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?

eM's Quick Guide To Panjim

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Other eM's Quick Guides here.

“Holiday? Is like, what? I’m a hyperactive girl, so it may be boring for me to be on the beach doing nothing. I just need to find a place for three weeks and work but sleep in the morning, maybe write a little bit, have a glass of red wine. That’s my perfect holiday.” - French actress Melanie Laurent

  I have a new favourite city and it is Panjim. No jokes--I used to think that the only two cities I'd live in in India were Bombay or Delhi--sorry Bangalore, your water sitch scared me, but it looks like we're all in the same boat, so joke's on me! Ha-ha? (Also the Bangalore traffic, I know we have traffic in Delhi as well, but at least the roads are wider.) Anyhow, no longer! Now my number two choice of city (number one being our default home with our flat and our friends and our resources) is Panjim! So charming, but of course, I'd have to live in the Latin Quarters to feel that charm 24/7, the apartments are just apartments on roads that are just roads in small town India, nothing super charming about them.

But of course, you don't have to MOVE to Panjim to fall in love with it. You could experience it over a weekend like we did, leaving the home comforts of our friends' villa in North Goa to hunt out some City Livin' for the weekend. As a sign up in a coffee shop said, "The beach is boring." (Roxane Gay in this terrific piece sums up what we're all thinking also.)

Here's what we did. I strongly urge you to give Panjim a few days when you're next in Goa, it's almost like being abroad for a second, except with fish thaalis.

The hotel: We stayed in the lovely Latin Quarters (Fontainhas) where there are loads of little guest houses. We found ours on Booking.com, a really old house called Hospedaria Abrigo De Botelho. I chose it primarily for the long narrow wrap-around balcony that the room had on one side, the high ceilings and the ancient old bed. We looked out over tiled rooftops and there was a bonus mama cat with her kittens frolicking on a nearby roof, two of which looked remarkably like our beloved Bruno, so that was excellent.

Since it was pelting down with rain almost every day, I think we were the only guests (except a very noisy family who joined us for breakfast on the first day, playing loud Punjabi music on their mobile phones while the baby squalled. I don't know where they went after, but we missed breakfast for the next two days and didn't run into them again. Thank god. Murder has been committed for less.)

Rain check: It's so nice and quiet in Goa now. The last time I did a full-on monsoon trip, I was in my early twenties, and two girlfriends and I went to the Cavala resort in Baga beach and got SO wasted all the three nights we were there, someone tattled on us back in Bombay and I returned to long faces and lectures from the fellow I was dating then who was a First Class Fuckface (FCF). The trip was fun though, despite two days of hangover after thirteen tequila shots--uff, I will never be that young and that foolish again, which is a blessing.

We had already bought some raincoats--a  yellow button down slicker for me from Oxford stores (very well stocked, a grocery store after my own heart) and K stopped by the side of the road and got himself an orange poncho, which unfortunately also reminds us of the RSS, which is sad, that they've screwed up such a happy colour, but we should try and reclaim it. Just in time too, it rained hard all the days we were in Panjim, puttering about on the scooter.

Coffee/cozy: If you get caught in the rain, make your way to Bombay Coffee Roasters, which is part of the Old Quarters hostel. You can't miss the building, it's got a mural outside made to look like old tiles. They do this hot chocolate which is a massive square of chocolate, about the size of a baby's fist on a stick which you dunk into hot milk. Oh my god, you guys. The sitting, the hot chocolate, the rain, you'll die of coziness.

Another great place to go for coffee (and breakfast if you're up early) is Bodega. It's up a hill and behind a temple, set inside an art institute. It's essentially a courtyard surrounded by three long galleries, and it has coffee, eggs and things AND baked goods. However, do not be fooled by the fancy siren call of Eggs Benedict. I refuse to believe anyone actually loves eggs benny for the sake of eggs benny, you know? You all just think it's a damn posh breakfast or something. And sure, it's pretty, and it's time consuming to make, all that poaching, all that hollandaise, but can we just admit it's sort of... gross? Meh at the best of times. Don't @ me eggs benny lovers! I am ON TO YOU. K ordered it, because we both were slightly hypnotised by it as we always are. Eggssss Benedictttttt. It's like avocado toast, you know? The breakfast you know you should want because it's trendy and fancy but in the end, you should have just stuck to your regular toast and regular eggs.

(That ends my lecture on Eggs Benedict.)

Fish thaalis: On the first day we were there, we wended our way to Ritz Classic. Now, Ritz Classic is the place you tell people in Panjim about and they go, "Ah, Ritz Classic, obviously." It's like when someone comes to Delhi and tells you they've been to Moti Mahal or Pandara Road. You shrug like a Frenchman and go, "But of course."

From what I found out, there are several Ritz Classics, the Classicii as it were, but we went to the one Google Maps sent us to, an air conditioned place with uniformed waiters and knee deep in tables. They had put in seating everywhere, and yet there was a long line (thankfully after we were seated) and sharing tables and people just kept coming, even close to 3 pm, when the restaurant officially closes. It was worth it. The Ritz Classic thaali should be on an Intro To Fish Thaalis course, it is the baseline thaali, it is the thaali that should set expectations, only to shatter your hopes bitterly when you realise what an exception it is. On the plate: prawn curry, TWO pieces of fried fish, each so big, you'll only be able to eat one (and a half if you're lucky), a separate fish curry in a sort of recheado sauce, crabs, mussels, sol kadi, kheer--did I forget anything? Obligatory veg and that dried prawn onion thing. I ate slowly, but I did not eat it all.

On our last day, we went to Corina, another institute, but one that was so dingy it even challenged MY adventurous spirit. It's what the Panjimians call "a taverna," like the Greek (even though Corina is one of the few places that does food), so it smells of old alcoholics, and even had several tables occupied by men drinking busily. It also had the pong of a room not aired out, so while it was clean, it was not exactly appetising, even though the thaali was very good. Go here only if you have the stomach for it and would like feel like one of the locals. There was a mural outside of a man with yellow eyes and that broken vein nose of alcoholics, which I thought was very fitting.

Not a fish thaali: Just down the road from us, a fun little ramen place called Mamarama. We had passed it the day before, in the shadow of a church. We walked in the next day for lunch and heard a loud hallooo. "Guys!" and from behind the counter emerged a Delhi/Bombay/Goa friend who managed the place! Although not biased because of him, Mamarama is super cute with fun food (miso shrimp in butter mmmm) and also breakfast and coffee options if my rant about eggs benny has put you off Bodega (which it shouldn't because it's also lovely. Plus the chef there also consults here so all one umbrella really.)

Draaanks: First: Joseph's. The trendiest little dive bar, and it should be, overrun as it is with people from 99 Springboard (or is it 91? The co-working space is what I mean anyway) and in December, the entirety of the Serendipity Arts Festival descended on it. "A 100 to 200 people," another friend said, shaking his head, "They were spilling out all over the road." As they had to, Joseph's is teeeeny tiny, and that's AFTER they got rid of their taco making tenants next door and added another little room to their establishment. Joseph's is the only dive bar I know in Goa that actually sells Black Jewel and Greater Than gin, and also has Susegad beer on tap and Simba in the fridge, so okay, not very dive bar at all, except the size, the history and the bathroom, which is GENUINE dive for all you tourists, sharing space with a storage room, damp and with a hole in the ground, ominous lightbulb swinging overhead.

Joseph's doesn't do food, so the first night we set out for Clube Nacional. Newly refurbished because a year ago the roof caved in, I remember a couple of years ago, and we were charmed by how old and dingy it was (sensing a pattern here). Now though, it's like a sports bar, everything is newly done but in a bright! loud! way, so even the old uncles drinking (so many old uncles all over Panjim wanting to explain things to us. Mansplaining, Panjim edition) looked a little shell shocked in the light. The food is still really really good though--all these little stuffed pois with things in them, especially the smoked pork, mmmm. Oh, the choriz pao. What a beauty.

One night we went to Pinto's to meet friends and eat and drink as well, and there we had an excellent meal as well, but special shout out for the feijoada, which is this Portuguese dish made with kidney beans and sausage, Goan-ed up with choriz and rajma. Pinto's has a special sausage supplier, so their Goan sausages are light on the vinegar and with a more smoked flavour, and this feijoada is brought in from a nearby home, so it's a special family recipe, I believe. SO GOOD. We also ate it with a different kind of bread than what we'd been having before (I think Clube Nacional also had it). I forget the name, but it had a hard crisp shell and a steamy soft inside, and we were quite greedy about it. Almost like a dinner roll, they served it to us piping hot and you broke the bread in half along the crack on top.

Shopping: Not this time, but when we did our Panjim day trip I went to this little boutique called OMO (recommended by a friend a while ago) and got myself this incredible skirt which I am, of course, being me, saving for the right occasion which is so silly, I should just WEAR it all the time, but I want the first time to be special, you know how it is. Maybe next week when we are in Bangalore? Or maybe the week after that, back in Delhi. I love this skirt, I love its swoopy samurai shape and its high waist, so sexy and how I feel half warrior princess half ballerina. But OMO also has incredible fusion-y type clothes, the kind that I wear often, so if you're into that, definitely go check it out. (there's a Blue Tokai in the back to sweeten your deal.)

OKAY! That's my Panjim list, as always I'd love to hear your feedback, but like, not in a needy way, just in a "oh how nice that someone is reading this thing" way. No links this week, EXCEPT two that I wrote myself.

My mythology column! Last fortnight's theme (and my first) was on Mohini, Vishnu's female avatar. (New one coming out next week.)

Excerpt: How hot was Mohini? So hot that she had an off-again, on-again thing with Shiva in several tales — not quite Ross and Rachel but definitely some Jamie and Claire from Outlander vibes, where Claire's husband left behind in present-day Scotland is Parvati. There are at least three different stories where Shiva either spots her or asks Vishnu as a very special favour to produce her. In most of these stories, he's so overcome that he ejaculates immediately and his semen falls on the ground.

My book recommendation column! This month: privilege and its consequences. Very exciting books.

Excerpt:  I read one-and-a-half sports books for you, dear reader, even though the Organised Sport genre bores me to tears. Early on in Nick Hornby’s football classic Fever Pitch, I was yawning so hard I almost dislocated my jaw. [...] Here is my takeaway: Life is too short and there are too many good books in this world to bother ploughing through something that refuses to hold your interest. Move on and abandon it with, well, abandon.

Newsletter: Bad dates, dive bars

I'm assuming you've all seen the Aziz Ansari story yesterday about what a shitty date he is. I've been rewatching Parks And Recreation on Amazon Prime recently, and he comes up a lot--almost every single episode, and it's hard to watch scenes with him now without thinking back on his behaviour. Worse still was the set of episodes also guest starring Louis CK, because then you look at all these men who are known for being great actors and comics, and winning awards and what not, AND Parks And Recreation is also Amy Poehler's baby, and she's always seemed like an amazing woman to me, so how do you separate in your head the art someone creates with the way they are in real life? I find myself to be a lot more unforgiving of the men, even Aziz, who is this little brown guy winning awards and generally being charming, someone you WANT to root for, and when you learn about him being basically like everyone else, it's a little bit of a betrayal. Whereas with Margaret Atwood--a way more articulate person than Aziz or Louis--her saying that #MeToo was:

The #MeToo moment is a symptom of a broken legal system. All too frequently, women and other sexual-abuse complainants couldn't get a fair hearing through institutions – including corporate structures – so they used a new tool: the internet. Stars fell from the skies. This has been very effective, and has been seen as a massive wake-up call. But what next? The legal system can be fixed, or our society could dispose of it. Institutions, corporations and workplaces can houseclean, or they can expect more stars to fall, and also a lot of asteroids.

Which is kind of true, in one way: #MeToo would not exist if the legal system was perfect. But to dismiss it is unfair, because it is exactly what was needed. Maybe the legal system needs to change and embrace the way we can--each of us--go to the internet and say something each time something or someone has wronged us. I know from personal opinion that when you tweet at a company, they are more likely to fix something than when you just call them and sit for hours with a customer service representative. I've tried both. And the way women are taking down powerful men using their words goes to show that if you hold someone accountable in a public forum, they are far more likely to offer apologies for their actions, rather than just lame explanations. And hopefully, some man somewhere is reading all the testimonies and thinking, "Oh hmm, maybe it's a bad idea to put my hand inside my intern's shirt as she bends over." I think that's a win, anyway.

As for the people turning this into a "humiliation" thing, I'm not sure what their reasoning is, despite reading loads of tweets around the same argument, and this one long Atlantic piece I've linked to above. Is it just because the idea of a "bad date" doesn't gel with the idea of a sexual harasser? I have been on bad dates, and I have been on dates where a person doesn't listen to your body language (OR YOUR WORDS), and I can tell you that despite that, I still said goodbye to them with a semblance of a smile. Teeth gritted, face in an "I want to get out of here" expression, but still a smile, because politeness is drilled into us way more than saying no in a hard situation. So there's that.

This week in further meditations: I am still in Goa--leaving today for Hyderabad for a family wedding and then back to Delhi--and I have fallen into a comfortable routine. I write during the day, stopping for lunch and then a brief rest before writing again, and then go out to join friends. Which means my favourite part about Goa, its dive bars. Yes, you can keep your beach shacks and your fancy restaurants, for me, nothing says Goa more than rolling up to Siolim crossing and jumping into one red-walled bar where a man called Rock knows my drink order and always keeps the same table for us.

If there's one thing Delhi lacks, it is the character filled dive bar. I think it's also because of Delhi's attitude to women, most dive bars there have a faint attitude of seed. Like if you sat there alone too long you would inevitably become newspaper headlines on page three the next day. There are a few that I loved in Delhi but then 4S became too popular (the idea is you can dress how you like to go to a dive bar), Saki bar in Connaught Place is too far (Hotel Alka, I wonder if it's still a thing) and while I like Road Romeo, it doesn't really begin to compare to Rock or Paulo's in Goa in terms of sheer atmosphere.

A true dive has all of the following: a) cheap drinks, b) small, too-close-to-each-other tables, c) a regular clientele so you always run into the same people, d) something to distinguish it from all the other dive bars next to it, so you're justified in picking your favourite. In the case of Rock, I actually like the food, and I like how friendly the owner is, and I like almost sitting in the street as I drink. In the case of Paulo's, it's full of leathery old hippies who sit there, one imagines, from morning to night, and who are almost as much a part of the decor as the old prints of famous musicians on the wall. Paulo's has gotten a little trendy now though, they even gave me a laptop decal the last time I was there, and one Iranian lady will come around selling sandwiches off the back of her scooter. That's Goa for you. I return to Delhi drawing rooms soon enough.

This week in endorsements: Lots of love for Before, And Then After on the interwebs this week, and here is a screenshot from one reader on Twitter who loved it.



Then, to my complete surprise, I see Confessions of a Listmaniac/The Life And Times of Layla the Ordinary is on this list of the 121 best Indian books in English OF ALL TIME. So that's very flattering and nice, especially for one of my young adult books which I always feel get a little lost in the shuffle. Just the sort of motivation I need to finish up my next book. (Here's a link to buy my books in case you're curious now.)

Monday morning link list:

When Nathalia brought two new poems to her father a few days after her mother’s faux pas, he was very impressed, as he told it, but wanted a more expert view. He suggested she send them to an editor at the Brooklyn Daily Times whom he knew vaguely from his short stints at various copy desks before reenlisting when the United States entered the First World War. There was a flurry of attention at the Times, and Nelda started sending out more of Nathalia’s work, some of which was apparently published without further fuss. So a year later, when Edmund Leamy, the poetry editor of the New York Sun, accepted a poem that Nathalia was said to have sent on her own, he had never heard of her. He assumed the author was an adult. After all, in his experience, no “child would ever submit any work from his or her pen without adding the words ‘Aged __ years.’” And “The History of Honey,” rhythmical and ingeniously rhymed, bore no obvious literary mark of immaturity. Nor was there girlish handwriting to supply a clue. When Leamy invited this new contributor named Nathalia Crane to drop by to confer about another poem and have lunch, he mistook her mother for the poet. Flustered to learn that “Miss” Crane was the “little, long-legged, bright-eyed child,” he forgot about the promised meal, as Nathalia noted years later.

- This story about a child-poet genius (including her rather excellent poetry) is a fun and sad read.

 

But online, we inhabit an unrelenting present, where artificially spatialized time appears severed and successive. The present is announced by the externalized whims — notifications, replies, mentions — we swipe at, scroll past, click through to. On Twitter, for example, each tweet’s timestamp — 17 min, 42 min, 3 hr — announces time since. Time, rather than passing, continuously refreshes. The latest is, of course, predicated by news, or by whatever resembles news. The unrelenting present is continuously under threat of assault from the caprice of one man’s sleepless whims. A new sense of dread accompanies checking one’s phone in the morning. It can feel like waking up and tuning in to the apocalypse.

 

- The more I stay off the internet, the more sense life makes to me.
 

Also, remember if something is making you miserable, you do have the power to change it - in work or love or whatever it may be. Have the guts to change. You don’t know how much time you’ve got on this earth so don’t waste it being miserable. I know that is said all the time but it couldn’t be more true.

- Before she died, Holly Butcher wrote a letter to the world.
 

Newsletter: Resolutions, resolutions

Four days into thirty six, and I am filled with good resolutions. None of your humdrum ones either, no, these are little lifestyle changes that, if done properly, should reclaim all the parts of me that are scattered everywhere. The first one is to not check my phone the first thing when I wake up. It's harder than it sounds, so I've taken to putting my phone on charge in the dining room, which means I have to leave the coziness of bed to get it. It means that my mornings belong to me again, the outside world does not interfere until I allow it to, and I wake up slowly, eyelids fluttering, echoes of sleep still everywhere. I lie in bed then, sometimes I think about my dreams: when you look at a phone as soon as you get up, you don't remember your dreams anymore. Sometimes I talk to K, sometimes I think about the day ahead and what I'd like to do. It's become sort of precious, this just-this-house-just-this-bed time. Of course, since social media is a hard habit to break, I felt a bit fidgety this morning, but my brain learned to deal with the fidgets, it produced a train of thought for me to go down, a cat appeared to walk across my chest and meow for her breakfast. If you think of waking up each day as a rebirth, then every morning is the day you are born, you do a little accounting with yourself: how do I feel today? Are all my limbs intact? I feel in a better mood than I have on several mornings, I feel bright and alive.

The other thing I have done, and maybe I shouldn't mention it until it takes is started a reading journal. A "Book of Books" which is an idea I got from this article, earlier this year, but never thought to take up. However, starting to diarise again, no matter how small and specific, has been good for me. Because while the pages of my notebook are filling up with what I'm reading, and what I'd like to read, and books on my to-be-read pile and so on, there's also insights into my state of mind, which I wouldn't have thought of had I not been writing all my bookish thoughts down. Pamela Paul, the author of that article, felt the same way, she loved opening her "Bob" to see how her tastes had changed, how one genre influenced another and so on. I have gotten out of the habit of hand writing anything, but slowly--and with the help of a beautiful pen--I'm hoping to reclaim it.

This week in books and reading: The book that inspired me to begin this in the first place was Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell by Susanna Clark, a book it felt like the whole world had read except for me. I came home from Goa and found a copy waiting for me, part of Bloomsbury's new editions of some of their more popular books. In many ways, the cover of my copy is what drew me in, it was so beautiful, this mysterious woman done in shades of flame orange and burnt sienna, the satisfying heft of it, even the font, never say that new editions are a waste of time, because they can draw in the most unlikely of readers. Having tried to read this book several times in the past, especially when it first came out and everyone was reading it, and having abandoned it, I only picked it up because I wanted something fat and solid and maybe a little fantastic. To my joy, I realised it was the book that Jane Austen would write if she wrote books about magicians. I loved it, despite, or perhaps because of the fusty language, the "shewed" for "showed," the "surprize", the descriptions of history laced with magic, the hundred footnotes at the bottom of the pages. It's been so long since a book has felt like serendipity, look, here I was all along, and here you are, come to discover me. I think that's a sort of falling in love as well, of all the libraries in all the world, and here you are, in mine.

Now I've finished it, however, and my own Bob is teeming with ideas about what I should read next, and since a friend kindly gave me an Amazon gift voucher for my birthday, I bought four books off that and am reading one right now: Still Life by Louise Penny (that I am currently reading) (the first in a series of detective novels about a Canadian inspector called Gamache, and I have heard nothing but good things.) (I don't normally buy crime novels, but it's a genre I enjoy SO MUCH that I'm just going to own to it, guilt-free). I also bought Deep South by Paul Theroux (review), The Penguin Book Of The British Short Story: From PG Wodehouse to Zadie Smith (review) and The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier (review.)

This week in parties: My own birthday party last week was excellent, and here is a photo of me and K dressed as Mario and Princess Peach respectively.

 Our cook made a feast, and everyone drank and ate and talked, and it was all very civilised.

And because it's December in Delhi, literally my favourite time of the year, everyone's so social! And in such a good mood! We have become very Adult about our socialising and have created a shared Google calendar, just so you know we're that couple now. I'm not sure what use it is, because I keep diligently marking down all the parties we've been invited to, and K, just as diligently, asks me "what do we have on Wednesday?" But hey! At least the CONCEPT is grown up.

This week in food and drink: Kofuku for my birthday dinner with just the two of us. Lovely. Perhaps the best Japanese food I've had and the sushi was soooo good. And it's in the weird dystopian Ansal Plaza which makes it even more exciting.

Town Hall with my friend Nayantara, where because of MCD something or the other, they've stopped their terrace seating, which is too bad, because it was a very pretty terrace, however, we sat downstairs, she gave me a gorgeous box of Ruskin Bond inspired hand painted stationary and we drank copious amounts of wine.

Then Indian Accent, the new one at the Lodi, with my friend Shrayana, and we drank MORE wine and ate: panko crusted chillis stuffed with goat cheese, baked fish, bacon kulchas, mushroom kulchas, daulat ki chaat and a surprise birthday cake! Mmmm.

Then my friend Samit's birthday party last night, where he served up this insane haleem and nihari from some place called Purani Dilli? Sadly, I was too full from all the fried fish he waved in front of us for starters to do much justice to the meal, but out of greed, I tasted everything.

It's been a good week.

This week in stuff I wrote: A response to the Cat Person short story in the New Yorker for Scroll. ** I've also started to put a lot more of my archives on my blog, so please look at it also.

Sunday link list
 

 

It’s true that the bulk of these seventeen—seventeen!—stories sound like Tom Hanks movies. Or rather, they are stories that could have been written by an alien whose only exposure to the planet earth is through Tom Hanks movies … This book-shaped object made of cardboard and paper was never going to be a book exactly. It is a gift, something that parents give to their college-bound children as revenge for making themselves difficult to understand … in four hundred pages, there’s hardly even a hint of conflict or a suggestion that American life is anything less than a holiday where everyone rides Schwinn bikes, leaves the immigration office to go bowling, and has a dog named Biscuit.

- Lit Hub's most savage reviews of the year.

And that’s where memory—whether direct, or received from elders or pop culture—can be most subjective. As bad as the present may seem, the people who actually lived in those “simpler times” had less education, less health care, less equality, and less ability for economic and social advancement than today. It’s a little like the fallacy of past-life regression: no one ever thinks they were once a lowly peasant, or died of disease at birth. But we couldn’t have all been princes or kings. Now is still the greatest time to be alive, in other words, for the vast majority of humankind.

-Quartz has a great series on the nostalgia economy

 

You’re exceptionally hairy. A shock of bristly setae covers your body and face to help you keep warm, collect pollen, and even detect movement. Your straw-like tongue stretches far beyond the end of your jaw, but has no taste buds on it. Instead, you “taste” with other, specialized hairs, called sensillae, that you use to sense the chemicals that brush against particular parts of your body.

- What's it like to be a bee?

 

Jen: But the prime minister is the second-worst plot in a movie with 855 plots (number approximate). Can someone tell me what the meeting when PM Grant and President Billy Bob Thornton was *actually* about? Anyone? Anyone at all?
Tanya: It was about creating more tension between Hugh and Natalie. She was "his" in his mind because he had a crush on her and her chocolate biscuits and tea.
Jen: Which is *ridiculous.* Would the prime minister of Great Britain really take a stand against ... whatever he was discussing with the president ... just to declare his secret love for an aide? Please say the answer to this is no, please say the answer to this is no ...
Tanya: Well, um ... huh? I think someone's calling me.

- Tis the season to rewatch Love, Actually and have arguments about it

I'm Harry Potter! The Dark Arts better be worried, oh boy.

- What happens when a bot rewrites Harry Potter? HILARITY, THAT'S WHAT.

At my Delhi school one day, a seven-year-old in my class found out that my middle initial “A” stood for “Abdul.” He declared it was something to be ashamed about—rather viciously for his young age and in the unrelenting manner that children do when they pounce on an embarrassing secret. I realised at that early age that my Muslim surname was unlikely to ever be an asset and was best kept to oneself when it could be helped.

- On being Muslim in India

Engraving can make anything—even the most humble of junk store finds—feel a little more precious. Adding a personal message quickly and easily transforms a tchotchke into something meaningful. For instance, last year I found a WWII-era brass compass for my fiancé. I polished it up, took it to my local jewelry store, and had them etch in a phrase that—I swear to god—came to me in a dream.

- I love this DIY gift guide by Atlas Obscura most of all the gift guides.

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.

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

Newsletter: One week into 2017, here's how I've been

This was my newsletter last week--this week's has just gone out! Subscribe here.

One week into 2017 and it feels like a really long one. Although, evidence suggests that the first week of January always feel long, January itself feels like it's dragging its feet, because I guess November and December are full of parties and entertainment and celebrations and by January, you have to "get on with it" as it were. Never mind, by March, the year will start whizzing past again, unless you or someone you know has their board exams this year, in which case, March will never end. I read this fairy tale about the twelve seasons, where this girl meets all the months and they give her presents and June and July are very dashing, and January is a baby and December is old or vice versa. Here's a version of the story, from Russia, featuring a good stepdaughter, and a rude bio-daughter.

The Russians made it into an animated movie

This week in arts and crafts: Spent the first day of the New Year attempting to paint over the mouldy bits at the bottom of our bedroom wall. I did it "freehand" which means great, glorious slaps of paint, looking a bit messy, but then K intervened with masking tape and showed me how to do lines and things, and now, thanks to our efforts, it looks very nice and professional. I chose gold, which has turned out to be a shade of mustard yellow, not unpleasant, and also an aqua-ish blue to touch up the old Godrej that is also hideous. These are things we do now: K has carpentry and gardening projects, and occasionally, I paint walls.

This week in Reading Challenges: Not only have I pledged to read 150 books this year on Goodreads, I'm also trying to check off Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge.  (PDF link) Some suggestions if you choose to do it as well: "a book about sports," have chosen Joyce Carol Oates's On Boxing, debut novel, either The Last Samurai or Geek Love, a book where a "person of colour goes on a spiritual journey" was a bit tougher, but I picked Deepak Chopra's Muhammad and also Elif The Unseen. Anyway, picking and choosing my way through it, so that not all 150 books I read this year are random and thoughtless.

This week in television: Stayed in bed with a cold (a looming one that hung over my head from December 31st, which I ignored and which finally got me this weekend), and decided to give Netflix one last go. Not so pleased with it as a streaming service, it's both more expensive and has less selection than the other two. Plus three subscriptions is a bit much, so it might be bye-bye Netflix from next month (it already auto-added me this month.) Anyway, so I watched Love, a delightful meet-cute rom-com set in LA, starring a geeky guy and Brita from Community as the cool girl addict. I thought it was a fantastic show, and was very sad to only have ten episodes.

This week in dive bars:  Friends took us to Rock's Pub, and I'm now holding it up as my golden standard of dive bars (besides 4S which I still love). GREAT Goan bar snacks--sausages and potatoes, and roast beef and a prawn pulao that's just lightly steamed rice with little pink prawns buried in it like treasure. And bar pets, some very friendly dogs and a cat that lords over them all, and drinks are cheap, so basically, yes, Rock's Pub is where you'll find me if you're like, "Oh hey, where should we meet for drinks?" You notice I'm not telling you where it is, but intrepid readers will look on Google maps or just like, message me and I'll tell you.

This week in new restaurants:  New-ish Japanese place I can't remember the name of, I think it's called Cliff's Monty? Down the road from Artjuna. No Japanese here compares to anywhere in Delhi or Bombay, unless it's when you're being lazy and ordering Sushiya, so okay, these are all Sushiya-ish standards. But still pretty place and cheaper than Delhi or Bombay, so there's that. Plus really pretty stuff for sale in their attached shop section, including some origami earrings I think I will go back for.

This week in short trips: I went to Bombay for a meeting this week. I had actually ruled out Bombay from the places I'd like to eventually live in (again), late last year. Goa takes care of all my Bombay weather needs, one big city in India is remarkably like another (yeah, yeah, yeah, save it), and I had no desire to cramp myself into a teeny 1BHK after years of living in large spaces. BUT! As I got out of the fancy new airport, zigged across the fancy Sea Link, entered fancy South Bombay and gazed up at all the buildings with my mouth open, I decided that Bombay WOULD be nice to live in again, IF I could snag a top floor in a high rise in South Bombay, preferably with a view of the sea. The 'burbs were my home, and still continue to be where my friends live, but they're too much like crowded versions of South Delhi. However, since these fancy homes cost more per month than what I make in a year, that dream might have to be shelved till I'm a billionaire.

Despite that really long week, I don't have that many updates for you this week. My mum is visiting and staying with us, two other dear friends (hi Nayantara and Anmol!) are also visiting and not staying with us, both are nice things to know though, and we are working, and the sun is shining, so those are all great things. Onwards to the Sunday reading list: My favourite new TinyLetter, I open The Alipore Post before the rest of my email every morning. ** Why you shouldn't be buying your puppies. Come on, guys. This is 2017. Surely you've heard enough arguments by now? ** Two-two new mentions of The Girls Of The Mahabharata 1! One in DailyO, and one in bpb. ** "He then repeatedly slapped and punched her and called her a whore. The petrol pump staff and bystanders did not note down his vehicle number despite her repeated appeals to them to do so. When she later asked them why they did not intervene or help in any way, they casually told her, “We thought he must be your husband." Uff. ** Coming to terms with being single forever. ** Anne Shirley or Emily Starr (OR Pat?) **




Have a great week!
xx
m
 

 

Newsletter: eM's Quick Guide To The Goa Life (part two)

(Part one here.)

(Sent out as my newsletter last month, subscribe here.)

Week two of my Month In Goa life, and I think, I really do think, I can see myself living here. Probably not full time, but for a few months of the year, definitely. And to that end, we've been looking at places we can rent at affordable prices so as to always have a house we can run away to. It's a different sort of tourism--house hunting--and it's been fun looking at all these homes and trying to picture them as Home. Well, Another Home, anyway. I've been imagining something wildly different from our Delhi house, which is, of course, the place of my heart (if only I could collapse it and carry it around with me like a snail), so that each home is distinct from the other. I've been itching for some kind of CHANGE in my life this last year, something new and different, and moving towards becoming the global citizens we want to be (few months in Delhi, few months in Goa, few months abroad, maybe?) feels like the coming together of something that's been simmering at the back of my head for a while. However, all this is purely hypothetical at the moment, so more updates as and when I have them. (We're probably going to share with a friend who lives in Goa full time, so as to halve the rent and also have someone always living in the house, which is important because even a few weeks of neglect makes the old Portuguese houses return to the wild.) (UPDATE: Reader, we rented it.) 

This week in SKILLZ: Have been trying to master the art of riding a scooter. That's how everyone here gets around from old grannies to young college girls, and so I was all, "How hard can it be, really?" It's not, but it's still a little scary. I realise that the fear bit in my brain (the amygdala, an "almond shaped structure in the limbic system") works a little harder than most people's, which is why I'm usually risk averse. However, K is a good teacher, and often sits right behind me so he can take over control if I begin to lose it, and maybe soon, I'll be able to ride that sucker by myself.

This week in food and drink: Mainly drink. A kind Delhi friend (hi Niyati!) introduced me to Black Jewel gin at hers, a while ago, as an Indian gin you could only get in Goa, but which was pretty good. (Not Bombay Sapphire or Tanqueray good, but one step up from Gordon's. Beefeater, perhaps?) It's distilled in Italy, but sold here at a ridiculously low price for good gin (Rs 520!) and after re-drinking it at my friends, who had a little bit left in a bottle, we went in quest for it at several different liquor stores until we finally found it. That's my evening unwind now, local gin with local tonic and another friend taught me to slice a green chilli down the middle to add a little extra sparkle to it. I've ensured everyone I know here has tried it, and so there'll probably be a huge demand for Black Jewel pretty soon. (Delhi friends, I'm bringing back a few bottles in my suitcase for you all to try!)

Also, OMG OMG, it's avocado season! And it's best to eat it now, says the cook, because during season, which is fast descending on us, the prices are ridiculously high for all the foreigners who demand avocado on everything. We always have fresh guac in the fridge. Guacamole and gin and tonic. Mmmmm.

This week in clothing experiments: So I thought I'd be very practical in Goa and live off only seven dresses, rotating them every week. HOWEVER, that was a TERRIBLE idea, and I am now thoroughly bored of all my clothes and never want to see them again. I'm all like, "WHY DID I PICK THESE ONES?" and thinking longingly of my lovely dresses hanging in my cupboard at home and half of the ones I brought don't even FIT properly and basically I'm going to have to buy some tourist tat or die of Closet Boredom. Is that a thing? It should be. I have never felt so unfashionable.

This week in stuff I wrote: On Aunty Feminist, talking about why progressive parents can also be protective * In my relationship column I talk about ghosts of social media and the "so-and-so is now typing" ellipse **

Saturday link list: Home births are on the rise among India's middle class. ** Dalit food and the history of it ** Roald Dahl's granddaughter on "Mold" her beloved grandpa. **

eM's Quick Guide to Bhutan

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

Hello, friends, warriors, fellow earthlings,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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