Can you be a feminist and still need a handyman?

(This appeared a long time ago on The Week as my F Word column. Putting up some old articles here, do read ICYMI)

I realised how lost at sea I was when a faulty wire burnt out in our flat's adapter box. I was alone at home that week, because my partner was out of town, but it wasn't that which daunted me. I'm used to doing things on my own, but having lived with a man for the past three years, I got sort of into the habit of being on a team of two, us against the world, always someone to complain to when things at home are going awry. You get used to comfort so much faster than discomfort.

The faulty wire was just one in a series of small household disasters that had been hitting me that week. Due to move house in two weeks, we had gotten into the habit of not thinking very much about our current flat, treating it as a transient, temporary space. It was as if the flat sensed that and in retaliation, decided to fold in upon itself just the two weeks my partner decided to go away. The Jat agitation affected my water, and even though I tried to have a shower before the multi-peopled families in the rest of the building, often I was too late. Add to this a day-long power cut which wasn't a power cut at all, and some random bureaucracy by BSES and you have one very harried person.

It was then that I turned to my next door neighbour. Super capable and with the advantage of being a much more proactive person than I, she let me sit on her sofa and pour out my tales of woe while supplying me with the number of the best electrician I've met in my time in Delhi.
(And like an ill-fated romance, oh for us to meet just as I'm leaving your locality!)

I was all praise for this new handyman in my life to my mother when she came along with me to the BSES office the next morning, and it was then, mid-sentence, that I realised my whole Delhi Defence Mechanism (DDM).

We all have one—just substitute the city in which you've lived alone as a single woman. My DDM was one that had also served me well in Bombay—and I suspect would have worked anywhere in the world I lived. For such a strong, independent woman of the twenty first century, as I like to think of myself, my whole modus operandi was to be helpless and have someone “save” me. This worked not only on handymen, where you look sad and scared and lost, in the hopes that they won't rip you off (and, truth be told, it's a 50/50 thing) but also with auto rickshaw drivers, men in government offices and the other end of call centre lines and even on co-passengers on the train. It's ridiculous how well it works, and it's also ridiculous that thirteen years after I first left my parents house to live on my own, I am just now realising it.

There are two kinds of women who live alone in India. The first type is most of the women I know. They're capable and can change a tyre as well as a bulb, are on easy, first name basis with the plumber and the watchman and seem to have no fear even in the face of household disasters. Then there's the second category, into which I fall: slightly scatty, changing handymen as soon as one comes along with a cheaper price, dependent on household help and the kindness of strangers. Type one usually winds up mothering type two, which is a dangerous trap for both to fall into. For type one, this is bad because they'll often feel resentful, but will be unable to withdraw their help without feeling guilty and for type two, because with no one telling you how to figure stuff out, you're far more overwhelmed by common accidents than you have a right to be as an adult woman.

I've noticed it though. I'm addressing it. I'm looking it right in the eyes. And since that one week of disasters, I began to—step-by-step—get more hands on about things than I normally would. As a result, I'm far less stressed because things are within my control. It's still irritating when things fall apart, and I'm still too non-confrontational to do anything but accept the first quote I get, but I feel... different. I feel grown up.

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: Alexa and hula hoops

As always you can subscribe to this newsletter in your inbox in a timely fashion over here.

This week in New Household Members: We are Smart Homed! Well, a little bit anyway. My dad had an Amazon Echo speaker, which he really only used to ask the question "Alexa, how old is Mammootty?" Which is a great party trick, but he found he had no other use for it, so on a recent trip to Cochin, he passed it on to me. I did some research about stuff you can do with Alexa here in India, and while they range from ordering stuff on Amazon to booking a cab, I find myself using it for two things: 1) when I say "Alexa, good morning" she reads me the news from three different sources and ends with a weather report, which is a great way to start your day, especially if, like me, you don't get any newspapers. 2) I've discovered how much I miss having a steady stream of music in the background all day, and so I just call out "Alexa, play ambient music!" (Ambient or baroque is what I use to write to, it's easier when it's music without words and sort of gentle that you can tune in or out of.) but usually I have on a radio station called Radio Paradise, which has been a revelation.

The Echo can pull up music for you from both Amazon Prime music as well as TuneIn, which is an internet radio app that collates a bunch of different stations from around the world (including all of the Beeb), and when I searched online to find the best station on there for a work day, a bunch of people on forums said Radio Paradise was amazing. It is, actually, kind of amazing. We've had people over a lot the last week, and Radio Paradise has been the background score all through. They play a mix of jazz/rock/country and folk. Yesterday, the RJ said that Alexa had integrated Radio Paradise as one of the skills, so all I have to do now is say, "Alexa, play Radio Paradise" instead of "Alexa, on the TuneIn app open Radio Paradise." Oh, and I'm also very pleased with the fact that I can say, "Alexa, volume up!" from across the house and she does it. I have fully drunk of the Kool Aid, and K is so jealous despite the fact that he banished Alexa to my study because he "didn't want Jeff Bezos to listen to all our conversations" that he has built his own Alexa from scratch, which is very impressive, but not as nice as mine.

Oh, and if you're looking for a cool station to listen to at work, Radio Paradise is also streaming. It's not just algorithm driven music, it's real people choosing a playlist which means the music is all very good.


This week in New Fads: If you follow me on Instagram, you will have no doubt seen the extremely dorky video of me trying to hula hoop, while my friends Rosalyn and Janice manage it with ease and panache. However, it was great fun to do---Rosalyn brought over her hula hoop to show us, as she had just been converted into the cult by our friend Mrig in Goa. And I was so inspired, I made an impulsive drunk purchase and bought my own, which should arrive next week. I do like to TRY all the exercise forms possible, before I decide they're not for me. No one can say I don't have an open mind, I'm just very very lazy and also tend to lose patience if I'm not amazing at the new thing within the first two days. Hula hooping could totally be my new thing though. I'm optimistic.

Meanwhile, I've been sorta kinda doing yoga again with the help of an app called Down Dog, which I recommend highly. You can set your experience level, how long you want to do it for, what areas of your body you want to focus on and so on, and it's free! I got bored of our old yoga teacher, and this for about 12 to 20 minutes a day is more challenging, plus we don't have to make small talk. How soon before I completely forget how to talk to new people, do you think?

Last week in travel: Since we last spoke, I was in Cochin for a very brief trip to speak at the Krithi Lit Fest. I had a lovely session talking about women and mythology with Namita Gokhale, moderated by my friend (and sometimes editor) Manasi Subramaniam. Later that night, we all went out to dinner with my father, who took us to the Seagull Club in Fort Kochi, which I recommend to anyone in that area. So lovely, the restaurant has a sit out that's right over the water.  Then the next day I came back to Delhi and I will be here for some time, even though little pangs about a holiday that is not lit fest or wedding related are happening. As soon as I finish my book!

Friday Link List For The Bored And The Weary

  Super Bollywood movie type story by Snigdha on a juvenile school shooter in Haryana who turned into a Don.

Excerpt: Akash was keen to return to “normal life”. In 2008, he came out of the observation home on bail. He was 15. His parents had moved back to their village, Bhamrauli, on Pataudi road in Gurgaon. In 2010, he took his Class 10 board exam from an open school in Faridabad. “Then, we admitted him to a regular school in Faridabad for Classes 11 and 12, but a friend of Abhishek’s joined the school a few months after, told everyone about Akash’s past, and the principal asked us to take our son out,” said Kamlesh, his mother. The family made a few more attempts at returning him to school. “They always found out who I was and struck my name off the rolls,” said Akash.

Next time you take your laptop to a coffee shop, maybe don't.

Excerpt: Logging in for two hours of free Wi-Fi requires the user’s email address, which goes onto the Rose’s mailing list — and while people can log right back in, the expiration reminds them that it might be time to order another round. Servers circulate to ask if they can get something else for a customer tied to his electronic devices. And Wi-Fi service ends at 5:30 p.m., to signal that the workday has ended and dinner service is about to begin. [... ]Mr. Neroni tried extending the Wi-Fi until 7 one night, “as an experiment,” he said. “People looked up and figured we forgot to turn it off. And it was ‘Oh, boy,’ and a line of people carrying their open laptops into the dining room so they could keep working.”

Related: how remote working may not be as incredible as it looks.

Excerpt: The desire to live cheaply abroad while remaining part of a like-minded social group makes a certain amount of sense. But how can you be confident that a random collection of fellow travelers won’t undermine your productivity and happiness, to say nothing of being fun or intellectually stimulating? Maybe I just have a bad attitude, but in my experience, most people are a little annoying, even the ones with good hearts and minds. Think of any coffee shop you’ve been to and how elusive productivity can be—with patrons talking loudly, lingering at the register when there’s a line, piling their personal effects on adjacent tables that others might want to use.

If you want to keep believing in magic, don't look at these behind-the-scenes photos of the Harry Potter movies.

Excerpt: Most people are (well aware that Robbie Coltrane isn’t actually as tall as Rubeus Hagrid. He’s playing a character, and with some simple movie magic, audiences can be led to believe that Coltrane is actually a half-giant wizard without a single shred of doubt. Still, though, seeing him out of costume seated beside a stunt double in a half-giant Hagrid suit doesn’t feel right. What’s worse is that the double is holding a dummy of Harry Potter, and Coltrane is gently rubbing its chin.

While I continue to love This Is Us, this parody is very funny.

Excerpt: JACK: The way you know I’m great is that everyone keeps insisting how great I am.

REBECCA: How are you so perfect, babe?

JACK: Let’s do this activity before I die, which is absolutely going to happen.

I love this project called The Museum of Material Memory founded by Aanchal Malhotra which gets people to write in with their family keepsakes.

Excerpt: In those days, it was customary to include a cabinet for dolls in a bride’s wedding presents; this was at a time when most brides were no more than ten or twelve years old. The doll’s showcase possibly travelled with many child brides, across paddy fields and city by lanes, keeping pace with palanquins and jostling on boats across Bengal’s wide rivers. For these child brides, the doll’s showcase served as an antidote to homesickness, as a pacifier to deal with the pangs of separation at a tender age. In a strange new life, it was a vestige of the familiar and the known, a reminder of a home so far away. And though my grandmother was no child bride, custom demanded that a doll’s showcase follow her to her affinal home. Complete with a set of miniature silver utensils- the wooden showcase found pride of place in one corner of the marble floored drawing room in her new house. But my grandmother dreamt beyond the roles of domesticity that the young owner of such a showcase was generally relegated to. She wanted to fill this wooden cabinet, with its glass paned doors and rounded patterns, with dolls from across the world. And that’s just how it came to be.\

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And finally this mutton curry, which looks really simple.

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

Monday link list to start your week out right:


 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going to Indian lit fests during lit fest season

Newsletter: The return of the part-time hermit

But I'm also writing my new book so THERE

I have been reading the Penguin Book Of British Short Stories (volume II from PG Wodehouse to Zadie Smith) which is not only reminding me how much I love the short story--sort of got out of the habit last year--but also included a gorgeous story by Evelyn Waugh, who I have never read before. Called The Cruise, it's letters from a young lady of leisure while she does a cruise to Egypt, and each of her letters has "Goodness how Sad" in them, and in one of them, a postcard, she makes it just "G how S" and now that phrase is stuck in my head. Squishy and Bruno fight? G how S. My coffee spills? G how S. I even woke up in the morning thinking "G how S" and it's a very convenient phrase for all manner of things.

The last time I was obsessed with a line I read in a book was way back in 90s, when I read Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris, and Fadiman, pregnant, is wandering about the house at night, wanting a piece of cheese "toasted mostly." My friend Nayantara and I had a whole bit about toasted mostly, and mostly toasted, and I think G how S that we don't really do things like that anymore. I think it's because people seldom read the same books at the same time anymore--books with memorable lines in them anyway, and the last time I can remember a collective fad as it were was with the Harry Potter books, and that's why we can still reference them today. I was re-reading Harry Potter just recently, the last two books, and now I've gone back to the beginning with Philosopher's Stone and G how S that they're over and I'll never read them for the first time again.

(I'll stop.) (But G how S.)


This week in domesticity: My cousin gave us an Instant Pot for our wedding, and it's been sitting in its box on top of the kitchen shelves for a long time, since we didn't have a transformer to convert the voltage (American to Indian.) It didn't even occur to me when I asked for it that it would need a transformer, because I'm used to buying things from Europe should I need to. (Well, not used to buying things from Europe, that sounds like I just whip out and order like French cheeses or something all the time. I mean that we've bought electronics from Europe before, on our last two trips and they haven't needed any fancy plugs.) Finally, we bought a massive box to change the voltage, which was more expensive than I expected it to be, having never bought one before, but luckily it is blue and matches the kitchen tiles and we have snuck it into a corner and stacked cookbooks on top of it so it looks inoffensive.

SO the Instant Pot. It's basically an electric pressure cooker, with a slow cooking and yogurt making option (also rice), but it's so insanely popular that there's a whole cult movement around it. Here are just two of the articles I found when searching for "instant pot why popular." I began using mine just yesterday and I feel like as a reluctant cook, it has cut down a lot of the guesswork for me, because... dun dun DUN, it has a TIMER. I just set the thing and leave it to do its work, no counting whistles, no need to turn down the stove. I made a coconut chicken curry yesterday and a cauliflower soup today (our winter veggies are basically just cauliflower and aubergine, so we have bumper crops of each.) Both SO good, and I'm totally giving all credit to the pot. I've also been kinda scared of the regular pressure cooker since the one time I tried to use it, it exploded (sort of) and there were vegetables everywhere.

And the soup! You guys, if you've never made a soup from scratch, only those packet ones, there's this wholesome Martha Stewart type feeling that floods through you. I made this soup, you think. SOUP. I MADE. And it tasted good! Plus, if you don't like veggies, it's a good way of disguising them and still eating healthy.

And lest you think I've only turned to domesticity and given up my social life, I'll have you know I went to two very fancy parties this week.

This week in oops, maybe that was a bad bargain: I bought a one month membership to Ola Select, but honestly, it wasn't really worth it. Sure, it's cheaper to get an "Ola Prime" but those are usually just beat up Swift Dzires, and I'd rather have a new Wagon R, I think. Also, it takes SO LONG to get a cab, which is not usually the case with Uber. With Ola, your waiting time shows up as "ten minutes" and then, half an hour later, it's STILL ten minutes. Makes it very hard to go out unless you've planned to book your cab thirty minutes in advance, which you know, I got out of the habit of. Will not be renewing I don't think, even though I really wanted to love Ola, since Uber is so evil.


Saturday reading list for those of you sitting at home today drinking soup:


Round ups:

* The best children's books of 2017.
* These very hyped gadgets went out of business, so a memorabilia gift guide to 2017.
* Things that offended Indians in 2017.
* A hater's guide to a posh Christmas catalogue.
* And finally, every single year end list because we can't get enough.

 

People assume that to choose to live in a cold place is to choose austerity and a life without comfort. Because, of course, to escape the cold—to winter in the tropics, retire under the sun, take off for the islands at Christmas—has always meant you had achieved a certain level of success. But a cold life is not without its own riches. There are clear winter days when the surface of the snow glitters like diamonds. We have access to silence, one of the rarest commodities. And cold ocean waters make for extravagant dinners: salmon hooked minutes before, clams and mussels gathered into buckets by cold hands, oysters slurped raw so that you can feel the ocean dribbling deliciously down your throat.

- In defense of winter in Alaska.

 

More and more, however, families and friends of those who die on Everest and the world’s other highest peaks want and expect the bodies to be brought home. For them and those tasked with recovering the bodies — an exercise that can be more dangerous and far more costly than the expedition that killed the climber in the first place — the drama begins with death.

 

- I LOVE Everest stories, and this one is insane and sad all at the same time.

 

The Love Commandos, on the other hand, advertises a one-time fee that covers the cost of a wedding ceremony and registration; couples are invited to stay as long as they need. Perhaps more important is Sachdev’s promise to protect them even when it compromises his safety. Armed men and disgraced relatives routinely come knocking, he said, and at least four khaps have issued bounties for his death. None have made good on their promise, but he and his colleagues have been beaten. “Look, we are madmen,” he explained. “We are not scared of dying.”

 

- In a year of bad news re: choosing who you love, here's a lovely story about India's Love Commandos.

Sofa, So Good

(Wrote this in  April 2016. I've grown to like our sofa since.)

It has been nearly a month since we shifted into our new home and still, I haven't been able to have a party of more than four or five people over at a time. The reason? We have no sofa.

The eventual sofa plan

This may sound petty to you—certainly it's reading a little petty to me as I'm writing it—but being now of the age where folding oneself onto the floor for longer than an hour or two leads to creaky hips and aching backs (blame our sedentary lifestyles), I cannot, in all good conscience force my guests to discomfort. Once, we had about ten people over, and like a good hostess, I stayed standing while everyone got dining chairs, and by the end of the night, my knees ached with the effort of holding me up for so long. And I do yoga regularly.

After many weeks scouring online websites and finding nothing exactly perfect—eg: great shape, but too-delicate fabric, which wouldn't last a week around our cats; nice colour, but a bit boxy looking; prohibitively expensive for all its style—we decided to go the Indian way and have the sofa commissioned and made from scratch. A craftsman came recommended from a friend, we bought the yards of plain black (apparently cat-proof) fabric, handed it over to him with an advance and picked a design from his coffee table book catalogue. It was a deceptively simple looking sofa, sleek and stylish with rounded arms and comfortable enough for two people to lie, feet facing each other at the end of a long day. We imagined narratives around it, eventually we will acquire a projector and this will be the sofa on which we watch movies. I imagined my stylish friends, in pretty shift dresses standing out against the black fabric. I imagined the winter to come, how the sun would hit it in just the right spot, me and a cat curled up for an afternoon nap.

There are things in our new home I've never owned before: a dining table that seats six, and now a three-seater sofa, all indicating our couple-d lives, a “we” instead of an “I.” I put furniture into terms I can understand—like a set for a stage or a blank page of a Word document. What scene are we setting? This is a house that will be full of people we love. This is a house that will see us entertaining effortlessly. This is a house where there is a comfortable nook in each room for two readers to be alone together.

Unfortunately, the sofa maker didn't see it that way. Proud as we were of supporting local businesses and not going online (plus saving some money), it seems to be an uphill task. His first photos (sent weeks after the commission, despite my urging) were of a boxy black sofa. Comfortable? Maybe. But not our original design. We edited, I wailed down the phone, he sent back draft two: still not what we were waiting for.

Finally, we sent him a drawing marking out exactly what needed fixing. He claimed to understand, but also told me categorically that he wasn't a photographer. “Just come and sit on it, madam,” he said on the phone, “You'll see how comfortable it is.” Unfortunately, my Hindi does not extend to the point where I can convey that comfort is all very well, but it's not the original sofa that we chose from his catalogue, one he promised us he could make with no problems at all.

And that's why small businesses in India seldom do very well to an outside audience. For me, it's par for the course, having grown up in this country, I'm used to not having exactly what I want when I have something made, but for my European partner, it's sacrilege to pay someone for a service he considers unrendered. And probably, if this sofa ever gets made, and we use it and then in five or ten years time, we consider replacing it, it'll be the online route for us, just because this was such a time-consuming project, all the calls and all the photos and all the driving we have to do to his far away workshop, just to explain to a professional that the sofa he made for us was not the sofa he promised. (It's not like his labour was cheap either.)

And therein lies the problem: he sees it as “good enough,” we see it as “not what we wanted.” Will there always be this culture clash? And will online and factory shopping eventually give the customers what they want, so all these enterprising men will someday be history?

Newsletter: Thinking about home

(This appeared as my newsletter not long ago. Want regular updates? Subscribe here!)

"Do you think there's any restaurant in Delhi that you would eat at every single day of the week?" K asks as we sit at Vinayak for lunch. My mother tells him there are a couple of canteens she used to eat at every day, before I was born, so like, the 70s? I'm thinking of the dhaba near the old Indian Express office in Qutub Enclave. They did delicious parathas--chicken and veg, and noodles, except for the one time that a baby cockroach was also served up, so my memory of it is both yummy and I want some more mixed with a faint amount of nausea. There was also a tea boy, who served really bad cups of coffee--all this before we moved to the newer office a few blocks away, which came equipped with a fancy canteen and coffee machines on every floor. Then, of course, all the office buildings there were sealed, and it was back to the ITO office for everyone else and off to a new job in Gurgaon with what became Ibibo for me. ("Ibibo" for "I build, I bond," something we came up with at one of the never ending meetings, was supposed to be a blog portal, a rip-off of a Chinese portal, but we didn't know then that blogs were on their way out.) Strange how some memories take you off on other ones.

This week in homes: Back when I worked at Ibibo is also when my friend Meghna and I shared a flat in another illegal building, a place called Anupam Enclave, not too far from our current home in Delhi. (Our friend Supriya had already moved out by then and we had a constant revolving door of flatmates who came and left.) This building was four floors, and we were on the very highest, which swayed each time a truck drove past. Such legendary parties we gave, Delhi will never see the like again. I'm thinking of all the walk-ups I've inhabited, not a single building with a lift, so my legs are always stretched, suitcases are always packed light, I'm out of breath if I've been away too long, sitting on the landing below ours and gazing up at our front door, so close and yet so far. In Goa, our house has a garden and only two stairs leading to the balcao, but it's large, so if you leave something in the bedroom, you have to traipse across the house. Not quite as much cardio as climbing all those stairs, but something to keep me from just sitting on my bottom at my desk the entire time. We've been painting, did I tell you this before? The mouldy bits of the wall are covered up with yellow, and just yesterday, we painted the Godrej and the remaining wall. They're now aqua, but I made a smudge, and covered that smudge up with a box, and since the blue wall is also our projector wall, everything gets a blue censored box if it's in the right position.

(Speaking of Meghna, she's now a qualified yoga teacher, and gave us her and our first session. She's very good.)

This week in home entertainment:  Since my mother has been here, we've been watching a movie almost every night. It's usually Hindi films from one of the streaming websites, we've watched Highway and Pink (Hotstar), Fan (Amazon) and Udta Punjab (Netflix). My objections to both Highway and Udta Punjab is how well they began, all these gritty films on difficult subjects and how they devolved into typical Bollywood romance in the second half. All the storylines need to have some romance in them in order to work, apparently, but they kind of ruined the film by just inserting the love story in there. Highway was a particularly bad example of this, at least Udta Punjab has three different storylines that intersect in interesting ways. But that's two Alia Bhatt movies for me, and I thought she was dumb thanks to the AIB spoofs on her, but turns out she's a versatile and talented actor, which is a ray of hope for the future of Bollywood films anyway. Pink turned out to be excellent, despite Amitabh's grandstanding at the end, and everything getting wrapped up very neatly, and Fan  was the creepiest of them all, even if it wanted to be an action movie with not one, not two, but three completely gratuitous chase sequences.

Besides Hindi movies, we also watched The Godfather (Amazon Prime), which both Mum and K had seen before, much to my surprise. (Not K, he used to work at a video store, so he's seen EVERYTHING, but I thought my mother was more like me, inclined to soft commercial releases with not so much Men Talking And Doing Things.) I understand many more things now that I have watched it, about pop culture references, but mostly about the bits in You've Got Mail where Tom Hanks is telling Meg Ryan about how everything in the world can be related to The Godfather and she's like, “Why do men always always always reference that movie?”

Also, not on any streaming website, but acquired elsewhere, an episode of Planet Earth II, the grasslands episode. Recommend watching all six for anyone interested in this great big world of ours, and how things adapt and live and thrive within it.
  

This week in hobbies: My Salim Ali Book of Indian Birds sits always at my left hand on my desk. This is because the bushes outside my desk attract a whole ecosystem of small birds. Once I got into naming and labelling them, I started to look everywhere, and now I have fifteen different species, all listed at the back of the book. The other day, our morning visitor was a large Indian peafowl (a peacock, to be less exact, but more descriptive) which K woke me up for. The peacock didn't knock, he just stood around the garden looking attractive, much like men in fedoras with artistic beards and skinny jeans do. If this peacock was a human, he'd be the one at a party, who, upon being ignored for five minutes, goes and picks up the guitar, playing a few chords on it, until polite people gather around him and ask if he can play, to which he'd reply modestly, “A little.” This is probably unfair anthropomorphising of the peacock, who has really done nothing to me, but probably also influenced by the fact that pick up artists call getting dressed and going out on the town “peacocking.”

This week in sports: Once again we are cutting down, quitting, attempting to stop smoking and so have turned to physical exercise as a way of controlling cravings and energy slumps. Badminton satisfies all those things, the thwock of a shuttlecock being hit perfectly fills a void inside of me. The cigarette void, probably. Either way, I'm getting very good at badminton, and sometimes we play it indoors. (Maybe not “very good” but I am fairly enthusiastic, which counts for something.)

This week in food and drink: Tried out new restaurant The Banyan for Chinese food the other night. The food was okay (and such small portions!) but it's built around a MASSIVE banyan tree that is really the most spectacular tree I've ever seen. Worth going for drinks and to gaze up at it in wonder.

Reading list:  If you can't come to Goa, Goa comes to you. On Delhi's new "beach shack" restaurant, Lady Baga. ** Karan Johar won't say those three little words. ** Bhutan had a ban on Indian chillies and now everyone is depressed. ** He's baaa-aack. Arnab gets a new channel to play around with. ** Scathing review of a food book just before I was about to buy it, so good timing. ** Morbid but fascinating: scientists on Twitter have been using #BestCarcass to show off pictures of dead animals. ** Sweet story about the habits of our close cousin species: the Neanderthals. ** Want a great relationship? You need to be kind and generous, duh. ** The British curry house and why it's become more white, less Indian. ** Why everyone in Bollywood is called Kaira, Ria or something like, and why they all have jobs like "photographer." (Kian was Kian before the Kiaans, and Meenakshi never had a moment.) **

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

 Let me be clear—while I like green things as pleasant, restful objects to look at when you're tired, I've never been interested in cultivating them myself. Plant after plant came into my house and most died of neglect or maybe over enthusiasm. In one flat, I had a cactus, given to me by a friend, which I placed on an outside window and remembered only when I had to open or close it. This cactus literally spat out thorns each time my hand passed it, that's how much it hated me. I liked the idea of plants, but they became a sort of out of sight, out of mind thing. If I remembered, I watered them, if I didn't, they wilted.

#notmyplants

I do have this one plant tree thing—it has a fancy scientific name, but I have always referred to it by the name of the person who gave it to me, let's call him Pranav. Pranav's Tree not only does not die, it willingly resurrects itself every summer and grows taller and taller, putting out new leaves and flowers. My mother, who has the same tree and is a good gardener, came over and looked over my Pranav Tree with some envy. “It's doing very well,” she said and I looked smug, but truth be told, I literally just leave it alone.

However, our new house has several very accessible windows with ledges for plants and a balcony that we actually spend time on, so I decided it was time to get a garden. (Worry not, plant loving reader, I have already engaged a man who will come to take care of my plants for me.) We—the architect, my partner and I—made a trip on the hottest afternoon so far this April to a wholesale nursery away in a side road by Delhi's farmhouses.

A few weeks prior to this excursion, Partner and I had been browsing in one of those fancy gourmet food stores, when I saw they had live plants in pots. Extremely excited, I went home with a basil plant in a grocery bag and placed it on the balcony and watered it for a bit, and then forgot to water it the next day. The basil plant is a delicate darling, one day of not being watered and the leaves shrivel up, the plant droops pathetically and you think all is lost, until you water it again and suddenly it's perky and the life of the party. Partner has had a basil plant before, and being generally more organised at these things, he reminded me to water it every day and we moved it to the kitchen window where I'd see it every time I went in. I grew so confident, I even snagged a money plant stem off a neighbour's creeper, placed it in an old gin bottle and hoped it would grow enough to cover the lattice iron window.

Which is probably why I was so confident at this wholesale garden centre. The basil seemed so easy—and so useful, just pick a few leaves each time you make pasta—that I wanted to grow more food. That's what we were both really excited about actually, so we got two seed trays and teeny tiny tomato and chilli plants. For the rest of it, we got large trees and hanging pots of ferns—small sweet jasmine and large fleshy hibiscus. A champa tree for that one corner in a big pot. An Andhra ficus with dark green leaves and a regular local ficus with light green ones. And finally a banana tree, although there are myths about how it's supposed to stop babies, although I can't find any mention of that on the internet. (Also great contraception!)

Although gardening is all about patience and waiting for things to sprout and so on, I'm already fastforwarding five months ahead, sitting under a creeper laden terrace, with all my trees in full bloom.

(A version of this appeared as my column on mydigitalfc.com)  

Sofa Away From Me

It has been nearly a month since we shifted into our new home and still, I haven’t been able to have a party of more than four or five people over at a time. The reason? We have no sofa.

This may sound petty to you — certainly it’s reading a little petty to me as I’m writing it — but being now of the age where folding oneself onto the floor for longer than an hour or two leads to creaky hips and aching backs (blame our sedentary lifestyles), I cannot, in all good conscience force my guests to discomfort. Once, we had about 10 people over and like a good hostess, I stayed standing while everyone got dining chairs and by the end of the night, my knees ached with the effort of holding me up for so long. And I do yoga regularly.

After many weeks scouring online websites and finding nothing exactly perfect — eg: great shape, but too-delicate fabric, which wouldn't last a week around our cats; nice colour, but a bit boxy looking; prohibitively expensive for all its style — we decided to go the Indian way and have the sofa commissioned and made from scratch. A craftsman came recommended from a friend, we bought the yards of plain black (apparently cat-proof) fabric, handed it over to him with an advance and picked a design from his coffee table book catalogue. It was a deceptively simple looking sofa, sleek and stylish with rounded arms and comfortable enough for two people to lie, feet facing each other at the end of a long day. We imagined narratives around it, eventually we will acquire a projector and this will be the sofa on which we watch movies. I imagined my stylish friends, in pretty shift dresses standing out against the black fabric. I imagined the winter to come, how the sun would hit it in just the right spot, me and a cat curled up for an afternoon nap.

There are things in our new home I’ve never owned before: a dining table that seats six and now a three-seater sofa, all indicating our couple-d lives, a “we” instead of an “I.” I put furniture into terms I can understand — like a set for a stage or a blank page of a Word document. What scene are we setting? This is a house that will be full of people we love. This is a house that will see us entertaining effortlessly. This is a house where there is a comfortable nook in each room for two readers to be alone together.

Unfortunately, the sofa maker didn’t see it that way. Proud as we were of supporting local businesses and not going online (plus saving some money), it seems to be an uphill task. His first photos (sent weeks after the commission, despite my urging) were of a boxy black sofa. Comfortable? Maybe. But not our original design. We edited, I wailed down the phone, he sent back draft two: still not what we were waiting for.

Finally, we sent him a drawing marking out exactly what needed fixing. He claimed to understand, but also told me categorically that he wasn’t a photographer. “Just come and sit on it, madam,” he said on the phone, “You’ll see how comfortable it is.” Unfortunately, my Hindi does not extend to the point where I can convey that comfort is all very well, but it’s not the original sofa that we chose from his catalogue, one he promised us he could make with no problems at all.

And that’s why small businesses in India seldom do very well to an outside audience. For me, it’s par for the course, having grown up in this country, I’m used to not having exactly what I want when I have something made, but for my European partner, it’s sacrilege to pay someone for a service he considers unrendered. And probably, if this sofa ever gets made and we use it and then in five or 10 years time, we consider replacing it, it’ll be the online route for us, just because this was such a time-consuming project, all the calls and all the photos and all the driving we have to do to his far away workshop, just to explain to a professional that the sofa he made for us was not the sofa he promised. (It’s not like his labour was cheap either.)

And therein lies the problem: he sees it as “good enough,” we see it as “not what we wanted.” Will there always be this culture clash? And will online and factory shopping eventually give the customers what they want, so all these enterprising men will someday be history?

(This appeared as my column on mydigitalfc.com)

WHY IS IT SO HARDDDDDDD (that's what she said)

Reader, I'm moving.

No, no, not from this space. I'm moving house next week, and as usual, I'm in a torpedo of stress from decision making (or things moving too slow) to really enjoy it for what it is—the end of one chapter and the start of a new one.

Arguing with the Good Thing about what to keep

While being in a new house is great, what is not so great is the actual getting stuff from one apartment to another. I hate moving. I don't know how many times you've done it, but I've lived away from my parents since I was 21. Fourteen years and eight homes later, I've been a rolling stone all right, but one that has gathered plenty of moss. I used to be happy with just a mattress on the floor—the mattress became a single bed, which became a queen sized bed, and finally now, a four poster which reminds me of being on a ship, so wide and vast and heavy is it. And it has to go down three flights of stairs and up another four.

Beds aren't the only thing. Our bookshelves were deconstructed to make wall fittings, but our books lie in piles on the floor, so many of them that we could make them into independent furniture units of their own. Everywhere I look, there's a book! I don't even remember buying them all, and each time I wade through them, I find another five I haven't read and don't have any recollection of owning. It's like magic.

Navigating piles like a boss

When the Good Thing and I married our households, we didn't get as much extra stuff as you would think—I am a hoarder and he is just the opposite, but what we did get was kitchen things. Now we have two of everything in the kitchen—sometimes five, and most of them in not great shape. Only one of our four non-stick frying pans is actually non-stick, only one of the pressure cookers is big enough to cook for two.

And now to my biggest dilemma: getting rid of stuff. There are several ways to do it in this internet age, and I've tried most of them. Number one is all the classified websites, your OLX and Quikr and whatnot. These are useless, and I've had no luck the two times I've tried them both. No one reads the ads carefully, so you're subject to a lot of calls and messages asking questions to things that are listed right there, and people bargaining with ridiculous numbers, asking you to slash your asking price by about 90 per cent. 

This is the face of my internal monologue

The second way is to post the items for sale on your social media: I have the best luck with Facebook. I cross-posted all my things on both my personal page as well as groups known to people who are looking to buy second hand things. There are a lot of time-wasters on these as well, so really your best bet is do the transaction with people you know. The third, and most traditional option, is to sell to your local second-hand furniture guy. Delhi has a thriving market for secondhand goods, where you can both buy and sell used furniture. The only problem with this, as I can see, is that you won't get the price you want, and you'll have to settle for selling it at peanuts. Which, by this point, you're inclined to do anyway, because you're so desperate to get rid of your things.

I don't know why classified websites like Craigslist or Gumtree don't work so well in India. In fact, I know that most people still go down to the second hand furniture market to buy whatever they need, instead of online. Maybe it's a paucity of people who share your taste? Maybe because you feel more confident bargaining with the men at Amar Colony, more than you would with an expat leaving the city and selling all their things. Or maybe it's just because you think second hand means there's something wrong with it, or why would you be selling your things just to move from one house to another?

I even found a website that sells used furniture online and allows you to post pictures of your things so they can come by and give you a quote for it. Sadly, they never replied to me, so I was forced to slash prices on my Facebook, and wait for someone to gather their own moss while I roll on.


(A version of this appeared as my column on mydigitalfc.com)

If eM can bake, you can bake too! (plus all the recipes I love) PART ONE

Baking is an exact science.

I mean, I read somewhere that cooking is an art and baking is science, and I guess that makes sense, because while I'm not one of life's feeders, I get excited only briefly by fresh ingredients and rarely use them all, leaving several vegetables to shrivel at the bottom of my veggie drawer, there's something about baking that appeals to me.

I loved my chemistry set when I was young. Is that still a popular present? It should be. My chemistry set was magic, I could make pink paper blue and make things fizz up and create invisible ink. Baking is a bit like that--it's all "add baking powder to make this rise" and "brown sugar makes your cookies crunchy while powdered white sugar makes it dense and cake-like." Your ingredients react with each other a lot, in the same way a science experiment does. There's only one pot or pan into which you pour everything and let the oven make its magic. It's amazing.

My mum had bought me a Bajaj OTG, a pretty small one, but still functional, back when I still lived in Bandra. I used it, but not a lot. I wasn't great at lining stuff up so they cooked perfectly, and the oven was always somewhat tempramental, so I wound up with stuff undercooked in the middle or too burnt around the edges. I didn't pursue it a lot.

It was only about two years ago, when I first moved into this house, the one I live in now, that I blew the dust off it and decided to get started in earnest. I had a chocolate chip cookie craving, and I had a free afternoon, so I ran down to the shop, got all my ingredients and made a batch. I kept one eye on the oven so that my cookies wouldn't overcook, and when they turned out WELL, not just ok, I put three or four in some aluminium foil and carried it to a party I was going to later, as a little host present. To my surprise and delight, I wasn't the only one who thought they were good (beauty is in the eye of the beholder, tastiness is on the tongue of the baker), and my cookies were a great success. "Do more!" people said, and I did, I whipped up cookie after cookie: Sriracha and peanut butter acquired legendary status and at home, the Good Thing and I grew addicted to oatmeal and apple.

I had no measuring cups (still don't), so the ingredients are somewhat eyeballed.

Also, this is all The Old Oven, which means you can do this with slightly faulty equipment. I was going to put my new cool oven and all the stuff I've made in THAT, but this was turning out to be a monster post, so that's for next time

Sriracha and Peanut Butter Cookies (Adapted with Indian ingredients)

I should really try these again

From The Sugar Pixie

• Two sticks of Amul Butter
• 1½ cups Crunchy Peanut Butter (or Sunbutter if allergic to peanuts) (I used Fun & Food's version, they have two: crunchy and smooth.)
• 1 cup Sugar
• 1 cup Brown Sugar (packed)
• ¼ c Sriracha (available at INA market)
• 2 Eggs
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 2¾ to 3 cups All-Purpose Flour (finished dough should be soft, but not sticky)
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• ½ teaspoon Salt
• 1½ teaspoons baking soda
• Granulated sugar for dipping dough balls into.

Instructions

1. Cream together butter, peanut butter and sugars.
2. Slowly add in sriracha, eggs and vanilla. Beat until combined.
3. In another bowl mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
4. Gently mix flour into peanut butter mixture until well combined. Place batter into refrigerator for 1 hour to chill.
5. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
6. Roll dough into approx 1" sized balls or use a Medium sized cookie scoop/Size 40 - 1½tbs portion. Dip the top of dough ball into granulated sugar and place onto cookie sheet.
7. Flatten each ball with a fork, making a criss-cross pattern. Bake for 8-10 minutes or just until the cookies begin to brown. Do NOT over-bake!
8. Cool on wire racks and enjoy!
   Oatmeal and Apple Cookies with Cinammon
   

   

   Breakfast of SUGAR HIGH champions

    

From Betty Crocker

3 sticks butter or margarine, softened

1

cup granulated sugar

1/2

cup packed brown sugar

1

teaspoon vanilla

2

eggs

1 3/4

cups maida

1

teaspoon baking soda (I just pretty much always use baking powder, it's easier to find)

1 1/2

teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2

teaspoon salt

2

cups old-fashioned or quick-cooking oats (I like Baggry's for this)

1

medium apple, peeled and shredded (about 1 cup shredded) (Um, no need to shred, just chop fine)

• Heat oven to 375°F. Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray.  (PRO TIP: for cookies, I use foil over the cookie sheet, which has the advantage of keeping the bottom both crisp AND soft, instead of overdone. No need to grease it, just peel cookies off.) 
• In large bowl, beat butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar with electric mixer on medium speed until creamy. Beat in vanilla and eggs, scraping sides occasionally, until blended.
• In medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Gradually beat flour mixture into sugar mixture. Stir in oats and apple. Onto cookie sheet, drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart.
• Bake about 10 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack. Cool completely, about 15 minutes.
•  
• I didn't make cakes much. I mean, I tried, but they never turned out all that well.  I made a carrot cake which was nice-ish, but still tasted too wet (I shoulda squeezed the juice out before baking it) and a banana cake which I took to several pot lucks and always came home to an empty box. (Also what we used to stimulate Bruno's appetite when he got sick.) 
•  
• Also I made cinammon rolls which need to RISE with YEAST, so you feel like a super baker, but then you freeze a whole bunch and just bake whenever you need them with coffee, which = LIFE OF LUXURY. It takes so little to feel posh. 
•  
• Bruno's Lifesaving Banana Cake
• Can't find the original recipe, but here's something very similar. It's SUPER low fat, except the sugar, so eat guilt free!
•  
  1 cup (240 ml) mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large bananas)
  1 teaspoon baking soda
  1/2 cup (120 ml) low-fat plain yogurt or any dahi you have in the house
  1/4 cup (60 ml) canola, vegetable, or corn oil (I used Sunflower with no change in results. You could also use olive oil if you want that extra flavour)
  3/4cup (165 grams) light brownsugar
  1 large egg or 2 large (60 grams) egg whites (screw the egg whites, just use the whole egg, unless you have cats who will eat the yolk for you.)
  1 teaspoon purevanillaextract
  1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour
  1/2 cup (65 grams) whole wheat flour
  1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  1 teaspoon baking powder
  1/4 teaspoon salt
  
  
  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place the rack in the center of the oven. Spray an 8 x 4 inch (20 x 10 cm) loaf pan with a nonstick vegetable cooking spray.
  In a large bowl, mix the mashed bananas with the baking soda and yogurt. Allow to sit while you prepare the rest of the batter.
  Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk together the oil, sugar, egg or egg whites, and vanilla.
  In another large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, ground cinnamon and salt.
  Then combine the banana mixture with the oil mixture and then add to the flour mixture. Stir just until all the ingredients are moistened. Pour into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for about 45 -55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean.
  Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
  Makes one loaf (about 12 slices). You can also make this in a cake pan for larger parties and cut it up smaller. I've done both.
  
  
  
  
• Super Cinammon Rolls That You Can Totally Stick In The Freezer and Pull Out Later To Look Like Martha Stewart
• From Paula Deen
•  
• 1/4 -ounce package yeast (You can buy powdered yeast in India now. It's super cheap and lasts a long time.)
   
• 1/2 cup warm water
•  
  1/2 cup scalded milk (Please. Regular milk will also do.)
   
• 1/4 cup sugar
•  
  1/3 cup butter or shortening
   
• 1 teaspoon salt
   
• 1 egg
•  
  3 1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour
•  
  Filling:
•  
  1/2 cup melted butter, plus more for pan
   
• 3/4 cup sugar, plus more for pan
•  
   
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
•  
  3/4 cup raisins, walnuts, or pecans, optional (Eh. I couldn't be bothered.)
•  
• Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  
  In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water and set aside. In a 
• large bowl mix milk, sugar, melted butter, salt and egg. Add 2 
• cups of flour and mix until smooth. Add yeast mixture. Mix in 
• remaining flour until dough is easy to handle. Knead dough on
•  lightly floured surface for 5 to 10 minutes. Place in 
• well-greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled in size,
•  usually 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
  
  When doubled in size, punch down dough. Roll out on a floured 
• surface into a 15 by 9-inch rectangle. Spread melted butter all
•  over dough. Mix sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over buttered
•  dough. Sprinkle with walnuts, pecans, or raisins if desired.
•  Beginning at the 15-inch side, role up dough and pinch edge 
• together to seal. Cut into 12 to 15 slices.
  
  Coat the bottom of baking pan with butter and sprinkle with sugar.
•  Place cinnamon roll slices close together in the pan and let 
• rise 
• until dough is doubled, about 45 minutes. Bake for about 30 
• minutes or until nicely browned.