Newsletter: Feeling my age

Is it still January? My, how this month goes on. I just checked my calendar, thinking, okay surely we must be at the end of the month, and it is only the 29th. I don't know why I'm so desperate for January to get over, from March, as has been scientifically* proven (*not really) the year just tears by. Perhaps because February is a big travel month for me. I am off, firstly, to Trivandrum for the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters where I will be talking about all things Mahabharata for three days--well, ONE of the days I will be talking about the Mahabharata, the rest of the time I will be listening, and reading and writing in Kerala. I used to live in Trivandrum, you know, from age seven to age nine, we had this lovely house on the top of a hill and the back of beyond, with this sort of terraced garden, where the lowest level, furtherest away from the house was basically given over to wildlife since we had no gardener, and once I saw a pheasant emerge from the long grass and fly out, shrieking. Level two was where there was this large granite structure, which was apparently used to scrub clothes back in the day, and level one was the garden closest to the house, and sometimes snakes would come out of the grass and come inside the house to curl up next to the glass panes for warmth. Usually rat snakes but once a cobra, and while I was sitting on the back steps once I saw what I thought was a skipping rope in the leaves and bent down to pick it up but then it MOVED and I'm fairly sure it was a coral snake, Which is non-venomous if you get treated immediately, if not, it causes breathing problems. It's amazing how lucky I am to be alive a 36, when you think of how careless I was through my entire life.

Another nice thing about the Trivandrum house was the slope-y roof, we used to climb up there and sit and watch the sunset. It was fairly lonely, not many children, and my school was too far away to invite anyone home comfortably, so I lived a solitary existence with my dog Bobo, named for Boris Becker, and the sometimes company of Bipin and Bindya, two very unsatisfactory playmates who lived next door but had zero imagination, and kept all their toys and games locked up in a "showpiece cupboard" so we had to ask their mother for permission each time we wanted to play, which sort of ruined it. Bipin was also this stolid little boy, very into rules and being proper, and he chaperoned his little sister very strictly, even leading her away when he thought I was a bad influence. I remember him saying to me, "You are a bad girl" as he took Bindya by the hand and steered her home. I could never stay angry with them too long though, because they were the only children I knew, but I did neglect them each time better company came along--my cousins visited or the lady next door had her grandson come to stay.

I liked the lady next door though, even though her dogs were two toy pomeranians who had to be shut away from Bobo's incessant need to get at them. Her house always smelt musty and sweet, there was too much furniture in an interesting sort of way, something to look at each time you went inside, and she lent me Rupert books, which are these poetry-stories of a bear who is always good and doing good deeds, but he's a bear, so it's less irritating.

Trivandrum also had a fantastic library, the children's section was well stocked and smelt also nicely satisfactory of old books, with large wooden shelves that you had to stare up, up, up at. Reading Matilda by Roald Dahl later, I pictured that library each time I read about hers. I used to borrow these retellings of biographies of famous people as children, of which I remember nothing, except the fact that they existed. I wonder if that library is still there--it must be, and yet, I don't think I'm going to visit only to find that it wasn't as big or as beautiful as I remember. Some things are better when you remember them from a child's perspective--how full of wonder the world was, how you felt small and dwarfed by the infinite world, how a skipping rope could magically turn into a snake, how when you played at "restaurants," you could serve bacon by putting some water on a dried leaf and tilting your head a little to see the resemblance.

Ah, but that was almost thirty years ago.


This week in books and reading: I didn't know very much about MFK Fisher except that she was a food writer, and her writing looked really good, so I put The Gastronomical Me into my Amazon Wishlist and finally bought it recently. Short essays about her life in food, especially Dijon where she moved with her young husband and lived for a bit. Most people talking about food is very boring, but if it's done right, like Fisher does it, you are transported. Putting it into my books column this week, and highly recommend to you all.

This week in socialising: One of those ordinary extraordinary weeks, where you can't really say where you've been and what you've been doing, but you managed to catch up with so many friends, and you feel refreshed and happy and at peace with the world. Many drinks and confessions, one child's birthday party in a park, sitting around dining tables, shining warmly at the people across from you, your third glass of wine... nothing to specifically  recommend, except all of it. Call your friends. Have an impromptu (or promptu!) dinner party where no one is in a hurry to go anywhere and your phones are forgotten in your bags, and the last of winter blows outside.

Monday link list!

When Mr Ahmed told the hospital superintendent about his wife's suspicion, she told him that his wife was mentally ill and needed psychiatric help. Mr Ahmed then filed a right to information petition, seeking details of all the babies born around 07:00 that day in the hospital.

- This story about babies switched at birth in Assam has a happy-ish ending, but this particular paragraph was horrifying. Imagine being told you're INSANE for suspecting your baby isn't your own. What if her husband hadn't been supportive?

Why didn’t you enjoy your childhood?
I don’t think I enjoyed childhood. I wasn’t child material.
You just felt disenfranchised by the whole experience of being a child.
I was like a short adult waiting to get to the other side of the party. I never wanted to play. I can remember being really small, like 4 or 5. And those horses outside the grocery store that you put a nickel in, you know what I’m talking about? And my mother would always say, “Oh, do you want to ride the horse?” And I would always think, “That would be so mortifying!” I thought that when I was five, that seems really weird to me. I wasn’t natural as a child. Whereas I think as I get older… I think at eighty…I will be fabulous at eighty.

Since I've been reading Ann Patchett AND the archives of The Hairpin which was just shut down last week, this interview with her IN the Hairpin is excellent.

Cat, enough of your greedy whining

and your small pink bumhole.

Off my face! You’re the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

- This from February by Margaret Atwood and MORE poems for cat people.

Without a plan, I kept going to New Vasantashram every day. I’d go at different times of the day so my staff couldn’t guess when I was coming and I could find out what was actually going on. I learned about the business just by observing. We had fixed check-in and check-out times, but our guests didn’t adhere to that. The first change I made was adding another column to our register with the time they actually left. This simple change stirred things up. My staff realized that I was pushing for more accountability and that they would have to pick up the slack. I made it clear that I’m the boss.

- I would watch a movie based on this article about a woman who took over her father's guest lodge in Crawford Market and turned it into something trendy and still true to its roots.

The majority of Instapoetry [...] is almost exclusively a banal vessel of self-care, equivalent to an affirmation, designed for young women of a certain privileged position and disposition, one that is entirely self-absorbed. The genre’s batheticisms remove specificity, to avoid alienation, supplanting them with the sort of platitude you find on a department store tea towel. Because this is what Instapoetry is—it is not art, it is a good to be sold, or, less, regrammed. Its value is quantity not quality.

- This link is for my mother who went up to Rupi Kaur at JLF and said, "Oh my daughter is a huge fan!" and then couldn't understand why I was all "OH MY GOD YOU DIDN'T."

eM's Quick Guide to Bhutan

(This was my newsletter the week I returned from the Mountain Echoes Festival in Thimpu, Bhutan. Subscribe here for regular updates in your inbox every weekend.)

Hello, friends, warriors, fellow earthlings,

Bright and sunny morning after days of waking up to grey skies and rain. Now that I no longer live in Bombay where it rains for days without taking a breath, I've come to appreciate rainy mornings, from the time you're lying under your duvet and looking at the light behind the blinds to see how bright it is, to drinking your coffee while you're watching the clouds move, or just the general ahhhh-how-cozy-I-am feel of being indoors and snug and dry while outside everything is being bathed just for you. 

Sorry if you have to commute through it though. Then there's nothing romantic about it at all.

You know where else it was raining? BHUTAN. Where I just returned from. Let me tell you all about it:

The festival: Mountain Echoes is in its sixth year now, and a pretty major part of Thimpu's social calendar. Of course, Thimpu is "the size of Khan Market" as one writer put it, but still. Bhutanese travelled from all over the country to attend. But it was quite small for all that, so really very intimate, which means most of the talks were pretty well attended. (Unlike other things I've done where there's like five people in the room including the organiser, who is giving you pitying glances.)

My own stuff: My panels were quite fun. I moderated Ira Trivedi and a Bhutanese writer called Monu Tamang in a talk about writing about love, and Monu, though he kept "ma'am"-ing me and being very shy, came out of his shell quite a bit to talk about "night hunting" which is apparently how some traditional Bhutanese men date. (At night. Hunting. But in a consensual manner.) I take full credit for his expounding on Bhutanese sex and dating because of my excellent moderation. (He also said there was no gender disparity in Bhutan at all. I turned to the audience and said, "Raise your hand if you agree with him" and there were crickets. CRICKETS. Later, I met the young Bhutanese girl handling the media for the festival and she was like, "Dude OMG he's so wrong." Paraphrasing of course. Better than India anyway.)

My second panel was a little less lively, probably because we were the second last session to speak to a room full of teens who had been listening to talks about literature all day. However, happy to report, fully sold out of Split, and Cold Feet, my beloved neglected darling, did a brisk trade as well.

The food:  For the first day, I ate whatever Indian food they had organised at the various buffets, feeling very sorry for self, but then I realised I could actually LEAVE and go get something to eat. Huh. Another writer and I set off, and he was already feeling intrepid, so he suggested we eat at a dive bar. We stopped at the least bleak looking one, where the woman got us some beef, chilli and cheese curry, some daal, some rice and some kimchi. She also produced home made pickles from her own tree. Everything was excellent, even an older man pressing his phone into our hands asking us to video chat with all his relatives. (We waved and smiled, smiled and waved.)

That evening, emboldened by my dive bar meal, I ordered some pork momos at our hotel, and because I was in a rush, only managed to eat them much later at night right before I went to bed. Alas! My stomach could not handle this or perhaps the meal from earlier, because I woke up at 4 am with the most agonising stomach cramps and basically got Delhi belly in Thimpu. Thimpu tummy? It was owchy anyway.

Oh, and I ate at Cloud 9, which is this teeny, very fancy establishment known for its burgers and its homemade ice cream. Run by an Australian woman married to a Bhutanese man, it seems like a place everyone would be at, but no locals seemed to know it. Some of my fellow festival goers had every meal there and after one delicious anti-national beef burger, I wished I had thought of it too. I also had gone on a different day and had cold coffee and homemade Rocky Road and mmm. MMMMM.

The drink: Three words: Bhutanese. Peach. Wine. Actually, the local brands were pretty tasty, from the red wine to the Raven vodka to all the whiskey to the beer. (Less posh is the local EXTREMELY potent saunf-based drink which I could not have more than two sips of, even after diluting) I just rolled along with my peach wine, which tastes sweet and desserty but packs quite the punch as you realise later when you're arguing with Famous Writer. *sigh* (Argument totally warranted though.) The festival did most of its after-hours drinking at a small pub called Mojo Park, which had a live stage, exactly ONE bartender who started handing out post-its when he couldn't handle all the orders and all of Thimpu's trendies hanging about outside in the smoking area. What's that you say? Smoking is banned in Bhutan? Um, that brings me to...

The smoke: (Listen ya, sometimes I smoke because it just makes my good times even better, ok. I don't smoke at home very often and I don't do drugs or drink to excess or pop pills so whyyyy can't I just sit with my cigarettes? WHY? Argh. Very conflicted about this as you can tell.) Disclaimer over, I decided to take some cigs to Bhutan, because all the emails were all, "You won't get cigarettes ANYWHERE" etc etc. It was also very exciting because you have to declare even 14 cigarettes (that's how many I had), pay their exact value, and have a permit made. (I forgot all about my permit after I had it made, but no one asked me.) After day 2, several people ran out of cigarettes, but an Intrepid Reporter friend asked some locals where he could buy some and they took him to a shop and he returned with cigarettes. Also I totally saw Kelly Dorji smoking, so he must get from somewhere.

All told, everything was amazing. I wasn't introduced to the Queen Mother, because I skipped her dinner to watch Indian Ocean, for whom I will mostly cancel all my other engagements, but she seemed really lovely from a distance, attending almost all the sessions, and being engaged and asking questions and everything.

And that was Bhutan. Really quickly, here's what I wrote this week: As Aunty Feminist, how it's hard to be religious and feminist at the same time. ** In my relationship column, bad dates **.

Appearances! Bombay!

I realize having a book marketed to you is tedious, but you know how to make it stop right? Just buy it so much I won't have to keep talking about it. I'll just be all, "Oh yeah, I have two books out, whatevs." 

Heh. 

Soooo, you can totally come and watch me/get a signed copy (which may or may not increase in value over the next 100 years so think of it as an INVESTMENT. For your KIDS.)

Tomorrow I'm at the TOI Lit Fest at Mehboob Studios. In conversation with Anuja Chauhan and Nicola Morgan about teens and dissent within families--whether it's okay and whether teens are being listened to. This is all because I wrote a book about a young woman named Noor Khan Rai (half-Hindu, half-Muslim, all her own self, who is dissenting in her own way because her mum has just upped and left and there's mean girls and a VERY cute boy and a nice dreamy kissing scene PLUS MOAR.) (Here's a link to buy Split) (But if you're coming tomorrow morning buy it there because then I can sign it and say hi.)

11.15 am. Mehboob Studios Bandra. 

THEN I'm doing a reading and signing of Before, And Then After at a very lovely Bandra bookstore called Title Wave (which is the best name for a bookstore!) It'll be short and sweet and a nice way for you to segue into your weekend debauchery. 

5.30 pm, Title Wave Bookstore, Bandra (on Google maps!)

Before And Then After seems to be on a Kindle special deal today for like FIFTY FIVE RUPEES which is NOTHING, so buy it online here or come and meet me and get a hard copy and let me sign it. 

Here's the lovely Naina Redhu doing a reading from the book (which she loved) on her blog. 

Oh, and PS: Noor from Split is on Snapchat now. I'm trying a thing so I'm making her create her own Snapchat story. Are you on Snapchat? Add noorissplit. No spam/marketing, just storytelling. 

Before And Then After

Attention! 

My new book is OUT! 

It's full of stories.  I'd say more but my laptop is still at the shop so I'm writing this on my phone.  Okay, okay, I guess II can say a little more. 

The first story is all about young writing and India's cray literary scene. And sex. 

The second story is about a famous superstar who dies & how his kids deal with the aftermath because he was a recluse. 

My favourite story?  Gosh. So hard to say! For content,  maybe the one about the prostitute's cat because CATS! OR ooh, the last one about a mermaid who was adopted by humans. Or the one about a girl whose dead best friend rings her doorbell one day. 

Actually I kinda love them all. 

Here's where you can buy a copy!

It says pre order but I think the book is already in stores & definitely already on the Kindle so maybe Amazon just needs to update. 

 I hope you love it. 

Wishlist and Stuff I Love (1): Putting it out there

First off, I'd like to introduce The Life & Times of Layla The Ordinary. 

 

This used to be Confessions of a Listmaniac, but since it wasn't getting enough play, I gave it to Penguin's new YA imprint, Inked, last year. It's finally back out in stores, and I'm delighted with it. If you like young adult writing, I think you'll enjoy this book. 

Buy here. Kindle option here.  

Here's a link to the Penguin Inked blog, where I did a post on how I became a writer.

Anyway! Sales pitch done, and I hope it worked, because dudes, you will LOVE this book, I move on to the pretty-pretties. This is a new feature I hope to be able to do more regularly on the blog. Because? Because it's fun!

I don't have much time to shop these days (like, who does, right?) so I get most of my window shopping kicks from browsing e-commerce websites, and gazing at pretty things I will probably never buy.  

* Sometimes I succumb, like in the case of this dress by Runaway Bicycle. I love it, I love the way it's loose and sort of casual and yet has this boho vibe to it. Yesterday, I teamed it with tights, slouchy "suede" boots (that I HAVE to upgrade because they're ripping apart, but so comfortable!), a grey shrug and a fedora. The fedora was a bit OTT, I admit, and I took it off soon after, but it was sort of nice pretending to be an OTT kind of person, you know? 

* I spend a lot of time on Koovs. Do you know Koovs? I've never actually bought anything from there, but I have a great time just looking. Currently, I love, love, LOVE this cat jumper by Oasis, look at the dinky little cats on the collar!

* Fashion At Click is a very nice website with very unfortunate photography. I swear, they go out of their way to make the clothes look ugly. It wouldn't hurt to just style the dresses slightly differently, even if they must have an unflattering picture of a model. Regardless [MOVING ON FROM BAD PHOTOGRAPHY!] I really like this embroidered dress.

* I've been exploring my ICICI payback points, you know how your bank gives you points each time you spend? So I got myself a microwave idli maker. Don't laugh--this has basically transformed my life. It's super easy if you buy some instant idli mix, you basically have idlis ready in like 7 minutes tops. If you like South Indian breakfast, ie. Here's a link to one.

* Ending with the answer to the all-important question: what is the number one thing you should be buying this winter?

ANSWER: (and I cannot stress this enough) BLACK LEGGINGS.

No seriously. You should buy two pairs (which I didn't, because I'm obviously not a forward thinker), of a wool/acrylic/cotton mix, and THEN, just slap 'em on under everything: sweaters, dresses, skirts. Leggings, not tights, because you want them to look kinda like pants and kinda formal when you wear them to a fancy party. I bought mine at Forever 21, which is amazeballs, and super cheap, so cheap that you question their production methods, but let's not go behind that curtain.

What have you bought that you love this month?

If it's the weekend, I'm probably not in Delhi

By popular (which in this case means an aunt) demand, I will be doing a reading in Hyderabad this weekend. So exciting!!

Here's the invite:

 

Details:

HYDERABAD!!

SATURDAY MAY 18!!

6 pm!!

Landmark Bookstore, Banjara Hills!!

I'll be in conversation with Kinnera Murthy who is with a bookclub with the coolest name: The Bindass Bakwaas Bookclub. Also, like Bangalore, I will be happy to give tips to aspiring writers or anyone who would like some life advice, really. Or you know, talk about my cat.

Drinks afterwards would also be very welcome.

Come?

If it's Sunday, it must be Bangalore

Time for more book tour related travel!

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

Cochin, FRIDAY, MAY 3!!

6 pm

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

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

BANGALORE, SATURDAY MAY 4

6.30 pm!!

Oxford Bookstores!!

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

Opposite Taj Vivanta!!

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


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

How to date a writer

You are in bed together, both of you reading, when she begins to read bits of a bad review online aloud to you. By the end of it, she has gorged on every comment, analysed what so-and-so might mean, wondered whether she will ever write the best book ever written.

You toss away a comment about writing and it being an ongoing process. She is up in arms, "You don't like my book?"  You carefully say--it is all about being careful in this moment--that you liked it, you loved it, but every book should represent a growth. She stomps in her bare feet and shorts into the dining room and lights a cigarette, yelling things about support and encouragement.

You talk her down from a ledge. By the end of it, she is excited about a new project, her usual self, telling you stories you've heard before about what a friend from Hong Kong said about her book, how someone else messaged her on Facebook.

Launches & weekends

I'm writing this on a tiger-striped couch in the Good Thing's apartment in Juhu. Outside, the traffic noises have abated a little bit, that's one thing Juhu has over Bandra, the traffic seems less clusterfucked, it's more of a pleasant roar than a constant screeching.

Walk to Juhu beach

The other thing Juhu has over Bandra is the beach and a pretty walk to it, pedestrian-filled and cobble stoned. This is not to say my love for Bandra has abated, in fact, it still sucks a bit that you have to think before you visit a friend--and most of mine here in Bombay are still in that suburb--and I miss certain things, the activity, the young people and so on, but Juhu is civilised and so I've made my peace with it.

If it's Friday, it must be Bombay

ARGH, BAD BLOGGER, BAD BAD BAD.

If I could encompass these past few weeks in two words--actually I'll just make it one word: shoes. Spring is here, and I'm changing up some parts of my style.

A lot of my shopping has been online these days, what can I say? Work is so swampy I don't even have time to blog, book stuff has been a little stress-y, so in order to get my retail therapy stuff, I shop.

So, I bought these gorgeous pair of kickers.

Colour blocked heels from Done By None

And in my wear-every-day since I got them are these lovely, lovely buttersoft brogues by my good friend and all round Talented Person, Nayantara Sood of Taramay

Other stuff I can highly recommend: coffee from Blue Tokai, I buy the whole beans and grind them myself, because I'm a bit of a coffee snob these days. And a basket full of fresh veggies from I Say Organic, the prettiest pudina! the sexiest spinach! the pinkest beetroot!

And the reason for this post, because I'm a bad blogger, but trying to be a good book-writing-promoting-person-- drum roll please.

This FRIDAY March 15, at the Last Ship Art Residency, Bandra.
7.30 pm to 10.30 pm.

I'll be launching Cold Feet! In conversation with me is Raja Sen, who you know if you know movies, also a good friend, and someone I thought would have an interesting gender discussion with me. Also, drinks, reading, and Instagram. All are welcome, so come, bring your friends, your parents, your first awkward date.

Here's a link to the Facebook invite for more details.

ETA: Bombay invite

Also, stay tuned, because I'll be in Pune on Saturday for another reading--are any of you in Pune? Will you come and hear me read? I'll post location/time details on the blog and on my Facebook page as soon as I have it.

ETA: Pune NEW invite

*IMPORTANT IMPORTANT CHANGE OF VENUE IMPORTANT**
Saturday, March 16, 5 pm
Barista, MG Road.
Come! 
(The Law College Barista had construction going on.)

Phew. Promotion is wearing me out. I'll be happy when I can go back to talking about my cat again for three hours. (Although, this book party stuff is quite fun when you're actually THERE and DOING IT, as opposed to right before when you're organising it and trying to get the show on the road, because, wine.)

Win a signed copy of Cold Feet!

Here's all you gotta do:
1) Write a short-short on love eg: first love, love later, betrayed love, unromantic love, love for your cat, your tennis coach, your left foot, sex, kissing etc etc. Broadly love, but I'll leave the interpretation up to you.
2) (a short-short is micro fiction, so 140 words?)
3) Send this marvellous minute piece of writing to me here, OR Facebook it to me here.
4) Post a comment saying you've participated so I can confirm it. You can also choose to share the Facebook status.
5) Top three win signed books. Exciting!

DEADLINE 
You have a whole week. Plenty of time. Last date is Friday, January 25.

excitement overloaded

verse one:

i bought a new car
my very own new car
it's white with funny looking headlights
and a sweet curvy roof
that the manufacturers call "swaying"
i call it lola--it's obviously a girl
a horn that's low pitched and alto
a slender form that squeezes through traffic
and all. my. very. own.
lola makes me happy in my Deep Insides.

verse two:

for my birthday, my parents gave me a flat box

when i asked what was in it, they said 'plates'

why would i need plates? i asked, i mean

it's very sweet of you, but i'm inundated with plates

i have a lot of plates, i will never run out

it made me wonder if they knew me at all, because

really

PLATES?

and then i opened it and i was sorry for doubting them

because it was a macbook air

and it's gorgeous and i call him macdreamy

and it has changed my life

if life = the amount of time you spend on the internet.

verse three:

my book came out quietly

like a gay man at a straight party

it's sort of lurking by the umbrella stand

sometimes, when i'm passing a bookstore

i pop in to see if it's alive.

i had a party for it
it was a good party
fittingly, it was at a club
where people whisper to you
"do you know this is a GAY club?"
rumours have not been verified. 

Cold Feet launches in Delhi!

 

Really quick post to invite Delhi people to my book party tomorrow, Thursday, January 10, at Kitty Su. RSVP here. 

I'm super excited about the party, primarily because it'll finally feel like I have a book out. Releasing your book at the end of a year is a terrible idea, because it gets swallowed up by all the year end recaps and so on. Plus this was the December of Horrible News, so we couldn't have--even if we wanted to, which no one was in the mind space for--had the party then. 

I'm in conversation with my dear friend Pragya Tiwari, editor of the best (and only) space for long form journalism on Indian cinema. Pragya and I have known each other for about four years now, and even though we're rarely in the same city at the same time, every time we meet we chat for hours. It should be a really fun discussion, and I'm looking forward to it.

I also have three readers, who are a mystery surprise! But I've known them for years and years too, and they're going to be awesome.

So.. come.

Cold Feet, Cold Feet, Cold Feet!

You guys, this is awfully short notice, but will you come to a little conversation and reading I'm having today in Defence Colony? I'm in conversation with Samit, who you all know I love--and in fact, this new book is co-dedicated to him (the other dedicatee is the anonymous (on this blog) Good Thing)--and the good thing about Samit and I is that we have very good interaction chemistry. So, the conversation will be fun, and knowing him and me, probably will have lots of giggling.

Unfortunately, the book won't be on sale today, it should be in bookstores by the 17th? (Which totally kills my goal of having three books out by 30 and not 31.) But you can preorder on Flipkart which delivers really fast, or Infibeam which takes a while longer but is cheaper. (Oh wait, both the same price. Huh. Well, just a matter of preference then.)

I also interviewed myself on Brown Paper Bag, which you can read over here. Asked all sorts of hard questions too!

Anyway. Today. Come.

5 pm ( but don't worry if you're running a little late, we won't start chatting till 6)

Barista, Defence Colony

Friday, December 7.


It would be lovely to see you all!

The Next Big Thing: Cold Feet (a meme response post)

Samit Basu (who, incidentally, is one of the co-dedicatees of my new book) tagged me in a new thing that's going around on author's blogs called The Next Big Thing. It's basically a set of questions about your new piece of work. Which is easy to do, and I love easy. So, here goes:

1) What is the working title of your next book?

Cold Feet. I played around with different titles for a while, and all of them were really long (eg: "You Might Have Heard This Story Before, But Actually You Haven't) (Not a real title.) The .docx file was called cold feet. I liked the name when I first came up with it, but then going to parties, people began saying,  "Like the TV show?" I didn't know what TV show they were talking about (answer: this one) but the thing is, no author actually wants their new book to be "like the blah blah?" It has to be their book, because we are all narcissists and the world revolves around us. True story. Go hug a writer today, we're very sad people.

And it's not a working title, it's a TITLE-title. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wondering if I'll stay young and restless

Looming above my head is a massive deadline. I need to finish book three very soon, and things are going well, but slowly-ish. I've got a large chunk done, it's just wrapping it up and giving it a bit of a polish that remains, and I can't wait to finish it, to have another book lurking on my hard drive, but this last bit is always the hardest part. If you've read my first book (and if you haven't, there's a handy link on the top left corner you could go buy it) then you probably already know that I'm a character writer. I love peeling people apart, in a non-cannibal way, writing about them, their motivations, what makes them tick and so on, but my flaw is plotting. I usually have a general wide story arc I try to fill in, which is easy and it works too, but for Book Three, I had imagined a more intricate back-and-forth, it was all RIGHT THERE, and that meant I had to make actual notes and a flow chart and work backwards and forwards and all sorts of complicated things, but I've got the hang of it now, things are in place and I hope that a final edit will remove any glaring holes I might have left. So, phew. That's what I've been up to, and that's why the month long silence on this blog.

Sri Lanka was absolutely magic. I travelled with a boy and two friends, and everyone got along and there was much drinking, and one night we walked on the beach and there were fireflies everywhere and it was like something out of a movie. I'm going AGAIN, this time for a family wedding, in a couple of days. I don't think this second trip will be Beach-Firefly-esque, but hey, Sri Lanka is Sri Lanka, right?

And, I've just returned from a long stint in Bombay, two weeks, partly to give the book its right setting, being as most of it is set in Bandra, partly because Delhi was very cold and depressing and partly because of the aforementioned Good Thing. By which, I'm sure you've realised I mean romance has pirouetted its way into my life once more, but it's early days yet. Still, it requires a certain  amount of travel, my most favourite thing in the WHOLE WORLD, so I'm happy. I'm not so happy when travel means spending part of the time in a long distance thing, but long distance has a certain hazy charm to it, very romantic and I can pretend we're both in a war or something and I'm being very brave and waving my hanky from the balcony window while he sails off into the sea. Or, since I'm a feminist, I'm the one fighting the war, or going off into space on a dangerous asteroid exploding mission. Yeah. That sounds appropriately bad ass.


There aren't that many new places in Bombay, or maybe I just haven't checked out the right new places yet. We did do this music night thing at Mehboob Studios, which is a gorgeous setting, I think it happens every couple of weeks? Anyway, the music is a bit hit or miss, there was this harpist-singer who was trying to do rock and roll lyrics with a harp which was a bit... odd, but mostly fun, and they have food and drink. Plus being inside Mehboob Studios feels very retro and Bollywood, down to their red tiger striped couch and the soundproofed room the nights take place in. Also, there's this place in Worli called the Cool Chef Cafe which has regular events, and I bumped into a bunch of people there, so it appears that's the cool new thing to do. Otherwise, more of the same. WTF, twice, and the last night I went there they had just reopened so all our drinks were on the house so it was like Bombay was throwing me a party. Elbo Room which I'm still not crazy about but since other friends were there, we went too, and Ivy, which has just opened in Bandra and it is LOVELY. My new favourite place, I think.

Back home in Delhi, I've been pottering around a bit too. Just last night, we revisited TC, which is the source of my raging hangover today. But Delhi for me has always been more of a house party place, especially as I get older and my tolerance for loud music and crowded bars goes down. I do the odd event here or there, 4S, always, but really, I like having people round or popping by to their house most.

I have to tell you guys about the horrible train I took from Delhi to Bombay. It was called the Garib Rath, Laloo Prasad Yadav's idea for the poor people to have a Rajdhani style travel, but oh my god. TERRIBLE. It's chair cars for one thing, they have sleepers also, but not so many, and the chair cars are packed and the seats don't recline and they leave the horrible bright lights on all night so it's impossible to get to sleep. It took me two days to recover from that and I took a Rajdhani home. But, it was funny. I'm taking the train a lot because I'm so broke, but there was a guy on the train home, talking about he wasn't educated and he played a lot of hockey so his name was in the papers when he was younger and he said, "Look at me now! I'm in a Rajdhani! A Rajdhani!" and that made me awww. Funny how the concepts of luxury travel are so relative. I like to fly because I like getting there more than the process of getting there if you know what I mean, but there's a certain something about the train. I'm glad I'm broke and don't have a flying option so I get to experience it more. Silver lining!

Okay, that's pretty much my month so far. Slow moving, but not uneventful. Good start to the year, all in all, I'd say.

Your body’s a dream that’s turned violent, and that’s the way I like it

Because I am ALL ABOUT the lists this week, this post is going to be a list as well.

 

1) First, I need to pimp myself. I do. I’m sorry. I am a freelance writer, and as you know, this work pays peanuts. Probably even peanut shells sometimes. And when you have a blog, you should be able to use it to like a little oh-look-at-me-and-maybe-toss-some-money-my-way tool every now and then, right? Right. Justification over, let me tell you what I’m planning for next weekend. It struck me that there are LOADS of workshops all over Bombay. For cooking and dancing and photography, even for SARI TYING (which I should really attend.) And I thought, hey, I could totally do a workshop. So, ta-dah, I’m doing a creative writing workshop at my house in Bandra next week (Sunday, June 20th). For the bargain price of Rs 1500, you get three hours of intensive writing exercises, critique, advice on how to get started and stuff like using social media, getting a publisher and so on. Sounds awesome? Write to me at thecompulsiveconfessorATgmailDOTcom to sign up. Link to the Facebook event here.

 

2) Went for this interesting party the other day. It was hosted by this website called Internations and I was asked by this friend of mine, so I dragged Ira along as my date and the two of us went. Expat parties are usually not my cup of tea, I mean, completely expat parties, where it seems as though everyone is living in this little bubble which they basically transport from country to country. But this one was quite fun. I met loads of interesting people, including a German door maker and the location was fabulous; at the Novotel’s bar which has this nice outdoor section overlooking the sea and where they play excellent alternative rock which sort of went with the whole ambience. Good fun.

 

3) Scholastic asked me to go down to Pune to talk to some of their marketing staff earlier this week. My mother and cousin were still in town, so I took them along as well. The chat itself was brief, but two nice things happened—I got a chance to hold the new book and smell it and love it and gasp at the inevitable typos and we had a nice long drive down the Bombay-Pune expressway which is really beautiful. I’ve been down it before, to go to Kamshet and Goa and so on, but when you’re with out-of-towners who marvel at these things, it’s nice to take a fresh look. We also stopped at the famous Shrewsbury biscuits bakery for them to take presents and man, it was the most crowded bakery I’ve ever been at. Who knew they were so popular? My mother left today and I’m all waaaaaah, I miss my mommy! Sigh. I guess in some regards, you never really grow up.

 

4) Oh, also. Speaking of Scholastic and pimping and so on, they now have an excerpt from Confessions online. Here, in fact. If you’re curious, take a look and let me know what you think. I’m looking for honest feedback! The contest with Friends Of Books went well, too. We got a lot of entries, and I’m going to be making my final decision soon, so stay posted.

 

5) I still haven’t been to see SATC the worsequel. I know it’s going to be terrible. I know I’m going to hate it. I also know I’m going to watch it. By postponing the viewing, I’m hoping to hold on to some of the magic of the show while I still can before this movie irrevocably ruins it for me. Did anyone like it?

 

6) By the way, a tip for anyone in Bombay who’s got visitors? You don’t even need to show them the sights anymore. The Bandra-Worli sea link is SO fascinating that my mother and cousin could talk of nothing else. I did my duty as a family member though (reluctantly leaving Bandra) and showed them stuff like Brittania, the Asiatic Library and the Tea Centre, among other things, but nothing compared to the sea link trips.

 

7) I just bought drop crotch pants from this very nice (and pretty cheap) boutique in Bandra called Creative Handicrafts. (They’re an NGO giving work to underprivileged women.) Drop crotch pants are very cool and  attractive and comfortable and I love them, but I didn’t realise they don’t give you much stretching room. Result: walking up the stairs, I had to literally WADDLE. Not sexy, no.

 

And that’s all I have for you this week. Except that now that I’m done with almost every single TV show that I love and they’re all on a break till September, I’m at a loss. I’m looking for something Gilmore Girls-esque. Any suggestions? Or, I could just rewatch Gilmore Girls, I suppose. That should keep me occupied for a while.

Re-emerging

Since the trolls decided to come out and play again (this is what happens when you leave a post of such a personal nature up for too long unsupervised) I thought it was high time I changed the subject.

But first, you guys are awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for your words of support and encouraging comments. I hope that JC and I will work things out, but I’m glad to know that you think I can do it on my own even if things don’t go the way I hope.

Anyway. On to more cheerful things. Such as things I’ve been doing recently. Despite the heat and my discovery of a brand new show (Greek! About college life and fraternities and sororities, and so awesome!), I have managed to be quite social recently. So, okay, back in January, I, very excitedly, bought myself a planner. Like, to keep track of things and stuff. Only I never had enough things for me to actually forget things, if you know what I mean. Therefore, said planner (brown leather with a clasp) languished on my desk for a while, collecting dust. And then, I went to England. And there EVERYone was all like, “Ooh, let me check my diary” and I really wanted a diary, just so I could say, “Ooh, let me check my diary.” So, on my return, I dragged out my planner and started putting things into it, even random shit, like, “Meet A. for coffee, 4 pm, JATC”. What do you know? The planner started to fill up, and before I knew it, I was actually saying, “Ooh, let me check my diary.” Win! Now I have meetings, appointments, errands and drinks with friends all recorded neatly and clearly for me to look back on when I’m old.

One of the things recorded for Thursday night of this last week, is a dinner party I want to tell you about. I subscribe to this awesome blog called Brown Paper Bag (and if you live in Bombay, you should have a look and then you, like I, will wonder what on earth we did before this site existed). Anyway, so the chicks at BPB are very cool, and as part of their coolness they have this event they call ‘Turning Tables’, where a chef comes to someone’s house and cooks and you can sign up, and you’re basically at a dinner party with twenty people you (hopefully) have never met before.

I’m having a bit of a hard time meeting new people these days, also, I went into hermit mode after, you know, the whole break up thing, and so I was a little nervous about attending. On the other hand, I figured as I walked out of the door that it might be just what I need to get back on the social horse, so to speak. (Aside: my mother is in town and so have been spending a lot of time having my life organised, in the way that mothers do.) I had been contemplating offering them my house the next time they had one of these dos, but then I walked into this MASSIVE apartment on Pali Hill—all beautifully decorated with a kitchen the size of my living room, and well, I decided against it.

Meeting 16 random strangers (it turned out Bandra’s smaller than I thought and I knew four people when they walked in) was actually one of the more exhilarating moments of my week. I made conversation, I discovered all sorts of things that I hadn’t know before, I got to answer (finally!) “who” I was wearing. (Answer: Dress from Sarojini Nagar, belt from Bhutan, bag from Hill Road, shoes from Linking Road) and the wine flowed and the food (the chef was from Valhalla) was awesome. Good times.


And THIS, boys and girls, is my new book, now available for pre-ordering from all sorts (link was bad, so replaced with the link here.) of places. Also, my friend Arti has organised a contest over at Friends Of Books. Basically, you write a list of things you love(d) or hate(d) about being a teenager, submit it, the best three lists win an autographed copy of my new book OR if you’re in Bombay, I’ll take you out for coffee and a chat. Fun? Fun. Contest ends on June 15th, so hurry!

Schmoooooozing away

I was in Delhi and Jaipur over the last ten days, and with limited to zero internet access. Of course, I have my beautiful cellphone which made me wonder how I have gotten along without my email sent straight to my cell for all these YEARS, but you can't blog from a cell. I know, coz I tried.

If you follow me on Twitter (and you SHOULD), then you know what I've been up to. If you don't, here's a quick recap.

I was part of a panel called Teen Deviyan, which is apparently a Dev Anand film, which I didn't know until the day itself (which goes to show how much I know about retro Bollywood). Moderated by (dun dun DA dun) Chetan Bhagat, the other two deviyans were Ira Trivedi (who was in Kovalam with me, and we're pretty good buddies) and Anjum Hasan (who I hadnt met before, but whose book I LOVED). I wondered how they had chosen the panel. There's Ira, former model, prolific writer, whose books cover Indian high society and the troubles therein. There's Anjum, with her lyrical, serious prose, the most "literary" of all of us. And then there's me, with my coming-of-age story of a young girl in the urban Indian mileu. Maybe it's because we were all young? Maybe because we all wrote about urban India? Who can say.

Mr B. was in full form. Some people found his questions rather facile, but say what you like about him, the panel was entertaining and amusing. He really did his research too--he was supposed to be only introducing us, originally, but at the last minute, decided to do a moderated session. This worked for me, because I am TERRIFIED of public speaking (no, really). So I read like two paragraphs or something and hoped the mic wasn't picking up on my thumping heart. I was even more nervous because this was like the BIGGEST crowd I had ever read in front of. Of course, they were mostly there for Chetan, but they were going to listen to me, Chetan's fans or not, and I had to say something, not just trip over my own tongue with nervousness.

There were SOME fireworks on stage, but I was blissfully unaware of it all, mostly. Once I finished my part, I sat down and enjoyed myself, watching all the various dynamics at play. Besides, on a completely selfish note, I learnt later that I sold ONE HUNDRED COPIES, which made me walk around for the next two days with a big grin on my face. I love it when people buy the book.

OOOH. I FINALLY met Sidin Vadukut after many years of just about missing each other. I also read his book, Dork, which is really funny and you should read it too.

The much awaited 'Writer's Ball' was meh, not as fun as last year. There were too many people for one thing, so that feeling of exclusivity last year's had was missing. Also, the buffet spread and the several dinner tables made it feel a bit too much like a shaadi for my liking. And the dance floor was sort of tiny. We did have an after party at a friend's GORGEOUS house (funny story, we were at the same house a couple of days earlier, and me and another friend went for a smoke to the garden. "Let's explore!" we said and went for a walk around the grounds*. In the distance, we see a white statue of a woman and as we get closer, I SWEAR it looks like it's moving. "It looks like it's moving!" I squealed and the two of us ran daintily back to the house, holding our wine glasses out in front of us.)

*not an exaggeration. Really "grounds".

We spent a lot of time at Cafe Flow (trying very hard not to make menstrual jokes) which was this coffee shop in the same venue, but unlike everything else, not free refreshments. They made BRILLIANT Bloody Marys for all their crappy food and eventually crappy coffee, so if you're ever in Jaipur craving a perfectly done Mary, that's the place to go. Diggi Palace. Cafe Flow was also sort of the writers-publishers hang out, to get away from the teeming masses, so you could table-hop quite happily.

What else? Well, there was a band called Djaima, which we all found hilarious for two days, making jokes like "Djaima Monologues" and so on. When they actually came on, we (well, mostly me, because I have no shame) whooped and cheered and yelled, "Djaima!" and everyone around us looked bemused at our enthusiasm and then figured they must be a famous band to have such varied groupies.We did our part for the music scene that day.

Well, that was mostly Jaipur for me. I realise I haven't talked about the panels, but I always find READING about panels to be deathly boring as opposed to actually being there, so just imagine that I had a good time there too. The Kala Ghoda festival is next week and I'm really looking forward to that!

PS: For lovely and funny recaps of the ENTIRE festival, please check out this blog.