The Internet Personified: I want a perfect body, I want a perfect soul

Woke up late last night with heavy booms of thunder, and the occasional flash of lightening across the sky. Of course, I just lay in bed trying to figure out what woke me up, but K, being the proactive person he is, actually leaped out of bed to get the litter boxes under a shelter. And that is the essential difference between us: I'm a "let's wait and see if it needs fixing" he's a "let's anticipate the problem so we won't need to fix it." Obviously his method is better and I am a very lazy person. But, by the time I give myself a pep talk to move from where ever I am to a course of action, the bad thing that we were trying to avoid has already happened, sooo yeah.


This week in the writing life: Have spent the week on rewrites, I finally finished the last round of edits on The Girl Who Swum With Fish (Fishes? We're still deciding which rolls off the tongue better) and though I am heartily sick of looking at it already, I've gotta say how much I'm looking forward to its release in June and to hearing what all of you think. The edits being done mean I need to get cracking on my second book for Harper, not in the Mahabharata line, a separate volume entirely but very probably, if I can pull it off, entirely illustrated by self.

In all this is also me screenwriting furiously, trying to make stuff sound funny, and if you've ever tried it, you'll know that writing comedy is HARD, much harder than writing straight up drama. I see now why so much Indian comedy is slapstick. So much easier to write someone slipping on a banana with sound effects than to have quality banter, a set up and a punchline. However, I'm trying, typing out plots with one finger, grim faced in my efforts to get chuckles.

This week in personal development: So, feeding off the work, I've gone into full on introvert mode, only stepping out once this past week to see a bookish friend for dinner (where I borrowed a bunch of her books: thanks Niyati!) I like that I've begun to embrace my Quiet, instead of fighting it and/or feeling like it was the onset of depression like I always have. In the past, especially in my twenties, these weeks of I-don't-want-to-meet-anyone-or-talk-about-it have felt like large black shadows, a period where I feel like I'm at the bottom of a well, that I'll never be cheerful again, that energy is being sucked out of me like a straw. I hesitate to use the word "depression" because I don't think it's quite that, but there is a link between bipolar disorder and creativity, especially for those of us with language skills. (Here's one of the studies about it.) I'm nowhere near as fucked up as Sylvia Plath but I recognise those ups and downs, the high manias, the low wanting-to-hide. But this time, I'm riding out my Hermit phase as something to be enjoyed. I HAVE to write because of deadlines, and the writing is keeping me centered, connected with the world. My black shadow period has transformed into a nesting in a burrow period, which suits me so much better. I'm actually quite cheerful. Maybe I've outgrown whatever those moods were up until now. That would be quite a win for ageing. (Takeaway for friends and family reading this: I'm fine, don't worry!)

This week in reading: You guys, Amazon now has a Used Books section and it is there that I have been spending all my money. I bought a pile of books last week (including a Virago edition of Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle from the '80s, and Patricia Highsmith's Strangers On A Train) all in excellent condition, except slightly battered, and the whole bundle (including some new) for about 1500 or something. The biggest discovery was Miss Read's Fairacre Chronicles about a village schoolmistress in rural England which feeds my Anglophilia unabashedly. Miss Read was just what I needed, and I read the three books in one omnibus and now nothing is as comforting.

Also off the used books section, I found a book I have been looking for since I lost mine, an out of print series of memoirs by MV Hughes about her Victorian childhood, girlhood and during the war. You probably haven't heard of her, I wouldn't have heard of her unless I had found the first part of her memoirs at Daryagunj once years ago. I loved that book so much, and I remember at boarding school, the headmaster had a copy of the entire set, and oh, how I coveted it, but I was too timid to ask to borrow it, and then I left the school and kept my eyes peeled at second hand stores and never saw it again AND lost my book--the first volume--to one of my many moves. All until now when I saw all three being sold online for the princely sum of Rs 500. I bought it immediately, but alas, it will only arrive in April. And I don't quite believe they're actually going to arrive, it might be all a big scam designed for MV Hughes lovers to part with their money, so I'll believe it when I see it. (According to Wikipedia I'm still missing the fourth and last volume of her autobiography, so that'll be a treasure hunt for the future.) I wish there was a way to bring these beloved books back into print, so everyone could enjoy them.

This week in TV: In an effort to inspire and also entertain, I'm doing a marathon rewatch of 30 Rock. I've seen the odd episode here and there, but never in full and never back to back. After some Googling, I realised the genre is "absurdist humour," and the sort of "cringe comedy" that appeals to me the most. Fantastic situations with normal people in the middle going, "WTF?"

Sunday link list: Ten very short poems by female poets. ** The marvellous Ursula Le Guin declining to write a forward for a collection of science fiction. ** Full Circle's Priyanka Malhotra on how marketing books as a "product" is harming us all. ** Gay loneliness in our evolved world. ** NOTHING on the UP election because I am ignoring all the stories that say that Modi will basically be in power for ever and ever and ever. **

Have a great week!
xx
m