My latest book is The One Who Swam With The Fishes.

"A mesmerizing account of the well-known story of Matsyagandha ... and her transformation from fisherman’s daughter to Satyavati, Santanu’s royal consort and the Mother/Progenitor of the Kuru clan." - Hindustan Times

"Themes of fate, morality and power overlay a subtle and essential feminism to make this lyrical book a must-read. If this is Madhavan’s first book in the Girls from the Mahabharata series, there is much to look forward to in the months to come." - Open Magazine

"A gleeful dollop of Blytonian magic ... Reddy Madhavan is also able to tackle some fairly sensitive subjects such as identity, the love of and karmic ties with parents, adoption, the first sexual encounter, loneliness, and my favourite, feminist rage." - Scroll



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18 October 2008

Love and other indoor sports

It is with great sadness that I have to tell you that I'm shutting down comments. This is for several reasons. First, the ones of you who are nice enough to leave lovely encouraging comments are being bypassed because of the number of nasty anon ones. Second, I find myself with limited time to blog these days, let alone reply to comments and third, aforementioned nasty anon comments. My email address still works though and if you have anything burning to tell me, it doesn't take that much longer to shoot off an email. Will this be permanent? I don't know, but for right now, it seems like the right thing to do.

I was going to make this post all about my travels, but then much has happened on the relationship front and I figure that would probably be of more interest to readers of this blog. So, I'm going to tell you the story of JC and me, someone I keep mentioning, but someone you barely know at all.


We met at BB's housewarming party, a good night for many people. I didn't know that many people at the party, to be honest, so I wandered about, making random conversation and planning on where to go next. If you cast your mind back, you'll remember a bungalow in Worli that I went off to, before I left for Lonavala, it was right before that, that I met JC. I was sort of standing in a corner, looking around for my friends and I looked up and caught his eye. "Hello," he said. "Hi," I said. I remember loving the British accent and thinking he was cute and that he did look a lot like Jesus. We had a conversation about what I did, and when I said he was a writer, he didn't immediately bypass this to talk about himself like all the other men at the party, but smiled and told me his favourite writers were Terry Pratchett and Oscar Wilde. Score! "Really?" I said, not believing it completely, so I did a little "what's your favourite Wilde book?" thing and he passed with flying colours. (I've been line-maaroed by all sorts of people, including one boy who sat down next to me and said, "Hi, I'm a misogynist!" Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.)

Then my friends indicated from across the room that it was time for us to leave. "So.. um, bye then," I said. "Could I have your number?" he asked, right on cue. We exchanged numbers quite happily and I went off, only to text him much later that night saying: Hey, it was good to meet you. We should do coffee or something when I get back. (He later said that was such a desperate move on my part to which I say, "Hmph, you weren't going to make the first move, knowing you.") THREE days later (something about a three-day-rule, make-them-want-it thing he has) I get a text from him: "Hiya, good meeting you too. Yes, we should hang out when you get back." For a minute I was all, "Who?" but then it came back to me. "I'll be back Saturday," I said, the next day and this time my reply was a lot more prompt: "Let's do drinks tonight."

When I got back, we decided on Zenzi as a meeting spot, which, by the way? Is a TERRIBLE place for a first date, especially if you live in Bandra. Within moments, everyone was there and our cozy little date turned into a party with three thousand people. We hopped from Zenzi to Vie and then to Rock Bottom where it was oddly, me, him and some cousin of a friend of a friend. (Who bought dinner, but still, it was a little strange.) As we left, I said, awkwardly, "Well, that was a weird first date." "Was it a date?" he asked, and my stomach plummeted. I must have looked as abashed as I felt because he quickly compensated, "I mean, you know, I'm really flattered that you'd think it was a date, but I just thought it was two people having drinks." "Which is a daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!" I wailed, but, "Not necessarily," said JC.

It picked up though, when he asked me back to his flat for a bit and since I wasn't sleepy yet, I said okay and he played his guitar for me and as we both sat on the floor and I watched him, I knew in that moment that I wanted him to be my boyfriend. That we were going to be together. Don't ask me how I knew, perhaps it was just the vodka and the music and the cute boy playing it, perhaps it was just one of those times when fate hits you on the head, but when we kissed, it felt right. Connected. Okay with the world.

I don't know whether he felt the same things, but he must have felt pretty strongly about it, because right after our second date, he told me we should be dating-dating. Boyfriend-girlfriend, to be precise. And I waited for my panic system to set in, which it normally does, I go screaming for the hills at the mention of commitment, but this time, nothing happened except a strange sort of excitement. Oh, it wasn't as easy as that. I tried to set off the panic alarms, I was indecisive and threatened to run, but at the end of it all, I was good with this whole relationship thing.

But even if something feels like it's meant to be, it's still bloody hard work. We've been rocky several times, we've broken up twice, we don't seem to see eye-t0-eye on many things. On the other hand, we know how to be silly, we know how to laugh, we're getting to where we can compromise on stuff and even though we've broken up twice, we've gotten back together in less than a week. I love him and he loves me.

We took off to Manori yesterday, planning to get some quiet us-time in, but wouldn't you know it, the resort we went to was overrun with Mahindra and Mahindra employees playing LOUD team building games at ten in the bloody morning. And there were kids running around screaming. And we were kicked out of our room and sent to a TINY non-airconditioned thing at 9.30 in the morning. So, we checked out of our broom closet, tried our luck at other places but everything was fully booked. Cross and irritable and hot we headed back to Bandra, quarrelling, but then we stopped and spent the rest of our "dirty" weekend at home. Nice.

So, yes, I'm in a relationship once more. Yo-yo-ing. Happy. We're good when we're good.

And *touch wood* six months next month. Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.