The Internet Personified: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
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Even though my sense of self worth is not tied up with the way I look, thank goodness, my periods of self loathing can be directly pointed to how I feel about my hair at that moment. We have a complicated relationship. In my early twenties, I straightened it and then straightened it some more. I know what burnt hair smells like, I know the little daggers the ends of your hair form into when you iron it too often. I also know that feeling, that feeling when you emerge from a salon, silky straight, like an ad for shampoo, and you swish your hair when you turn to talk to someone, your curls have magically extended, this is how long your hair is meant to be! This is Real Hair, the Hair you have the Potential For, and the rest of your life was just hiding it until it was able to hang silky straight and with all the "character" and volume beaten out of it, not doing a thing except what you wanted it to. Which was, back then, just limited to hanging there and looking straight and shiny. To this day, even though I know, I know, ironed hair is so 2004, I gaze at women who have poker straight hair because once I belonged among them, a moth pretending to be a butterfly.
Then I broke up with the boy I had been seeing all through college and that's when I had the epiphany that all women have at one point or another--if you cut your hair dramatically after a bad breakup, you transform into a new person. I did--I went from hair that was halfway down my back to hair that was so short I could barely run my fingers through it. The irony of it all is at that length, it was straight, even the bangs down my forehead. I had been a Delhi girl, all straight long tossable hair and holding beers for other people, and now I was a Delhi Journalist, tight little kurtas, cigarettes waved for emphasis, long silver earrings that grazed my shoulders.
So it ebbed and flowed, grew in and stayed long and I hated it or tolerated it, holding it back with a half ponytail, trying to comb through the matted bits that dreadlocked each time my hair was too long to do anything with. Eventually, I settled for it just being tied back and as neat as I could get it, but then I grew bored of it and decided to cut it all off again, but this time, I didn't want it too short and I didn't want it too long, and I went to a salon in Bombay and I got... curls. For the first time in my adult life, my hair stood up proudly around my face, I had big hair and it looked good? "That's what I've been telling you all this while," K said, rolling his eyes as I preened in his apartment. "Why didn't you always have this hairstyle?" asked another friend, and I didn't know the answer. Why? Because I didn't know this hairstyle existed! (K also says, every time I tell him I think that girl is hot or whatever: "Let me guess, she has straight hair and she's tall.")
Recently I cut all my hair off again, it had been growing out, and it was nice while it lasted until it grew too much for itself and it was back to the straw-like texture, the Hagrid hair as it were, and I hated it and hated it, until I remembered The Haircut. (I go to Martina Wu here in Delhi who is consistently good with my hair which means she is good with curls in general.)
So off it came again this weekend. I'm reminded of a Tamil teacher I used to have back in school, who used to get so irritated with my hair: "Your hair is like a hut! Why don't you put pins in it?" (Sidebar: either I was just the sort of child who naturally irritated teachers or I had the bad fortune to always encounter adults who really really didn't like kids or their jobs. I can think of at least five teachers I had who fit that description.) I wonder what she'd say now to see the exact same haircut celebrated, not pinned, as hut-like as it can get twenty two years later. Hah, I say to her. HAH.
This week in purchases: You may know by now that I really don't like people. Or noises. Or noisy people. Let me clarify: I like to live in a city because I like the idea that there are people and noises, and I like the energy, but I don't like interacting with either. I guess that makes me like every single upper middle class Indian there is, out of touch, and trying to ignore the reality of what is just outside my window, but I do the same thing no matter where I am in the world. If it's not the people I actually volunteer to talk to, i.e, the people I have social plans with, I'd rather do all my communication via writing, without having to deal with humans. Anyway, so after my very long plane ride to Trivandrum last week, and my upcoming very long trip to Cochin tomorrow, I decided I needed to shut people out even more, and I got myself a pair of wireless sound cancelling headphones. It is AMAZING. I listen to music or podcasts, even when I'm in a cab, and the world takes on that dreamy movie-like quality when you can't hear anything, but it all looks like a music video. I'm getting better at talking to people and taking in the world, but mostly, I think I prefer to read about life, or watch it happen and think thoughts to myself rather than interact with the world directly. I think it's one of the things that makes me a novelist.
This week in television: Thinking about Carrie Bradshaw's "secret single behaviour" while K has been away this past week. Mine is not that shocking--but since I am an anxious person, I need to drug myself to go to sleep and in this case drugs = too much television, propped up on his side of the bed. I rewatched all of Parks and Recreation which is always great fun, but then just yesterday stumbled upon a show on Netflix called Doc Martin that has everything I want from show: grumpy city doctor moves to a small town, hilarity ensues, quirky small town folk etc. Plus it's British, so it's dark as well, and reminds me a little bit about a show called Everwood that I loved so much. And it has about eight or nine seasons, so should keep you occupied for a while!
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T-t-t-tuesday Link List!
Sure, it came out in a pre-literature festival era, but I’m yet to read another piece of fiction that deals with being a foreigner in India with more ease. Mostly, you wind up feeling slightly embarrassed for the protagonist, with every sentence you are reminded that they are White and Outsiders and Alone, but with Freudenberger’s characters — mostly women, mostly in South East Asia and India — you are so emphatic that you could be one of them, even though you have never lived anywhere further away than 1,500 km from where you were born.
- My monthly book recommendation column is up at BLInk!
In December, I converted my one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco into a “smart home.” I connected as many of my appliances and belongings as I could to the internet: an Amazon Echo, my lights, my coffee maker, my baby monitor, my kid’s toys, my vacuum, my TV, my toothbrush, a photo frame, a sex toy, and even my bed. “Our bed?” asked my husband, aghast. “What can it tell us?”
“Our breathing rate, heart rate, how often we toss and turn, and then it will give us a sleep report each morning,” I explained.
“Sounds creepy,” he said, as he plopped down on that bed, not bothered enough to relax instead on our non-internet-connected couch. I soon discovered that the only thing worse than getting a bad night’s sleep is to subsequently get a report from my bed telling me I got a low score and “missed my sleep goal.” Thanks, smart bed, but I know that already. I feel like shit.
- What it's like to have a smart home
For some American men, the cultural role models are obvious – the athlete, the soldier, the action hero, the real estate tycoon. For others, maybe especially those of us who attended liberal arts colleges and live in trendy neighborhoods and eke out precarious creative class existences, a different set of archetypes is available. The men of critically acclaimed romantic comedies and sitcoms are our most popular fictional guides for how to behave around women. All of them owe a debt to Allen.Maybe you are this second kind of man, or you’re friends with him, or you’ve dated him. As an archetype, he is funny and self-deprecating, intelligent and witty, neurotic and vulnerable, gentle and non-threatening, awkward and sexually frank. If he’s often rude or irritating or pretentious, he’s also genuinely interested in and engaged with women. Sometimes, the interest is motivated by kindness, empathy, and respect. Other times, it’s a mask for something more sinister.
- Unlearning Woody Allen
The whole story is basically that Facebook gets so much traffic that they started convincing publishers to post things on Facebook. For a long time, that was fine. People posted things on Facebook, then you would click those links and go to their websites. But then, gradually, Facebook started exerting more and more control of what was being seen, to the point that they, not our website, essentially became the main publishers of everyone’s content. Today, there’s no reason to go to a comedy website that has a video if that video is just right on Facebook. And that would be fine if Facebook compensated those companies for the ad revenue that was generated from those videos, but because Facebook does not pay publishers, there quickly became no money in making high-quality content for the internet.
- Why we should all switch back to blogs (or the personal newsletter!)
After the session, I’m surrounded by well-wishers, including Jeyamohan, a Tamil author of immense and prolific literary output. He clarifies the question, adding, “They say writing in English is like eating sambar in a five-star hotel.” Everyone laughs. I am mostly dumbstruck. He continues. “English is called a drawing-room language while our languages come from the kitchen, the backyard, the toilet.” I suppose he is bringing up a point about “authenticity”, but all I can say is if the discussion begins with these accusations I am being denied the one language with which I negotiate the world. He laughs, saying he has nothing against people writing in English, and the tension eases.
- Janice's column this month reminded me so much of so many conversations I've had including this author who was on a panel with me last week. There doesn't have to be a fight between regional language and English language authors, but I feel there's always a certain amount of tension.
Parallel Rupi conversation, which may or may not have happened at the same party because Rupi is nothing if not omnipresent. Lady asks poets Jeet Thayil and Melizarani T Selva what they think about Rupi. Jeet, the senior senator, swiftly passes the baton. Meliza could write a thesis about her complicated feelings about Rupi. Jeet tells Lady, “You know, Rupi Kaur outsells Homer?” Lady wants to talk about how Rupi made it because she’s an Instagram poet. Jeet says, “You know she’s sold like millions of copies of books…. She outsells Homer.” Lady to Jeet: “Why do you keep bringing up this Homer guy? Just tell him to get on Instagram.”
- And speaking of lit fests, loved Tishani Doshi's Jaipur diary in Open.
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 (suppport me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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