Newsletter: Five Nights In Delhi Edition

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NB: this was going to be six nights in Delhi, but I had an unexpected cancellation and so I spent my weekend gloriously watching Project Runway and Strike and since I was watching Strike anyway, I decided to reread the last of the Comoran Strike books which I have no recollection of, having read it in a tearing hurry when it first came out. There's a new one out soon! I'd read JK Rowling's grocery lists to be honest.

Anyway, by some trick of fate, I had plans for every single weeknight this past week. This hasn't happened to me in a while--old age, darlings, old age, your friends' changing priorities, your OWN changing priorities, life, work, it'll happen to you too, unless you're one of those labrador retriever extroverts who cannot handle a night in, in which case, my advice to you is make younger friends. I thought I'd document this, a very social week in my life just so we can examine it a little closer.

Monday

"Who wants to meet a millionaire?" I said, giddy with my own wit, but K wasn't having it. He looked at me deadpan, he enjoys doing that and said, "EVERYONE is a millionaire, they're very common, what you mean is a billionaire." Well, who wants to meet a billionaire is not as fun and alliterative, I guess I could have said, "Who wants to bang a billionaire?" but most of them aren't that good looking. Much like Scarlett O'Hara, people seldom notice this about billionaires because they are taken in by their charms. In this case charm = money. Money gives you polish, an air of confidence, even if you're sweaty and your clothes aren't that great, you could buy better clothes, but like Steve Jobs, you like to stick to what you know.

The particular billionaire we were going to "meet" was a cryptocurrency blockchain abracadabra morewordshere guy who was coming to India to launch his company. I wouldn't have thought this was the kind of event I would be invited to, what do I know about wingardium leviosa? But the person throwing the party was a friend, and he said, "Come! There'll be drinks and stand-up comedy" and I am always curious about the rich and famous.

So the billionaire stood up and said things about his company, which sounded very interesting but also like they were in Latin, especially after three glasses of wine, and we settled in to watch Abish Mathew's set. He's "the other guy" from AIB, by the way. Like, you'd say, "that guy, that guy, that guy, oh and that other guy." If I'm not very much mistaken, he often plays the straight man to his friend's punchline, like not a literally STRAIGHT MAN although that too, but the person who asks, "And then what happened?" to make a joke go forward. Anyway, maybe I just don't get stand up but I have found very few people very funny. And in this post-Nanette world (PLEASE WATCH IT ON NETFLIX) it's a little dated to say, "The only privilege men have is to be able to go to the bathroom whenever they like." OH MY GOD MAN IT IS 2018 IT IS TIME TO RETIRE THAT BATHROOM JOKE.

We were at the Taj Mansingh, which is a grubbier and yet posher Taj than the others. It has not changed its decor since the 1980s I don't think. The last time I was at that particular rooftop was when you could still smoke everywhere, and Vikram Seth was launching one of his books, and there were LITERAL OYSTERS coming around on trays. OYSTERS. At a book launch! I had three, my first time eating an oyster too. (These were also the glory days of excess where a fashion designer's new store greeted me with about a KILO of caviar on ice which no one was touching because "fish eggs ew." I ate as much as I could spin out of that story.) Now however, we had to trudge down to Rick's, favourite haunt of Rahul Gandhi, which has a smoking room attached, I assume for the use of this sort of guest, but which I smoked in merrily.

 

Tuesday

 

 

 

Samit and I have been friends for so long, I don't even very clearly remember a time before we were friends. Okay, I sort of do, because when I first met him, I was 23, a young reporter with a chip on my shoulder about writing my book, time was passing and there I was with NO BOOK, and he was 25, a young writer whose first book had just come out to great fanfare. I was so spittingly jealous, I might have asked him questions which all had an ulterior motive, along the lines of: SOOOO HOW DID YOU DOOOO IT? Hmm? HMMM? Anyway, much water and many books have gone under that bridge since then, and now he is a support system and a co-moaner about this ridiculous writer's life we both seem to have chosen with no regards for the practicalities of it all.

He had a party, and I was lounging about on his sofa, drinking the sangria, talking about all those things you talk about at parties, everyone there was a good friend, so I let my thoughts stack up like a little pile of coins on the table. We got to talking about what it would be like to meet our younger selves at a party such as this one. My own twentysomething self would have rejected any words of wisdom I had to offer her with a pert "that will never happen to me!" and as Samit said we'd both have loud words, not like each other much and then go home and think about it for the next year or whatever. Ahhh but I'd like to think I'd like myself at 26, still so shiny eyed and optimistic, just as I think my 46 year old self would like me now and my 86 year old self would like all the other mes. No, actually, my 86-year-old self will be DONE with everyone's bullshit and will probably tell everyone to fuck off. (I aim to be an old lady in this regard very soon.)
 

Wednesday 

 

Summer House still endures as one of the trendiest places in Delhi. Partly, I think it's habit. We love to go to a place over and over again, till we know our exact order and the waitstaff and the table we prefer. But mostly, it's because it fits into that perfect triangle: location (Aurobindo Market is close enough to HKV to be cool but far enough away that it's not actually HKV which all the trendies have ceded to the rest of the city who wander around the village sadly looking for trendy people), pricing (not the worst + some sort of shitty happy hour + who cares, we're on daddy's credit card people come here the most anyway) and music (OUNCE OUNCE OUNCY-OUNCE OUNCE OUNCE OUNCE).

But the service is shitty, the food isn't that good, and really, you're just paying for the privilege of being in one of Delhi's more cool places. I liked to think as I watched all the waiters ignore us, even as they spotted us wave and cry, that this star too would fall. It's been more than two years though, and Summer House is going nowhere. AND, irony of ironies, when my out-of-town friend said, "Please suggest somewhere nice we can meet for drinks" it jumped into my mind precisely because of that triangle.

Thursday

 Standing and smoking outside PDA (Diva's new cocktail bar, which is on Zomato Gold, which I have been using practically EVERYWHERE #notanad) this group of Particularly Delhi Girls walked up. Now, my friend Shrayana, who I was out with that evening, and I are both Delhi girls as well, but long years of apologising or trying to make up for our city has made us a little more--shall we say--circumspect in public. Neither of us would walk into the bar talking at the top of our voices. It's not us, it says "LOOK AT ME YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR." Now this lot, had no problem with us listening to every word they said, in fact, I think they relished it, like a stage show they were putting on. I know it, because for a brief time in college, I tried to be that sort of Top of My Voice As I Enter A Restaurant Person. Look at how much fun we're having, my conversation would say, and when other patrons turned to look at us, I thought it was envy in their eyes. (Now I know having been on the other side, that it's just plain old loathing. Do shut up.) "Get me nicotine patches," yelled Girl One to Girl Two who was standing right next to her, and Girl Two yelled back, "What happened to your vape?" and Girl One declares, "My Juul BROKE, ya!" And at this point, I exchanged looks with Shrayana, feeling about a hundred years old, and needed my martini desperately. (Note: PDA has such good drinks, we should all go.)

There has to be a word for this collective of Delhi girls, who say "bro" like they mean it, and who talk a certain way, like Valley Girls or the Sloanes, but Delhi-ish you know? Can any of you think of a name for their collective?

Friday

You know when you're with good friends and you finally manage to spit out what's been bothering you about something, and you finally articulate it in this golden sentence, and suddenly your brain clicks into place like you've had a really good massage and that night you dream about that problem so when you wake up in the morning and think about it, it's no longer aching? That was Friday night (and happy birthday to Niyati who hosted and listened!)

This week in stuff I wrote

Remember all the Deep Dark Hints I've been tossing around about You Are Here? WELL, the mystery is over because it is the TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY this year, and Penguin is rejacketing it and isn't it beautiful? It'll be out in August, and this version has a foreword by me, so please buy it for everyone and yourself. No events, but if you're in Delhi, let me know and I'll sign it for you at our mutual convenience.

 

In my book recommendation column this month on Mughal women and prize winning novels. (Plus I think the best book I've read all year.)

And in my Mythology for the Millennial column, are sages ancient India's Harvey Weinsteins?

Newsletter: It's definitely Yanny

This is already an old reference but it wasn't earlier this week

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Hanging on the wall of my study is a calendar a friend gave me, It features several doctored photographs of cats--like they've all been put through a Snapchat filter, say. Cat with sunglasses, cat with a hat, cat with sjiny bokeh stars around their face. This same friend also gave me an excellent fridge magnet which says "show me your kitties" and still makes me laugh when I look at it. Anyway, the cat calendar is also great because all the boxes for each day of the month are nice and big, so I can fit in my plans without having to squinch my handwriting up. So I've taken to writing down my commitments and from where I sit at my desk, I can see what the week looks like without getting up. (I have to get up to see the specifics of the week though, it's too far away to read in detail.) I used to use Google's calendar app, still do sometimes, but something about the satisfaction of a flesh and blood calendar, and also why give the internet one more thing they know about you right? Already major companies know who my friends are, how I spend my time, what I think about and often, what I do, but they don't have to know where I'm going and who I'm meeting if I choose not to say.

I sometimes think if you're busy socially, you send out a frequency that your other friends can hear as well, and suddenly they start to think about you. "Oh, hmm," they think, "We haven't heard from her in a while, let's make that plan to hang out." And then your calendar is full, and you're dressing up every night, until the next week, when no one has thought of you at all, so you have a week sitting at home in your pajamas reading. Both are great, but this was the former week.

I've also been putting up a lot of photos of my outfits on Instagram (you can follow me here) which is very not-a-fashion-blogger style. I don't go on about where I got my outfits from, but I do go on about how they make me feel. I love clothes, and I love experimenting with style. There was a time when no one would take you seriously as a writer if you dressed up a lot, but those days are thankfully over. I see women at lit fests and parties and conferences wearing really nice things. I see "serious" people talking about lipstick shades and fabric. And I see that when someone says "You look nice" they say it admiringly, not condescendingly.

This week in restaurants: For a long time, Ameya, Niyati and I have been talking about going to Chateau de Pondicherry but the plan just never happened. It became sort of a running joke--a restaurant that was super close to us but one which we would never visit. Finally, we made it happen yesterday, and dudes, maybe we should have left it as a running joke. The cocktails were nice, the restaurant itself is beautiful and the woman serving us who might have also been the owner, was very warm and friendly, but the food, oh, it didn't have much to recommend. Almost everything was undersalted, and was very heavy on one spice or the other (too much pepper, too much basil). We ordered a lot and ate most of it, because we were hungry but it was an eating-because-we're-hungry thing, not a this-is-so-delicious thing.

This week in home comforts: I have rediscovered my love for the watermelon. It's summer time, and that means mango time, but often, we forget about the amazingness of watermelon. So sweet, so cold, like that poem goes. I read this great article on The Goya Journal on how to make watermelon shrub (I kept calling it watermelon FROSH for some reason, but shrub is not much better) and I'm excited to try it. For that, I'm going to get my melons from I Say Organic, which is still the best place in Delhi to buy organic fruits and vegetables. (I also have a great organic shop down the road from us called Roots, which I use frequently for organic sugar, lentils and once a really good pickle as well.)

This week in books: Had a really good haul delivered from Book Chor again recently. Here's a photo I took of it.

Of these, so far I have read:

1) Good In Bed which is hilarious, but then I got the sequel on my Kindle and it was terrible, so if you read it and are similarly tempted: DON'T.
2) The Broken Bridge which was nice, but I judge all of Pullman through His Dark Materials and this was not that.
3) Pretty Monsters which was AMAZING, one of the best books I have read all year, a fantasy-meets-horror-meets-humour collection of short stories. I am now on a mission to read all of Kelly Link's books.
4) A Dog So Small which was also very similar to the author Phillipa Pearce's other book Tom's Midnight Garden which is one of the best books I've read about being in a time slip, whether for adults or children. Similar as in, there's also a boy who yearns for something (in this case a dog) so much that he tunes out of his regular life completely, and so, worries his family.
5) Katherine of Aragon which I am currently reading. Have read all of Phillipa Gregory on the subject of Tudors and now I am branching out. Why does Henry VIII fascinate me so? Is it the wives? Is it the cruelty? I think it's both those things, he turns into a Bluebeard-esque character, ominous, laughing and handsome until he wasn't.

Stuff I read on the web this week

As someone who is interested in the Royal Wedding this weekend but also not THAT interested, here are two articles on the subject that made me go hmmm.
 

The incredible Margo Jefferson on Megan Markle and whether her arrival indicates a wind of change.

Excerpt: But is Markle automatically marrying up by marrying a prince? In the old school way, yes: any “commoner” who marries into any royal family is seen as marrying up. But Harry is marrying up too. He’s marrying up by marrying out – out of long-entwined bloodlines, out of entrenched rituals and hierarchies, out of a lineage as constricted as it is privileged. We always ascribe social ambitions to commoners, but aristocrats have their own longings for a world elsewhere. Harry is marrying into all the possibilities of postmodernity. It’s a world where – as Zora Neale Hurston said of black folktales and music – hierarchies, styles, sites of social and cultural change are being made and forgotten every day.
 

And if you're ever invited to a royal wedding, here are some dos and don'ts (which are disturbingly almost entirely aimed at women.)

Excerpt:     “Do not touch the Queen.

    Do not shake the Queen's hand unless she holds her hand out first to shake your hand.

    Do not speak to the Queen unless she speaks to you first.

    If the Queen addresses you first, answer her ending your first response with ‘Your Majesty.’ End your second response with ‘Ma'am’ to rhyme with ‘jam.’”
 

An oldie but a goodie: trying to find the end of an endless appetiser promo.

Excerpt: 1:30 p.m. I goddamn hate these fucking mozzarella sticks. The more of them I eat, the more I feel like I can taste every ingredient. Ingredients include: cardboard left in a hamster cage in the sun; acid.
 

A lovely essay which feels very relevant to me: on birds, cats and children. (Except: I like children unlike the author of this piece. My feelings are like that old saying about New York: a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.)

Excerpt: Dorian [the cat] and the songbird nestlings were both completely dependent on me for their survival, as a newborn infant would be. The overbearing affection I poured onto Dorian would have drowned or smothered a child, while the stoicism I cultivated with the birds was only appropriate for a mother who planned to die young, leaving her children to fend for themselves. Motherhood, not marriage, was the one “till death do us part” relationship among humans. A mother would have to navigate between the urge to protect and the need to respect her child’s autonomy even after the child had left home to study, work, or marry. I knew how to hold on and how to let go, but I couldn’t imagine having to do a little of both, in the right mixture for each occasion, day after day for the many decades that make up the average span of a mother-child relationship. And in order to love my own child in spite of my general dislike of children, I would have to think of him or her as an entirely different category of being: for example, a cat. That’s what I was trying to say when people refused to accept my decision not to have children. I could only become a mother if Dorian could be my child—that is to say, never.
 

On falling in love with a polyamorous man, which okay, has been done, but the author is from Mumbai which is why I found this piece interesting.

Excerpt: She has suggested the meeting. I have heard enough about her to know I’d like her. Cory says she feels the same. Well, maybe if we met in a slightly different situation though? I’m so nervous. We meet for xiao long bao – Shanghainese soup dumplings. Cory texts me when I’m on my way there to tell me I can sit on his side of the table. This is actually one among a few things I’ve been stressing about. I don’t want to end up on one side alone while they sit across from me, like it’s an interrogation. This text calms me down a bit. So does his hug when I meet him outside the restaurant door.

This one guy had done a terribly tone deaf piece on why women succeed in publishing. (I believe one of his arguments was: because they already know how to juggle children and in laws.) Urvashi Butalia is having NONE OF IT.

Excerpt: In feminist circles, and sometimes even out of them, when women talk together we often find ourselves saying, resignedly, that when speaking about women, even the best of men will at some point, reveal the deep biases they carry inside them. We recognise these with a sense of familiarity, we’ve met them all our lives, but every time we encounter them – as in Venkatachalapathy’s piece – there’s also a sense of disappointment, almost of despair. We’re in the 21st century and we still have to deal with this?

Newsletter: So my pop culture references are mostly from the 1800s

This week in feeling like Beth March and/or Ruby Gillis (which is an actual thing my friend Sam referenced the other day, and I am totally stealing it from her) (actually in my case, it's more like Katy Carr): My hand is WORSE, well, it was worse this whole week, so I spent yesterday resting it, and today I am writing with a timer on so I can take a break every ten minutes. Not to worry, friends and concerned citizens, I am actually going to see an expert about it this week, and not just stick to this home doctoring. From what I understand though, there's not really a "cure" for carpal tunnel, but at least the physiotherapist will give me some exercises so I can stretch out my arm and make it feel less stiff.

However, it was not a wasted day, because I got to do my number one favourite thing to do when I am ill, which is watch TV mindlessly propped up on my pillow like an invalid. The Germans have a word for mindless watching: glotz, which I just love. Glotz, glotz, glotz. I glotz-ted my new binge watching obsession, Friday Night Lights, which I hadn't seen before because it's supposed to be a show about American football and sports are very much "who cares" in my book. HOWEVER, it is about so much more than football! The football is the background, the reason for the show existing, etc etc, but it's really small town teen drama with all sorts of small town intrigues and set in the American South which might be my favourite setting for small town TV shows (think True Blood). Try it, it's on Amazon Prime, and I'm pretty sure you'll be super into it after you watch that pilot.

(While I'm on TV recs, Parenthood, one of my favourite shows of ALL TIME is also on Amazon Prime, and you must watch that also if you're in a heartwarming drama mood, and really, who isn't, right?)

This week in sometimes we are also Ruby Gillis in other ways, which is when we go to parties and toss our hair around: My friend Ameya (I realise I say "my friend so and so" a lot. Can I just stick to their names? You'll know it's a friend, right? In the case of a FRENEMY, I'll say "my frenemy" just to set the record straight) (HAH AS IF! I am way too chicken to actually call out someone's shitty behaviour in real life on the internet! I'll just turn them into a nasty character in my next book!) ANYWAY, Ameya is obsessed with this new jazz bar in the usual no-fly zone of South Ex II, called The Bar Cat and it's like all the good things of Piano Man and PCO with none of the bad (too crowded and too trendy and so too full of children respectively). She took K and me there last week to see a band called Los Catphonics, who were okay, but the bar was really nice. Good cocktails, swing jazz house playlist, and nice food too. Pricey, but it can be your "let's get dressed up and go out with friends" place. Or maybe you have a full time job and are not peering at everything through the shredded remains of your last freelance invoice.

This week in practically turning into the Jetsons:  Here's a first world problem for you: what do you do when you are in the middle of crafting a perfect sentence and your cook comes in at just that moment and asks what you want her to make, turning your thoughts from High Poetic Ancient India to mmm what shall I put in my mouth today? (We have a feminist household, and our division of labour is pretty equal, and I decided to take on the meal planning because, well, I enjoy it, and I care more about what's for dinner than K does.)

What do you do? You do as I did and get an Excel sheet going! I commissioned K to build me something that would let me not only put out all the meals for that week but also have a running grocery list by the side so if for eg, we're eating daal and we have no daal, I just have to check the column in red to see what I'm missing. You can update the list of dishes and ingredients and now it's mostly smooth sailing. I will send you a link to the spreadsheet next week as soon as he tinkers with it a bit more because right now he says it's not yet ready for public consumption. Still it has made my life a lot easier.

Also since all that fuss about antibiotics in your chicken, I have been trying to find a better source. I use the app Fresh To Home which has really really nice fish--we've been eating a lot of fish these days, and I've been using our wedding present Suriani Kitchen (thanks Mihir and Snigdha!) to make all sorts of nice things. The chicken is not the best though, but Zappfresh has been recommended as another good source of antibiotic-free chicken, so will try that next.

This week in stuff I wrote: My monthly books column this time featured statuses: Facebook, singledom in your late thirties and the state of the world in a post apocalyptic future. An excerpt:

Sreemoyee Piu Kundu’s Status Single is the result of her interviews with about 3,000 single women on the realities behind being single in this country. It’s very much a PLU (people like us) book, and yet, it is an important one simply for taking into account the stories of thousands of urban, educated women and what happens to them in this country when they are minus a husband or partner.

I do love this gig, and how it makes me think about the stuff I read and how to structure it into themes each month. Speaking of reading, it was this month (sadly after column was published) that I got into Cynthia Voigt's excellent series about a family called the Tillermans. The first book is the strongest, and the one I would recommend the most: Homecoming about perhaps my favourite kind of kids-making-it-in-an-adult-world theme, the survival type story where you live off the land by making fires and fishing and hiding from grown ups. Very good. I'd recommend it highly for your next reading fix. 

Sunday link list here to destroy the other things you had to do this afternoon

 

Our top story this week is a woman who befriended a bumblebee. Befriended. A. Bumblebee.

Excerpt: Since the bee, now formally named Bee, would have to walk from flower to flower to feed, Presly built her a private floral buffet. Using some netting, she built Bee an enclosure full of blossoms where her winged counterparts couldn't reach to deplete the pollen.

 

Heh, never date a writer, kids.

Excerpt: Well. If I was going to be in this dang book, at least that gave me license to pick it apart.  I snickered at the skewed grammar — was the foreman blonde, or the daughter? — and rolled my eyes at Carl’s middle-class depiction of my working-class upbringing. And that tentacle thing. The narrator, named Frank, had just met Sophie at a gallery opening, it seemed, and they hadn’t even spoken. How did he know what her ego acted like? I could already see where this was headed: A 64-year-old man turning an insecure 25-year-old woman into an emasculating shrew, her sole goal being to suck his life energy. And this was only page 17.

 

Hey Ladies used to be one of my favourite series over at the late lamented Toast, and I'm glad to see they're turning it into a book.

Excerpt: Ali, since you’re the Maid of Honor I’ll let you handle dress code, but please, ladies, be prepared to wear a pastel or muted shade that goes well with your skin tone. If you’re not sure, google! Or go to a high-end luxury clothing store and make a consultation appointment with a stylist. As for shoes, just because this will be outside doesn’t mean you should sacrifice looking good for being comfortable. I am going to have a photographer on site, so keep that in mind! As for hair and makeup, please call Meegan at Hair Today in VA for consecutive day-of appointments so we can have consistency in looks.

 

A lot of chatter on my Twitter timeline recently about whether internships should be paid or not. I got paid for my first gig which was technically an internship--and I learned a lot from having that money + having to work for it. (I had one unpaid internship just before, which was perhaps a job I learned the LEAST from, and quickly quit about ten days later.) This Guardian article is interesting in that context.

Excerpt: You can only shrug off being paid in change if you’ve got somebody else picking up the tab. If my partner hadn’t had a well-paid job, I would not have had the money to eat that week, or any of the other weeks I worked at Monocle. My “job” was basically a hobby that someone else was funding. One of the other interns in my cohort juggled a second job at a ramen shop, but most had parents who subsidised their rent, bills, travel and food. Journalism has shifted to a greater degree of social exclusivity than any other profession, according to Alan Milburn, the former Independent Reviewer on Social Mobility and Child Poverty. In a report published in 2012 headlined “Fair access to professional careers”, he found that 49% of journalism students come from the top three socio-economic groups, and just 14% from the bottom three.

How to be a good mother (if you're a Southern African python.)

Excerpt: Although the mothers wrap around their eggs, they don’t rhythmically contract their muscles to raise their body temperature. Instead, two times a day, they lie at the entrance of burrow until they bake to 40ºC before returning to coil around their eggs, transferring the heat from their bodies. For the three-month incubation term, these massive mammas live an austere lifestyle, alternately sunbathing and curling around their precious loads. They don’t eat or drink.

 

Is it really love if you are not posting a hundred pictures of the two of you on Instagram?

Excerpt: It is so early in this couple’s relationship and I’m already exhausted. So are most of our mutual friends. The responses on their weekiversary posts have dropped from dozens of “You two!!” and “Cutest couple ahhhhh!!” comments in the early days of their relationship to just a single comment from one of their moms. A lone tumbleweed of a comment, rolling through the dusty, echoing canyons of Shut Up You Guys National Park.

Okay, my hand is starting to hurt again from all the copy-pasting so I'm ending this week's link list with this nice gif instead! Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every week!

 

 

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.\

So, you're going to a book launch this evening

(I wrote this ages ago for Elle. So long ago, that I can't remember what issue it was, but it still totally holds true.)

Just five more minutes and you can leave the house. Five minutes, and you won’t be the first one there, you won’t have to make awkward small talk with the author, while both of you wait around for more important guests. Five minutes, and you’ll still be on time enough to snag a parking spot—or a seat, if you’re wearing heels—and not so early that the waiters are still setting up around you. If you give it half an hour, you might be able to miss the interminable author reading, the questions that the moderator, usually a friend, feeds them, the ha-ha-look-how-funny-we-are-in-the-inner-circle questions from a friend, and make it just in time for the bar to open. You sometimes go for the readings, for an “important” book, or an author you’ve read before, or, most likely (who are we kidding?) your friend’s. If the invite says 7.30, you aim to leave your house at 7.35, if there are cocktails after, the invite will say “Cocktails will be served after the launch.” Otherwise, it’s just “beverages.” Beware the “beverage” launch.

The “high tea” launch, too, is misleading. The first time you saw that on an invitation, you were immediately slung back to one of Enid Blyton’s books of three or four chirpy siblings on a farm, who did all the chores without complaining about child labour, and who went in for high tea every evening, with sausages and meat pie and what not. You’re not expecting a meat pie from the book launch, but a chicken patty from Wenger’s would do in a pinch. More than a pinch. Biscuits and instant coffee is what you get. You stop going to book launches for the food. Some venues will still surprise you — the British Council Library in New Delhi, for instance, has a fried fish that’s moreish, and an apparently endless supply of wine. In case of emergency, you always have your after party, your back up plan, your cheap dive bar in the neighbourhood that you’ll take people to only to have them exclaim over the authenticity, the is-that-double-whiskey-only-that-much?

You consider your outfit in the mirror — too much, and you’ll be trying too hard, too little and no one will comment at all. The other girls have a casual hand with statement jewelry, piling it on over black tops and skinny jeans, but you’ve decided to go with a simple shift dress, a deceptively loose cut, which clings to you as you walk. Casual but elegant. Giving you the air of a person who only goes to certain parties, and who probably already has another three plans this evening. You sling your bag around your shoulders, a little extra cash in case you want to buy the book and have it signed that evening, a souvenir, as it were, and the mantra: car keys, house keys, wallet, cigarettes, lighter. 

yes, well....

Your friend who told you about this evening is standing by the door when you enter. She’s in publishing, or journalism, or PR, or she’s an author herself. She’s a useful person to know on a Tuesday night, when the only thing there is to do is crash a book party. She knows the very glamorous young male author, who is probably gay, but might not be, by the way his eyes rest on her bosom, as she introduces you to him. “There might be an after party,” she tells you, typing out a message on her iPhone, and raising one cool eyebrow and the side of her mouth in a smile to someone across the room.

You are not late enough to miss the reading. Young Glamorous Male Author goes on and on. There’s a challenging question from the audience about his homosexual themes, and whether that’s from real life. A frisson goes around, and the lulled audience sits up, alert and excited for gossip. He answers diplomatically, and you’re reminded of something you read about publicity: “If someone asks you a question you don’t want to answer, answer another question.”

Finally, they announce the drinks. This is the best part. This is the only reason most people are here. You grab a glass of wine from a swamped waiter. You throw your head back and laugh.

You are having a wonderful time.

Cat Lady Heaven: Dispatches from a cat show

(This first appeared as a piece on Scroll.  I took all the photos too!)

Chulbul yawns delicately and blinks his eyes—one blue and one amber. He's so bored of all this, even the medal wrapped around his neck is not enough of a plaything to distract him. His owner Shyampriya picks him off the top of the cage and hands him round to the crowd of people who are gazing at him, making “awww” noises. “He's for sale,” she says, and then gestures to the pile of kittens—Chulbul's siblings—inside the cage. “They're for sale too.” She's just explaining to me that Chulbul's mother, Gravy (an Indian street cat not at the show because she's too aggressive) won a beauty contest where she wore a dress (I take a moment to imagine this in my head) and his father is a purebred Persian sitting in the cage next to his offspring, when the MC announces the kitten class. Chulbul has already won a small medal for “Most Playful,” but there are other cups to be won, and Shyampriya has a whole cage full of kittens.

Oldest cat in the show!

The International Cat Show of India is not a new phenomenon. Maybe not as popular as the Indian Kennel Club shows, but nevertheless in its seventh year now. This is the first year it has been hosted in Delhi (previous editions have been in Mumbai and Bengaluru), and as a cat owner myself, I'm feeling birthday-ish as I skip up the stairs of the Vishwa Yuvak Kendra in Chanakyapuri where it's being held. I'm even dressed the part—small golden cat heads dangle from my ears, my tights feature pixellated cat versions of Batman and the Joker. I almost wore a shirt with Mrs Cat embroidered on the breast pocket but rejected that as too much. “It doesn't look very full,” says my partner, K, to me, looking sceptical. I'm too excited to be brought down, and when a car rolls up next to me asking for directions to the cat show, I wave and point at the building like I'm signalling to a plane. “See?” I say to K, “There are probably loads of people already here.”

There aren't. The place wears the deserted look of a birthday party where a lot more guests were supposed to show up. Outside, there are stalls featuring the sponsor cat food as well as a very well groomed toy poodle advertising her owner's pet grooming salon. Inside the hall—thankfully air conditioned—the volunteers are handing out cat cages: an iron frame work with a very thin stretch of chicken wire to cover it. Surprisingly, even though I brace myself, there is no acrid smell of cat urine (which, once burnt into your nasal glands, never fully leaves). The hall is also almost completely silent.

KITTEH!!

I'm not sure why, but most people who have a “breed” cat in India, gravitate towards the Persian. Perhaps it's because the Persian with it's punched nose face and grumpy expression has made it to a lot of cinema, perhaps because they're docile, or perhaps just because everyone else has one. Whatever the case may be, the hall is almost 90% Persian (including kittens and mix breeds) with one or two stand outs, like a family of Bengal cats (which look like a tabby crossed with a wildcat) or a Siberian kitten. Most people I talk to say the Persian they're gazing at lovingly is their first cat. “Just like a dog,” says one of the owners, stroking her powder puff Persian kitten, Lola. Lola went on to win third place in the kitten category, and I get to hold her while the owner is off somewhere, and for several blissful moments, I want to replace all my three Indian cats with soft cloud-like kittens like this one, who submit to being held. Until I let her go and spit out a hairball's worth of white fur.

Mostly everyone is also an amateur, except for Deepika Kaur. She's showing the aforementioned Siberian kitten, who looks straight out of a cat food advertisement. Kit Kat may be young, but he's already won seven cups in Bangalore, which Kaur has propped up on top of his cage, along with plastic flower barrettes to make it look prettier. She started with importing two Siberian cats, and Kit Kat is now third generation. While we wait for the judge to make her decision, she whips out her iPhone and shows me photos of Kit Kat's relatives, all prize winners. Kaur has come specially from Bangalore for this, and is with a friend, Lola's owner, to whom she gives tips. “Don't fluff her up,” she tells her friend, “They'll just run their fingers through her fur and make it sit down again.” There's this ointment called Goop which international cat showers use to make their felines look extra groomed and soft, but Kaur says the judges see through that instantly. “I thought the show was tomorrow, otherwise I would have bathed her,” says Lola's owner, glumly.

Bengal cat being streeeetched.

Cat people, I decide after a while, are very nice. There's this whole myth about the “crazy cat lady,” a spinster with a hundred cats, who take over her home and her life, but as the species gets more popular (the most popular pet in the United States), cat owners are becoming more mainstream as well. While the show has mainly women with their kitties, there are not an insignificant number of men as well. In my own personal life, I am the administrator of a cat group on Facebook with engagement rates that would make other more mainstream groups envious, and work closely with a cat adoption group called Everything Meow. Some of the women who run Everything Meow are at the show, and we greet each other warmly, asking after each other's pets. “You should have brought yours,” one says to me, “We could have all watched him while you wandered about taking notes.” Cat owners may be considered more selfish and less social than dog owners, but there's a sense of owning an underdog (apologies: undercat) pet, that makes us all hail-fellow-well-met and we're-in-the-same-boat.

After a while of watching Persian after Persian be presented by the judge, who is using a mic to explain what to look for, I'm thinking about breeding in general. As someone who has Indian cats or “desi billis” as the Whiskas representative calls them, I'm against breeding as a whole. For one, it's a bit like playing God, getting exactly the kind of creature you want, and the kind of creature everyone at this show seems to want is a upturned nose, deep inserted eyes face with enough fur that most of them resemble alpacas. Some of the cats don't even look very well under all their fur, and some are being displayed by unethical breeders, who use the cats as kitten machines. Not surprising because a Persian kitten goes for anywhere between Rs 8000 to Rs 35,000. Unlike dogs, cats are bred not for their service (although there are some character traits unique to a breed: Persians are docile, Siamese are talkative, British Blues are easily trained ,etc.) but for their looks. Which seems to someone like me, an Indian Cat Advocate, as such a waste, when local cats all over the world are prettier and hardier than their fluffy counterparts.

As a counterpoint, organisations like the World Cat Federation argue that without breeding, the best traits would go extinct. On the WCF website, there are a list of rules about showing a Persian with a list of faults that includes difficulty breathing and too flat a skull. With extreme breeding becoming a habit almost for dog and cat breeders around the world, it's good that these points are specified so that the animals, but not so good that the punch-nosed Persian (who needs an elevated bowl in order to eat without smothering itself and can't be flown in an aeroplane because of their breathing difficulties) is being encouraged as a breed in itself. Irina Sadovnikova, one of the international judges at the competition, was one of the breeding advocates. Even as she held up an Indian cat called Sandy (entered in the neutered section) she said it was a pity that this cat had been neutered because otherwise she could have been bred and an excellent kind of Indian breed could have emerged. This goes against everything animal advocates preach.

I too want a cat I can hold like a handbag

But shows like the International Cat Show of India would not exist without cat breeds. Of all the cats there, only two were of domestic origin (something that made me wish I had brought one of mine—a large black tom cat, who is very handsome, even if I do say so myself) and one of the “desi billis” is a long furred ginger anomaly who is immediately classified into “Persian mix” despite his owner's protests that he was born of street cats who she knows intimately. In the end, the breed cats win, including, to no one's surprise, little Kit Kat, who takes off with first place in the kitten section. All is not lost though, because a prize also goes to the eleven-year-old Sandy, the Indian cat, whose pretty little face makes someone ask me what breed she is. “A desi one,” I say, proudly. She may be only a contestant in the neutered section now, but maybe in a few years there will be shows for indigenous breeds like ours—feral cats and dogs who have converted to a life of domesticity and who—despite having regular pointed faces and short hair—are recognised for their beauty and charm.

Newsletter: Dispatches from the domestic front

(I sent this out as my newsletter for 01.05.2017. For more up-to-date madness, subscribe here!)

K has taken to exercise in a way that is alarming for me. If we were animals, he'd be something strong limbed and energetic--a big cat, perhaps--and I'd be a sloth. Or a panda. They're cute, right? But they conserve their energy and move only very slowly, and I am a slow moving kind of person. Oh, I don't mind walking as long as the walk isn't the PURPOSE of the thing. Walk and shop, walk to get somewhere, fine, but walking just for the sake of walking? I'm always checking the time to see if I'm done yet, whether I can go home now please. Even the Mi Band I bought isn't spurring me on, on the contrary, the days where I manage to do one kilometre just pacing the house are red letter days for me, I feel so virtuous and alive. And in the meanwhile, there is K with his skipping rope and his pull-up bar. Some of us just aren't meant to exercise. I am one of those people. I never get "addicted" to it, never need to stretch my limbs unless I've been on a bus or something, never feel like my well-being depends on it. Luckily, I also eat moderately, so my body keeps a balance, staying the same size mostly. I say that now, but in my thirties I'm way heavier than I was in my twenties and in my forties I probably will double that as well. Ugh. Ageing sucks. Having to "look after your body" also sucks. I miss the old days where no one cared about health and pregnant women bummed cigarettes from children and everyone drank till they dropped dead. 

This week in Khan Market: Surprised by the fact that I don't miss Khan Market. I thought I was going to once I moved away from Nizamuddin, but moving away also made us explore so many other places in this city. Like, our Nizamuddin selves would not pop over to Little Saigon at least once a month for lunch. or try and find new exciting places to hang out at instead of the same ol', same ol'. It is damn convenient--Khan Market ie--though. Everything that you need for a fancy life: your well-stocked grocer, your book store, your bar, even your roadside jewellery shops. And Khan Market will always have a place in my heart, just not the only place, I don't think.

Anyway, I was in my old stomping grounds twice this week--once for a friend's birthday at Public Affair (which I always think of as PUBIC Affair for some reason, sorry guys, it's very fancy and nothing remotely pubic about it, it's just my brain association); and the second for a conversation my mother was doing with Sunil Sethi at Cafe Turtle. Both times, I went out to the terrace (both for a cigarette and to get away from relentlessly cold air conditioning. K has a theory that the posher the place in Delhi, the colder it has to be, which is funny because it's true. I'm going to have to start carrying a little shawl around.) If you also haven't been in Khan Market for a while, you may not know that there's this whole MCD thing to close down the terrace sections of restaurants. Apparently one collapsed in Connaught Place even, so terraces in all these heritage type markets have this desolate sad look. Gossip has it (and this is just gossip, so don't quote me) that this one prominent family that owns a bunch of buildings in Khan pays the NDMC a lakh a week or something for them to look the other way and so their restaurant is the only one allowed to keep tables and things outdoors.

This week in other places that are not in Khan Market: My dad was in town so full parental week for me. We went to Delhi Club House, which I've been wanting to try, but which all my friends are bored of, so no one wants to come with me. Quite nice--again with the super high air con though. I was battling a hangover from Public Affair the night before, so could not stomach the idea of a cocktail, but they looked pretty good. Surprisingly, a large number of patrons looked like Gymkhana-Club-On-A Thursday members, so either a) they're really into clubs, or b) they're dressing aspirationally.

This week on books-to-television: From all accounts the new Netflix adaptation of Anne Of Green Gables is going to be that dreadful thing for nostalgia reading: gritty. It's now called Anne-with-an-E,  and is written by the same writer who did that Breaking Bad episode called Ozymandias. Uff, what an episode that was. BUT that's okay for a meth lord and Santa Fe, but not for idyllic PE Island and a little girl with red hair who always saw beauty in things. As a palate cleanser for my soon-to-be outrage, I watched the 1985 CBS adaptation of Anne, starring Megan Follows who WAS Anne, who was so, so perfect in the show. It made me feel better.

This week in Kittenamas: I THINK (knock on wood etc) that the two kitties we are fostering are mostly spoken for, it's just a question of my friends making up their minds. They're both SO sweet, and have really blossomed. I wish we could take more credit, but really it's just a matter of giving kitties lots of food and a secure place to live, out of the mean streets. Mack--the brown kitten--is especially a Love Cat, and likes best to be cuddled and picked up and have his tummy tickled (very rare trait in cats), while the Hobgoblin is a little darting bit of cotton wool. Our other cats have managed to ignore them completely, so peace reigns, mostly. It's nice to have enough space for five cats, but kittens are such delicate darlings, I check in on them every morning just to see they haven't perished in the night.

This week in new books:  After a meeting with the guys at Harper Collins this week (book is looking SO lovely!) I asked them for a copy of Anuja Chauhan's latest, about an Air Force pilot called Baaz. Excellently done, even though Anuja is clearly more into the idea of armies and battles than I am (I am a pacifist, believe that if everyone was, the world would be a lovely place, don't believe in young men being lured on promises to become cannon fodder. This is extremely naive of me, I know, but wouldn't it be nice?) and the book has some very exciting battle scenes as well as the zingy dialogue that makes her books so readable. You should pick it up, you'll love it.

Lunch reading list to ease you into Monday: Loved this piece by Manasi on Jo March (and it inspired me to start re-reading Little Women again). ** Fab obituary on the Hungarian woman who married a Nehru. ** Freelance journalist Aparna Kalra was attacked in a park near her home, but happily she's making a good recovery and even wrote a piece about it. ** Like a Zomato for sex workers. ** Dental care is the new hipster must-buy. (I've been using an electric toothbrush for years and since I switched haven't had a single cavity or gum bleeding). ** Related: the best inventions of 2016. ** Genital cutting in the United States. ** 100 Days of Trump, 100 days of false statements. ** Nevertheless HE persisted. **

eM's Massive Travel Diary Part Two: Barcelona, Spain (and some Berlin)

(My newsletter was a travelogue for a few weeks! Sign up for regular email updates here (never spam).)

I'm in a sunny Barcelona Airbnb as I'm writing this to you. The flat is a third floor walk-up in the Gothic Quarters, and it's only really quiet in the mornings. All night, thanks to several bars and several tourists, I can hear drunken people squealing at each other, caught up in the incredible luck of being here, being in Spain. Can you imagine? I'm in Spain! I still can barely believe it myself. Like every single other world traveler for time immemorial, I love Europe. I'm madly, deeply in love with the entire continent. I love how it all feels like one country, but also how things change from place to place. I love how I can walk everywhere. I love the little bars you stumble onto accidentally. I love how when you step out of your front door, you immediately feel like you're abroad, part of something else. I love supermarkets and how they change based on where you are. I love that my love of travel has been validated: this is why I do it, this is why I yearn to do more, the world is such a big place and there are so many places to see! I'm also glad I'm in my thirties as I'm doing this, you get crunched into the space you define for yourself at thirty something and it's good to push against that, get away from your comfort zone and become a new person again and again.

art by David Michael Chandler

But compressing it all into one newsletter might be a bit hard, so I suggest you follow me on Instagram where I'm trying to put out daily photo updates.

But, here then, is what we did the last few days in Berlin after I wrote to you last.

* We went to an Austrian place famous for schnitzel and ordered a "small" one but it was still bigger than my head, and quite frankly, not all that tasty. A bit bland even. Traditional German food--except for all the various kinds of wurst--has not gone down very well with me. There just seems to be not enough of something in that food, a complete and total lack of spices. I don't mean that stuff isn't spicy (which it isn't), it's just flavourless. But apart from that schnitzel, I ate very well: ramen and pizza and pasta and innumerable doners which K is passionately dedicated to.

* Signed up for a walk with a tour company called Alternative Berlin. I've been walking like a champ, it's so easy when there are pavements and things dedicated to the people of a city as opposed to the cars. In Delhi, it's hard to walk anywhere, because either the pavements have cars parked on them, or people squatting on them, but in Europe, the cities have been planned keeping people's walking needs in mind. Also, let's face it, the climate suits. In Delhi it's either too hot, too wet or too polluted to spend any dedicated amount of time outside, let alone the ten kilometres a day I am managing with ease. EASE.

Anyway, Alternative Berlin. Found them by looking for "free things to do in Berlin" and they offer a guided walking tour to see street art and counter culture, with a little Soviet East/West thrown in. It's wasn't free though, it was "pay what you want" which always winds up being a little more expensive than what you bargained for. (We checked the website and a four and a half hour paid walking tour was 12 euros, so we gave the guy ten each for a three hour "free" one.) I learned many things about Berlin, including the story of Osman Kalin, which is fascinating, and also he was sitting there as we passed his plot of land, a very old man now, who lifted his hand to wave at all the tourists gawping at him.

* Our last rainy day there--by this time I was tired and cold of European weather, so instead of being lyrical about it, I just turned my face up to the sky and wished for the sun--we went to Templehof airport, which is this old Nazi airport, turned into a US military base, turned into an airport for West Berlin and now a public park. It's very cool to see the old radar buildings and the empty runway and the little organic gardens that are coming up everywhere. I wish more places would turn disused things like that into stuff for the people of the city to enjoy. (The old terminal itself is now a police headquarters.)

And now, on to Barcelona. My memories of this are one endless stream of debauchery, our days are filled with walking and eating and drinking. Two of K's besties are here from the UK, so we've been hanging out with them. Yesterday evening, we got empanadas, and they played Catan for three hours while I happily drank gin and tonic and read my book. (I'm on book four, the last one of the Cazalet quartet and I'm so sad it's over.) Barcelona is warm and no one has ceiling fans, so we're all a bit sweaty. I haven't seen anything apart from the Gothic Quarter yet, but it's so beautiful, these little warren-like streets that you can get completely lost in.

Yesterday, thanks to my Rough Guide, we made our way to an outdoor food market nearby called La Bouqeria, and ate at the best food stall there--at least, that's what my guidebook told me. Bar Pinotxo has no menu (it's a food stall with tall stools to eat at the bar), so we resorted to pointing at things, but in the end, got just what the owner thought we should have. Which was a warm bean and cuttlefish thing and also a sort of ceviche with cod. YUM.

Also on one of our walks, I bought Couples by John Updike at an old second hand bookstore, partly because they had a cat who was just lying there and also partly because I think old books are the best things to remember a trip by. I'll always think of Paris when I open my copy of Ved Mehta (imagine buying an Indian author at the best second hand store in Paris, but there you are), I'll always think of England when I turn to my little hardbound volume of Grimm's Fairy Tales (dinky, and bound in gold) and now Barcelona with Updike. (The other thing I like to buy are accessories, but I haven't found anything yet.)

This flat has two friendly cats, which makes me miss ours a little bit, but also not, because it's nice to pet them and just leave them to do their own thing, not having to bother about food and water and keeping them alive and so on. But having now lived with both species on this holiday (K's mum brought her dog to Berlin who is very sweet), I can firmly say cats > dogs. Chill and sweet. The best pets.

Meanwhile in Delhi, The One Who Swam With The Fishes got a RAVE review in Scroll. We are also back up on the Kindle store. (Please leave me reviews so the book gets kicked a little higher up on the ratings.)

Since a freelance writer's work is never done, here are some recent pieces I did: In Open, an essay about the childhood memoirs of famous authors. ** On why period leave is a good thing: this article created a lot of controversy on my Facebook page with people calling me "elitist" so you know it's great clickbait. ** On Paddington Bear and why bears are so popular in kid lit. **

Also I loved this old piece by Arvind Adiga on how he came to be a writer and an outsider in Delhi.

Until next time, darlings. I am off to eat some more ham now.

eM's Massive Travel Diary: Part One, Berlin, Germany

Since I was away for a whole MONTH, something you may have seen on the today in photo posts, I sent out four newsletters during my trip. Putting them up here in case you missed them, but you can subscribe here if you'd like up-to-date musings. 

Darlings, I am writing to you from the sunny back room of a flat in West Berlin. Across the window, I can see a park which usually has children in it, but since the monsoon seems to have followed me to Europe, it is a grey, wet day, which I sort of like, because it feels so much more European. Sunny days are for beach holidays, in Germany, we turn up the collars of our coats and eat warm, bracing things. That's just the way it is.

Yes, my European holiday has begun! It really began late on Sunday night, when--having packed up Elvira The Backpack--I stood in line for an awfully long time waiting to get on a plane. Late night flights are the worst, they're always so crowded. When I'm rich, I'm only going to fly in the middle of the day. And also business class, since I'll be rich anyway. The good news is that they've done away with filling up those ridiculous little immigration cards which always caused a bottleneck right before you went to security check. Now I guess everyone has a new fangled passport, because they just swipe them on a little machine and send you on your way. It also means the immigration officer doesn't know I'm a writer, which is GREAT, because otherwise EVERY.SINGLE.TIME there would be this whole "what do you write? who do you write for?" and while I'm as happy to talk about myself as the next person, entertaining a bored immigrations officer is not my idea of fun. (They knew I was a writer because you had to fill in "occupation" in those forms.)

However, I can't get myself to go to sleep on flights. No matter how hard I tried, changing positions, putting on an eye mask, just lying there and closing my eyes, it wasn't happening. As a result, I just stayed awake. There were some movies to watch, I saw three back-to-back, read my book, ate the snack, considered my existence as the whole plane slumbered gently.

***

This week in plane movies: I watched Wilson, where Woody Harrelson plays this weird guy who has no concept of personal space etc, who looks up his ex-wife who is a waitress and then they hook up and he's all like, "I wonder what would happen if you had kept the baby" and she's like, "Oh, I did, and I gave it up for adoption" and then they trace their daughter who is now sixteen and they hang out, and you're like okay, sweet, but then the movie suddenly turns into a completely different one because Wilson gets arrested for kidnapping and putting a child in danger (the daughter has lied to her parents to hang out with them), and there are a lot of prison scenes and then redemption on the other side. Weird movie. (46% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I had to watch all these films WITHOUT checking the reviews first, which made me feel a little crippled.)

I'm surprised the next film I watched--The Boss Baby-- had a higher rating than Wilson (but only just at 52%)--because it was pretty schlocky. There's a kid who is the apple of his parents eyes, the centre of his heart and they have a second kid, and suddenly kid one is treated to the kind of isolation previously only experienced by overweight ageing labradors in a house with a new baby. But it turns out this isn't just any baby, it's a special management one, climbing the ranks to Super Boss Baby, and the two join forces and blah di blah, sibling rivalry turns into love. And I KNOW, it's an animated movie, but I love animated movies, they're usually not so pounding you over the head with the point. And this one was by the creators of Shrek so I was surprised.

Finally I saw Table 19,  where a rag tag group of misfits is seated at the worst table at a wedding and they all become friends and because I love the rag tag genre as a whole, I quite liked this one. (Alas, the one I liked the most got the WORST rating: 23% so my mind is a little shaken right now. Should I... NOT be reading reviews?)

***

Just went out and ate some soup. There's a place quite close to where we stay in Berlin which has a rotating list of daily special soups. They even have a punch card so your eleventh soup is free. I don't think we can eat ELEVEN, but K's dad only has three to go on his card, so we've just taken that. Today's lunch: potato and carrot stew with beef. Yum.

***

K's trying to get me to talk to people more. I can't, I'm too embarrassed of my less than schoolgirl German, I know my face is screwing up in odd ways to get the "sh" noises right, and I could switch to English (and I do!) but I'd like to be that person who converses freely with the locals everywhere she goes. So then I feel bad even as I'm speaking in English, and basically, it's just way easier for me to not say anything at all.

***

A lovely wine bar yesterday and meeting a friend I haven't seen in five years. The last time we met, I lived in Bombay and he lived in Singapore, but since then our paths diverged wildly. Berlin suits you, I told him, and it does! He looks happy and fulfilled. On another recommendation, we went to a wine bar in a rapidly gentrifying yummy mummy area. The wine bar was still delightfully dim and smoky and overcrowded, so no Invasion Of The Prams yet, thank goodness. What I liked is that you could get a glass for 4.50 euros or a whole bottle (the waitress gave us a cheap one for 15 euros, but prices went up to 450 on the chalkboard menu behind us), but if you couldn't finish your bottle, you could return it and pay for what you'd drank. Plus free antipasti just to get into the mood.

***

And now in book-related news, there's FINALLY a Kindle edition, for those of you who live abroad and/or prefer ebooks and an interview I did with the Hindustan Times is getting quite a lot of interest!

This week in non-book-related things I wrote: For my friend Nayantara's journal (attached to her amazing label Taramay's website) a list of my favourite female detectives in fiction. ** My Tsundoku books column in Hindu Blink is out again with three books I think you should be reading. ** And rebooting Aunty Feminist to be more "listcle-y" here is a myth-busting column on the single modern Indian woman. **

This week in links which might be kinda old since I haven't spent much (any) time browsing the internet:  I met a Freegan once. It was an interesting evening. ** Why "how to be gorgeous like a French girl" means nothing. ** Margaret Atwood talks to Junot Diaz. Yes please to this interview. ** Finally Shrayana takes all those conversations we've had and turns them into this compelling, cutting article on dating the posh gentry. ** She's baa-aaack. The Urban Poor is now a book. **

Have a great week!
xx
m