely perfect and I only have thirty minutes left to finish the season, which makes me sad, but The Crown returns on Netflix next week I think, so at least there's another period drama to replace this one.

This week in books and reading: Scroll republished my best books of 2017 list and I added one that I forgot earlier:

My favourite series about a family: A very specific category, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles. Set in England between the world wars, and some of the Second World War, I came across her via Hilary Mantel who mentioned in an article that in her opinion, Howard was the underrated author of her time. I couldn’t agree more. Even though the books have been made into a TV series, there aren’t many fellow Howardites, which is what makes our special club even more special. Finely observed, with all the foibles that make big families so entertaining, these were definitely a set of books I was sad to give up.

This week in winter vegetables: Our gardener has been a busy man since we last saw him, and now the terrace is filled with planters, including lettuce! Which I'm super excited about. There's also spinach and two types of cauliflower, aubergine and the long chillis which I like to season and fry to eat as an accompaniment to daal-chawal. Pretty soon, our onions and garlic will blossom (do they blossom?) and we'll have no need for outside veggie shopping at all. (Well, except bhindi, and he tells me he can't plant those for me till March.) Winter vegetables don't look as gloriously green as the post-monsoon ones, but they're chunky and solid, much like my fashion options.

This week in winter cats: OH MY FLUFFIES. MY FLUFFY FLOOFERSONS. MY FATTY FLUFFIES. Even the one who has pissed in various hidden corners of the house, which no one has noticed and which we are now excavating like hidden treasure.

Tuesday link list:

When Hannah was young, she said why at least a thousand times a day, and Dan and I developed a theory: She needed to know the truth; the truth would soothe her. Then on Christmas morning, when Hannah was 5, decked out in her new fairy dress, she asked where babies came from, and Dan told her. She didn’t speak for a week.

- A writer writes about her teenage daughter, interspersed with comments from said daughter, which are hysterical but also very wise. I loved this story.

In the years that followed, we shared so much, or looked at differently, so little: our lives were small, restricted. The Jhabvalas moved to the beautiful house designed by Jhab on Flagstaff Road, and there were now three daughters – and two enormous German shepherds. I too married and had children and would take them over for tea, which they would greatly look forward to because Ruth always had her cook, Abdul, bake a cake for them and Jhab would come back from his office to entertain them with his repertoire of magic tricks.

- Anita Desai on Ruth Praver Jhabwala. Made me go out and get a copy of Jhabvala's short stories. I've never read her, but was very intrigued by this piece.

My mother’s life started years ago in a small village, barefoot and unable to remember when she first wore shoes. She thought that Sunlight soap was for washing your clothes, then your hair and then your body — one after the other. I think of how her world grew bigger and bigger and then how, after a point, it started to shrink. She was boxed in by marriage and children and all those things that she had been taught to be afraid of. Unknowns and ‘what-ifs’; the places women could not go to, the things they could not do.

- A writer on her 70-year-old mother's world expanding with a phone.


In 1905, when seventy-year-old Mark Twain began to collect a bevy of adolescent girls, whom he called his “angel-fish,” he defended his predilection by insisting that he longed for grandchildren. His own daughters were grown—his favorite, Susy, was dead by then—and he was lonely. But grandfathers can have grandsons as well as granddaughters, and Twain, the creator of one of literature’s most famous adolescents, surely celebrated boys’ cheeky energy. There was more, then, to his strange sorority than an elderly man’s yearning for grandchildren, more even than nostalgia for his daughters’ childhoods. “As for me,” Twain wrote at the age of seventy-three, “I collect pets: young girls—girls from ten to sixteen years old; girls who are pretty and sweet and naive and innocent—dear young creatures to whom life is a perfect joy and to whom it has brought no wounds, no bitterness, and few tears.”

- Why are so many famous men kinda gross and creepy?

Octopus don't have any tentacles. 0. Not one. They have 8 arms.

- Twitter thread on that one fact scientists wish you knew.

Newsletter: she's addicted to nicotine patches

I've recently started an email newsletter, which you can subscribe to by clicking on this link. It's out every Friday with stuff I'm reading, thinking, and doing that week. I've decided to also cross-post on the blog, just in case you don't like emails and prefer reading stuff online, old-school. Here's volume three. 

GUYS, I have been adding to this newsletter all week, so prepare yourselves for a long one. It's also partly because I'm spending my summer in Delhi unlike most of you gallivanting off here and there, so with a staycation (HAH. I'm chained to my bloody desk. Greed has brought all my deadlines to roost) I have a lot more time to introspect. This morning my friend called and in course of conversation said, "I'm really enjoying all your Facebook updates these days. They're all about the little things." That's my life right now--the little things.

Stuff I wrote this week: My F Word feminism fortnightly column this week was all about raising feminist children.  I called and spoke to two of my girlfriends with daughters and we all had a very insightful chat, so read. Also in feminist writing, I gave advice as Aunty Feminist this week to a young person who wanted to know how to reconcile her often sexist and homophobic family with her liberal, feminist values. Over at HuffPo, I have a blog up about Susan Miller, astrology and horoscopes as hope. On my blog: let us now forgive powerful men, on Tejpal & co. And in my relationship column, the lure of the Delhi Gymkhana, Thursday nights and being called "adorable."

I'm "curating" the next edition of Prose At Toddy, which basically means I've invited a bunch of writers I admire to come and read at the Toddy Shop on June 22nd (Wednesday!). It's a non-fiction edition, which I'm very proud of, so come! Starts at 9.

This week in weird medical stuff: I've been having these strange vivid flashes of SMELL out of the blue. Suddenly, on a flyover, for example, I'll smell coffee so strongly, my nose wakes up. Or, in a really posh bar, miles away from the facilities, I'll smell urine. I thought with my usual jump-to-worst conclusion, that I was probably having a series of mini-strokes (because it could happen). I ruled out a brain tumour, because I've seen Grey's Anatomy and I don't have a headache. WELL. The actual answer is something called phantosmia. Turns out my nose is hallucinating. It's pretty weird and it can happen with a sinus infection, a sudden sneeze and/or smoking. AT LEAST I'M NOT DYING (yet.)

This week in book-adaptation television: Some people say, "How do you work from home? Do you have fixed timings?" and to them I usually say, "In my pajamas, and yes." Well, not exactly, but I usually start work around 11-ish, that's deadline work, not work like this newsletter which I do pre-deadlines, and knock off about 7 pm. Which is also usually when I watch a lot of TV on nights I'm not going out. This week I discovered The Durrells, an ITV period drama based on GERALD DURRELL'S Corfu Trilogy. Obviously I had to watch it. It's good, except it's not really the book at all, focusing more on Mama Durrell as a spunky, single mother who has to forge ahead etc. Also in period drama: Poirot! But Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are all 45-minute case of the week stuff. The really excellent episodes start Season 4 on, where it's two episodes per mystery and three mysteries a season. (This is my Sunday.) Also 11.22.63 based on Stephen King's time travel novel of the same name, ALSO a period drama. The book is great and the show with a brooding James Franco as lead, is pretty faithful.


Does anyone want to go to this sari class with me? How about the Harper Collins sale?


Throwback book of the week: Paper Moon by Joe David Brown. This is a con man story with a TWIST, it's actually a con GIRL and all she wants is love and a family and also to rip people off. A charming narrator, one of the funnest YA characters I've read. Later, this was turned into a film, starring real life father and daughter Ryan and Tatum O'Neal as Addie Pray and her "daddy" Long Boy.

Snack of the week: My friend Ishi always has the most exciting food at her house. Recently, while over there, she fried me up a set of pre-made snacks called Bean Bullets (Bean Bites?) by The Temperamental Chef. YOU GUYS IT WAS SO GOOD! And vegetarian, so you can totally pull them out the next time your lone veggie friend is sadly eating chips while all around her, they're snacking on chicken tikkas.

Speaking of food OR why I'm not buying chicken anymore unless it's "certified organic." Besides which, think of all the antibiotics you're eating! Gross. I'm well on my way to becoming a crunchy granola type hippy, evidenced by the fact that I looked up and ordered "almond milk" off Grofers this morning. (UPDATE: they cancelled, as Grofers is wont to do.)

Song of the week: This is the song that is basically your stand in front of the mirror, getting your confidence up before you go out anthem. Meghan Trainor with another very addictive song: Me Too. (Chorus: if I was you, I'd wanna be me too, I'd wanna be me too.)

Purchases I made that I love: Someone tweeted about a basic matte red lipstick by a brand called Sugar, so I Googled it, and then it turns out they had a lovely nude (called Holly Go Lightly) and I already have two bright red lipsticks but I'm always searching for a good nude one (sort of purplish pinkish brownish) so I bought that and then I fiddled around the site looking to see what else they had and they had a sale on this thing called a Tangle Teezer. Which is basically a tiny hairbrush, but with "revolutionary technology" and everyone on the internet was raving about it so I was like OKAY and

I bought myself one too (at Rs eight hundred something, I've never spent that much money on a HAIRBRUSH before.) Anyhow, both arrived last week and the lipstick is lovely but the hairbrush, you guys! My hair is so soft! And wavy-ish! And stayed that way even while I slept! And absolutely zero effort required, no pulling and tugging at knots, just zip-zip-zip and you're all set. (In an article I read about it, they said that people are now saying, "Can I borrow your Teezer?" instead of "brush" now so it's basically the Macbook of hairbrushes.) Anyway, there I am rhapsodising about a hairbrush, but it really is very good and also very cute and has a little thing you slip on so you can pop it into your handbag. Especially since I'm now growing out my hair out of idle curiosity.

Stuff I watched this week that wasn't TV: The Breakfast Club  which I have NEVER seen before. (Also a bunch of other classic films, so basically I probably HAVEN'T watched it so don't ask). What a fun film though. Even though I was kind of expecting it to be a bit like The Dead Poet's Society,  except, um, with BREAKFAST.


This week in stuff I read: Dayanita Singh on the Steve McCurry debate. In Japan, they're taking house party classes because of course they are.  TRUMPISTAN. Even Google has feelings.


And that's all for me and this (very long) newsletter this week! Stay cool, and have a nice weekend.

xx
eM

The best TV I've watched this summer

I'm huge TV lover--I really believe the television show is the new movie--I'm fairly up-to-date on what's showing, thanks to "working" from home, large chunks of time where I hate myself and binge watch television without doing anything else and subscribing to several TV and pop culture websites to see what's hot.

July through September is a fairly bleak time for those of us who watch American television. All the shows you're into are off the air for the summer and you have to settle for random rubbish or *gasp* not watch TV at all. Luckily, I have superior Googling skills, so I managed to find some TV that did not suck, although a lot of it does: this time of the year being when channels experiment with shit.

Books? Who cares about books?

SO, here's my list:

(Finished): Big Love. HBO show about a polygamist Mormon, his three very different wives, the politics of the polygamist sect and MORE. There's drama! Family relations! Mafia! It's seriously awesome. I cried at the series finale. (Complete show, five seasons)

(Ongoing) Everwood. Recommended by one of my TV forums as something that MIGHT fill the Gilmore Girls shaped hole in my heart. It's not quite the same as fast talking Lorelei and Rory, BUT, it gets quite interesting. Surgeon Andy Brown moves to Everwood from NYC with his two kids after his wife dies suddenly, and becomes the local doctor. Only, there's all sorts of interpersonal relationships, and stuff happening and not just feel-good stuff either, real shit. You'll like it if you like that sort of thing. (Complete show, four seasons)

(Ongoing) The Fosters. A show about two lesbian moms who open their home to a bunch of adopted and foster kids. DO I NEED TO SAY MORE? (Ongoing show, on season 3 at the moment)

(Pilot watched) The Astronaut Wives Club. I'm a huge fan of anything period-drama-y, and this is very Mad Men or more like Pan Am (RIP) focussing on the wives first bunch of astronauts to orbit earth. I'm not sure how it'll pan out, but I did really enjoy the pilot. (1 season, 10 (?) episodes.)

(Pilot watched) Mr Robot. It's sort of hilarious this show, how it puts exciting music over the image of someone typing on a computer (it's about hackers and cyber security in a way) and yet I found it completely engrossing. Definitely going to watch more.  (Season one is airing now, up till episode 7.)

(Ongoing) UnREAL. Really, really, REALLY like this show. It's a dark drama set on the sets of a reality show sort of like The Bachelor. So, fictional, but also showing us how reality TV is manipulated. (1 season, 10 episodes)

(Finished) Catastrophe. An excellent rom com, but also dark humour about a one night stand that extends into forever when the woman gets pregnant. Hilarious in a it's-funny-because-it's-true way. (1 season, 6 episodes)

And also shows that are good but I haven't finished yet, because HOW MUCH TV CAN ONE PERSON WATCH.

Daredevil: I wish they'd use some more lighting in this twisty adaptation of a Marvel superhero. But fun, action-y thing to watch with your boyfriend.

Wolf Hall: I'm putting off watching this till I have a huge chunk of time to watch it back-to-back which is basically never, but I watched the pilot and it is AMAZING.

And now you're back, from outer space

* I wrote a bunch of articles about blogging which I felt excused me from the actual act of blogging, but after a while you start to get guilty feelings in your stomach, like when you've forgotten to feed a pet, but not like a real pet, say a fish? Or a Tamagotchi?

Anyhow partially this is because while I haven't been manically busy, I have been a bit... preoccupied. Remember how I told you all those months ago about how I was broke? It continued to be an concern up until, well, last weekend, when finally all the stuff I'd been juggling began to make patterns in the air without me working so hard! Shit finally came together! And because I have a little breathing room now, I'm able to really look at all my tasks and get them done instead of numbing the stress with more brainless TV.


* Speaking of brainless TV though. I've been watching some very BRAIN-FULL stuff lately, which I'd like to offer up to anyone looking for recommendations.
Obviously The Good Wife is the best thing on TV right now, so watch that without fail and also, The Legend of Korra which I will do a longer post about soon, but which is basically the most feminist fantasy series I've ever seen (and it's a cartoon.) And Outlander, which is all time travel! And time travel sex! And history! And for science-y educational stuff, there's Cosmos, which sometimes will make your head spin with information but will make you that much smarter for watching.

* Oh my god, you guys I finally quit smoking! It's been four weeks. FOUR WEEKS! And apart from the drunk smoke, I actually don't miss it much. Sometimes I think about smoking in a wistful manner: this sunshine, this coffee, wouldn't it be nice? But that's a passive craving, which is far easier to deal with than an active one which feels like you're drowning in your desire to smoke. Uff, for a while all I could think of was smoking and now week four. WEEK FOUR!

Right after this photo was taken, Olga da Polga jumped on TC and ruined everything

* The cats are great, thank you, old enough that we should really neuter them soon so that we don't have grandkittens, but a total joy, and I don't regret having three at all except occasionally when I feel a bit outnumbered.

* I'm writing this from my new phone! Yes, I finally stopped being evangelical for Nokia, because a work thing came along for which I needed Android or iOS. I have a Moto G Second Gen, and it's amazing to be back on Android after a break because you can really tell how intuitive it is. Also this is a really good phone. Fast, responsive, solid. I was going to jump on the Xiaomi bandwagon but ugh, I have no patience for flash sales. Sell me something or don't, stop being a drama.

In Which Kevin Spacey Calls Us Thieves

Man, how much do I love House of Cards?

THIS MUCH (SPOILER GIF AHEAD, DO NOT SCROLL IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE BEGINNING OF SEASON 2)

Anyway, so old Kevin Spacey was the star attraction of the India International Film Festival (because, why not?) held in Tampa, Florida (I saw a sign in Bombay for it that said, "The India International Film Festival! Now in America!") and he looks like he was wearing a lungi? Why oh why Kevin?

(Woah, right? I can't stop watching it.)

In an AFP story in Firstpost, Mr Spacey was all:

House of Cards is really big in India, I discovered," Spacey told reporters late Saturday as he walked the ceremonial carpet into the packed stadium. "Except isn't it funny that Netflix doesn't exist there yet. Which means that you're stealing it," he said.

WELL EXCUSE US FOR TRYING TO WATCH GOOD TELEVISION, KEVIN!! Actually, a lot of people I know buy or rent movies or TV shows on iTunes if they can (they need a US credit card because iTunes here doesn't allow it, and so WHAT are the rest of us supposed to do? If only all the people who supplied TV would realize there is an enormous market for American television here in India, we'd all be very happy.) (Also Star World is really picking up its game now, I hear.)

Anyhow, despite the fact that Kevin hates us, we still love him. 

And how amazing is Claire Underwood aka Robin Wright aka PRINCESS BUTTERCUP OMG IS YOUR MIND BLOWN BECAUSE MINE IS

Now for a little (radical, feminist) poetry plus GAME OF THRONES! HUZZAH!

Misandry In Haiku is my new favourite Tumblr.

Cat haiku is also cool.

I could just copy the entire website and put it down here, but that's just super lazy as one of you was kind enough to point out in my last post. So, instead, my favourites of my favourites:

i answer only

to khaleesi. call me “babe”

and you’ll die screaming.

(Segue: Um, SPEAKING of Game of Thrones (also, yay, Sunday! Only one more sleep before I can get a new episode!) I have a kick ass interview with old George RR waiting to be shared with you. It's a long interview in Vanity Fair so pour yourself a cup of coffee before you dive in. Choice bits: the books might've originally been just Bran's story, you can tell who's going to die just by the heavy FORESHADOWING that he leaves in just for you, and George doesn't like to be a douchebag with the show's writers.

Peter is actually different from Tyrion in the books. Just certain basic physical things. He’s taller than Tyrion. And he’s considerably more attractive. Peter is a good looking guy and Tyrion is not. But none of that matters when you see him performing. He’s Tyrion. There he is. And it’s perfect.

Peter Dinklage makes me so confused, because he's a sexy guy, but he's also a little guy, so all my old pounded-into-my-head notions are like, "Whaaa? What's happening over here?" I love when my Notions are Challenged. Here's his Reddit AMA, where you too can sigh in fangirly glory.

Read the whole interview here.) 

Right. Back to Misandry in Haiku, and let's make clear it may or may not be a satirical site, AND it's just funny given all the "make me a sandwich" memes that float around the internet on a near daily basis.

in a rocking boat
with my rocking sisterhood
sailing to freedom

Comments on the site from some include: "Why are you such a gigantic bitch? You know what, I wasn't going to do this but your blog is the last straw. It is now my personal mission in life to make the lives of women intolerable. I will close doors on them before they can reach them, I'll trip them as they pass by, and I'll knock over what they are carrying just because I can. You have yourself to blame, bitch." 

Ah man. Troll Dudes! You make it SO easy!

i’ll never date you

because you are gross. friendzoned?

no. enemyzoned.

ALSO:

misandry is not
a real form of oppression.
shut up men’s rights groups

 Whoever runs this blog, and I'm imagining a Lady in a long Greek style white dress (yes, I know haiku is from Japan, but for some reason in my head she's sitting at a desk, surrounded by clouds, with a pen) also answers all snarky questions with a haiku.  For example:

What do you think trans people are? Crazy people who are just pretending? I'd like to know what exactly is broken in your brain to dismiss trans* folks as you do. You seemed like an intelligent person before I read your FAQ.

Anonymous

i seemed smart before

you realized i don’t agree

with you? haha k!

Just ending with a few choice haiku thoughts for this glorious Sunday.

a proposal

all the ladies will

abandon society

that oppresses us

with only banks

of refridgerated sperm

we’ll build hateless worlds

 ***

"Misandry is mean,

And all the men will hate you!”

^I don’t give a fuck.

***

“women are weaklings!”

i’m strong enough to carry

your corpse to the woods

Read. Enjoy. Love.

Update: I read the FAQ only after finishing this post, because I'm blind, and here are a few questions answered:

this blog is run by a 22 year old radical feminist. i’m white, poor, a nursing student, and the terfiest.

men have institutional privilege over women. women can not oppress anyone on the basis of sex or gender because we gain no privilege from being female. naturally, the people who are oppressed are going to be pissed at the oppressors.