The Internet Personified: Got a blank space, baby

ACT Fibrenet is both the best and the worst. (That's my Internet Service Provider, by the way.) The best, because they're high speed and with large, large data limits, so we never finish off all our data by the end of the month, and pretty cheap for all that. The worst because periodically they go down--and not in a sexy way--for a couple of days at a time, and because they are so cheap, there's no real skin in the game for them to fix stuff fast. So here I am, on day two of no internet, with no end in sight, and my hotspot keeps going in and out.

Not a very auspicious way for me to begin our new 500 subscriber life! (Well, 504, but there's always one person who reads the email for the first time since signing up six months ago or whatever, and then decides to unsubscribe.) (I imagine them very sniffy: this is NOT for me. With a monocle and a moustache regardless of gender.) Once we reach 5,000, we reach the limits of TinyLetter, and then we'll move out of here, but that day is still some time in the future.

This week in parties: I threw myself a party to celebrate ten years of my first book You Are Here, just released in a spanking new edition. (Very fancy with a “ten year anniversary” badge on it, and a foreword that I wrote.) I think it's important to mark these milestones. Normally I'd leave it to the publishers, but you know, I think the age of the grand book party is swiftly dying. Most people are making do with cheap alternatives if they must have a reading—a bookstore for example, or a conference room at IIC. This is if they get a launch at all. Oh, sure there are still cocktail parties, but those are sponsored by the bar you have them at, which means your book party has to be attended by at least 80 people for the bar to consider it a success.

I used to entertain a lot. A lot a lot. Big parties for no other reason than that it was a weekend and I had nothing else to do. It all seemed so simple in my twenties, I didn't even give anyone food—just chips and I got those big bottles of Coke and Sprite and soda, for the few people who drank soda. Tonic? Please. (Here is a blog post about a post-Diwali, pre-Halloween party I threw with my friend and then housemate Meghna back in 2006.) A mere twelve years after that post was written, I have changed up how I throw a party a little bit. There's real food. Real booze. Real plates and glasses, so everyone doesn't have to jab a hole through a styrafoam plate trying to cut their meat. (Plus you can stand up and eat if you want, and with the disposable plates I'm always looking for a surface to put it on so it doesn't sag under the weight of the food.) (Real plates and glasses only possible obvs if you have fewer than thirty people, otherwise who has that much crockery, unless you are a Crockery Hoarder Type Person?)

And then parties started to look like work, I'd get all excited about inviting people and as the date grew closer, I started to feel crabby—so much to do, no one is RSVPing, no one will care, whyyyy etc etc. This time though, even though I had my usual party stressors, I decided to enjoy myself. Fuck the Martha Stewart expectations I had of myself. No one expected me to be the Hostess with the Mostess, all homemade centrepieces and vats of food I created myself. They just expected to drink, to eat and to have a good time. Which I think I gave them. (I don't know for sure, because as the clock struck twelve, I was so gloriously, shamelessly drunk that I spent the rest of the party grinning wildly at people and having long slurry conversations. Ahhh.)

One day we will actually be old, friends. And we'll look back at our mid-thirties and we'll think, “Please, that was callow youth.” I worry that we are all too busy anticipating forty to be happy in our thirties. I know, I know, it's round the corner, and I know that life and priorities have changed for a lot of you. But why wish away our relative youth? Why fastforward to the end of this decade already? It's never going to come back, and our forties will probably be a whole new level of ageing and sleep deprivation and feeling aches for weeks in the small of your back and so on and so forth. What we have the energy for now, we won't have the energy for then. Same as when we were in our twenties. Let's just enjoy this, okay?

(It's partly why I drew this comic)

This week in hobbies: I decided to finally get myself up off my ass and sign up for German classes. But then, I thought to myself craftily, why should I have to leave the house? (This is a question I am always asking myself.) Why not get the mountain to come to Mohammed? So I googled, and it turns out there's a new start-up where you connect with tutors across subjects and across Delhi (there's maths, science etc, languages, and hobbies) and so I picked one at random because I liked his bio—full sentences with proper punctuation go a long way in your favour, kids. He came over yesterday, the first lesson in free, by the way, and I had my first ever structured German class.

I've been using language apps so far, and while they can build your vocabulary, it's really after doing an actual class with an actual human being that I realise there's still something to be said for classroom learning. I'm learning German because a) I wanted to learn a language, and living with a native German speaker means I can practise a lot better, b) The next time I go to Germany, maybe I'll be able to get out of my head and actually talk to people? I don't know, a big obstacle is how shy I am of looking like an idiot, whereas a lot of language learning is just looking like an idiot, if you think about it. You have to have confidence to speak your shitty sentences, mixing up your tenses and your genders and your pronunciation, and eventually, it will take, like English did, at some point in my lifetime.

I'm concerned that I'm too old to ever be fluent in a foreign language from scratch again, but if Jhumpa Lahiri can move to Italy, learn Italian and then write a whole book in Italian, I'm sure I can have party conversation with a few people. Wish me luck though! My brain was exhausted and abuzz yesterday—YAY WE'RE LEARNING A NEW THING it said—and so I played Scrabble with K (and won.)

This week in the movies: You know, I did not enjoy Sierra Burgess is a Loser, the To All The Boys I Loved Before-ish movie about a.. well, you remember that old movie, The Truth About Cats and Dogs? This is basically that movie, except Sierra's character is far less likeable than Janeane Garofalo. Plus, I mean, she's very pretty, Sierra. Played by Shannon Purser, who you last saw as Barb in Stranger Things, she's this ethereal looking redhead, with that redhead-specific very milky skin and full features, sort of like Joan in Mad Men, you know? Who they've uglified by putting in the WORST clothes and make up to make her eyelashes look like a ginger rabbit and whiten her mouth so she's just a splotch of white basically, and then have her move from confident teenager to “no one will like me because I'm fat.” OH. MY. GOD. I am SO TIRED of this trope, man. And then, AND THEN, there's this whole catfishing story, where she pretends to be a hot girl in order to date this guy, and her bestie is like, “Um, this is catfishing” and she's like, “Nooo, he likes me for my WORDS.” (That she texts him. And from what the audience is allowed to see, those “words” are basically emojis and pictures of animals.) Why, Netflix? Why. Give me a good rom com, not this sort of lazy one.

This week in stuff I read on the internet:

Plagiarism and Opal Mehta.

Excerpt:

At the same time there isn’t any tradition that she knows of, Viswanathan says, promoting the idea that she is sui generis, without precedent. It is strange how Viswanathan wants to see herself as unique in her Indianness—is this another remnant of the book’s spin cycle, whether by a company or her? For Opal Mehta to live, Indian American literature—indeed, Indian literature in English—must die. In contrast to the hoaxer whose bio is enhanced, with plagiarism the writing gets enhanced to match the extravagant bio. Despite the cliché suggested by the book’s title, life of course is not something you get; you live it. When you’re not wasting it.

Book pick! John Lockwood Kipling's Beast and Man In India is informative, sometimes snarky, full of colonialism and free on Gutenberg. (Sometimes I do a Gutenberg deep dive and come out with all sorts of things.)

Excerpt:

It is not easy to select instances that shall make clear to foreign readers the Hindu reverence for the cow and the place that her protection from death holds as a sacramental ordinance. In Indian history the slaughter of cows by impious and impure persons has often been the beginning of battle, murder, and sudden death. The chronicles of every State are full of retaliations for cow-murder, and in every local riot Hindu vengeance is first wreaked on the Muhammadan beef-butcher.

Poetry pick! For that friend who ghosted you and you never learned why.

Excerpt:

This mysterious silence isn’t kind. It keeps me

up at night, bewildered, at some “stage “of grief.

Would your actual death be easier to bear?

The history behind the names of some famous places in Delhi. (h/t Ameya)

Excerpt:

Five kilometres away, nestled within the leafy R-block residential area in Hauz Khas (which itself was named after a 13th century royal water reservoir—in Urdu, hauz means a water tank, while khas refers to something special), sits Chor Minar, a monument made of rubble masonry that looks like an overturned cup placed on top of a rectangular platform. There is an equally brutal story behind the Chor Minar. Built during Khilji’s reign, 225 holes dot the circular structure like vacant eyes. It stands in the middle of a small, gated lawn, where children play on cool evenings with their plump dachshunds and hula hoops. Centuries ago though, this location would not be a place for children; this was where the decapitated heads of criminals would be suspended from the bamboo poles which used to be inserted in the minaret’s holes. The macabre sight was meant to strike fear in the hearts of thieves and frauds.

Forget the Taj Mahal, my next trip to Agra is going to be for this cat mosque.

Excerpt:

“The cats are not here because Kandhari Begum’s love for them. They are here because this mosque is infested by Jinns. It is said that Jinns can turn themselves into three creators, man, snakes and cats, hence these cats have been bestowed with divine powers. This is the reason why the people who visit the mosque offer milk and meat to these cats to get their wishes fulfilled,” added Mohammad Junaid who also claimed that hundreds of cats died here in the mosque in past couple of years because of some disease after which they started losing hair and developed tingling.

Have a great week!

Xx

m

Where am I? The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.

Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of six books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.

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Forward to your friends if you liked this and to that friend who never RSVPs, preferring to be a person of mystery instead if you didn't.