The Internet Personified: It's all coming back to me now
I only have disjointed observations for you this week
Hi my fellow World Wearies,
The weird thing about life post-lockdown, when we are allowed to do whatever we like by the government, is the desire to do whatever we like. Rationally, I know that the virus hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s still exploding, India’s numbers are rising daily. Irrationally, I feel like a weight has been lifted off our shoulders. After all, traffic is now starting to hum on the main road behind us. Restaurants are opening up soon. People are going to be able to pray and go to malls and take a cab somewhere, all these things that were life pre-corona, that we are tentatively exploring in a life with corona. I have been reading about the virus since day 1, almost, so I know the risks it poses to myself and others that I love, and yet, and yet.
Don’t worry, though, I know I’m being stupid here, so I’m staying in as much as possible, but slight outward excursions have begun. I’m seeing my mother, for one thing, after we were separated for two months. I have made small, tentative plans to see a few close friends, if we keep our distance from each other and are extra careful. I know it’s hard. The biggest impact it has had on our personal small lives is that we don’t have any help and we won’t for a few months at least, because our maid depends on the metro, and even if it does open up again, all those people in a compartment together just gives me the creeps thinking about it, so I’ve told her to take some (paid) time off while we figure it out.
Which is in the grand scheme of things, not even an impact, just a bit of a bump while I figure out how to stay on top of housekeeping. I won’t be taking cabs for a while, so I need to re-learn how to drive with confidence. (I lost my driving mojo some time ago, and because cabs were always readily available, I never bothered to get back in the zone.) But I miss my friends, I miss comfortable silences—so hard to replicate on a video call! I’m wondering how I can see some of them without both of us potentially falling sick. Google tells me we should be sitting outdoors, but that’s impossible in Delhi weather right now. I don’t have an answer for you. I’ve made some plans, but let’s see, I guess. I don’t want to have to send you an update to this newsletter going, “Hey, guess what I have?” but on the other hand, all of us are probably going to get it, and I do leave my house once or twice a week for grocery shopping and so on, so you know, life must go on in this strange truncated way also.
After I wrote this, a friend called to ask if we wanted to play badminton in the park, and while an Organised Sporting Activity is not what I would put on the top of my list of Fun Times, it was a fun time. Fresh air outside of our balcony and we managed to chat while hitting a shuttlecock back and forth, thus ensuring social distancing. Perfect. Later, it rained as we walked home.
We have had lovely weather though, and a perfect double rainbow emerged in the sky the other day so I took a picture to remind me of that day.
That’s the park behind our house, and that’s the neighbourhood behind the park, and that’s one of the few planes back in the sky, and when I increased contrast to share it on my social media, I saw that I had inadvertently captured TWO rainbows, one that I could see, and the other, a faint photo negative, above it. It was a nice day, everyone on Instagram was sharing their own rainbow photos, we take our pleasures where we can get them, I guess.
Trigger warning: this section contains references to child sex abuse in literature and television.
For some reason, I fell down a rabbithole of pedophiles this past week. No, wait, that sounds wrong, but it is the most succinct way of summing it up. First I read My Dark Vanessa which is a new novel about a young girl who has an affair with her teacher for many years. The book tells her story as she’s looking back on her life as an adult, as the #MeToo movement has just exploded, and she’s considering what’s happened with this teacher. I liked it, but also, the woman stayed annoyingly passive through the whole thing, telling but not showing, if you know what I mean. You saw that she had trauma, and you saw how her trauma was linked to being groomed by this pedophile, and yet, she—and by extension us, the reader—stayed at a distance from the whole thing. Still, it’s a worthy book, because then you start to think about your own language around older men and extremely young women, and at what age you consider a woman old enough to give consent, not just legally, but also ethically.
My Dark Vanessa referenced Lolita a lot, so after I was done, I pulled out my copy of Lolita and re-read it, for the first time in my thirties I think. If anyone can make you make excuses for a pedophile, it is Nabokov. His Humbert Humbert is so matter-of-fact about his love, in fact, my copy even had this as a back blurb.
That’s Vanity Fair saying “the only convincing love story of our century.” The. Only. Convincing. Love. Story. Of. Our. Century. Sit with that for a second. I know a lot of people who believe Lolita was a love story, this kidnapping of a twelve-year-old, taking her on a road trip and systematically raping her while at the same time breaking her spirit, this is what is called “the only convincing LOVE STORY of our CENTURY.” Wow. And it’s not like Nabokov shies away from the rape and the breaking of the spirit, oh no. Early on in the book, after he has raped her three times the night before, “vigorously” to use his own words, she becomes blank and sullen and asks for a coin, so she can call her mother, and he finally tells her her mother is dead, and later, she crawls, sobbing, into his bed. “Because,” Humbert tells us, “She had nowhere else to go.” He threatens her with grim orphan homes, gives her money for sexual favours and then takes it away from her hiding places, in one bit, he allows her to go to a school dance so she will give him a hand job under her school desk, while he watches the neck of one of her classmates. It’s all there, in graphic detail, not describing the sex in sensual or erotic ways, that’s not Nabokov’s way, but there are plenty of hints and non-hints seeding the entire book that indicate what we are supposed to assume about Humbert, even if we are drawn in by his charm and manners. It’s a difficult book to read, but as a masterclass in writing, it is an essential one.
I don’t know why people jump to defend pedophiles so much. Recently, I happened to mention on my Twitter that I was of the opinion Michael Jackson was a pedophile because of this (extremely difficult to watch) documentary called Leaving Neverland where several men testified as to how MJ had raped and molested them as boys. I have never had so much vitriol directed at me as from that tweet. They came from all over the world and they were relentless. One person even created a fake Goodreads account so she could rate all my books with one star. I finally had to mute the thread, the endless mentions and abuse got too much. But that’s how far people will go. I was reminded of that when I watched some of the Jeffrey Epstein documentary on Netflix, just after re-reading Lolita. It was also a difficult watch and I didn’t make it all the way through, but I came away with the same feeling. If you are rich (Epstein) or you are famous (MJ, Woody Allen, R Kelly) people will bend over backwards to make excuses for you, and in some cases, like in Epstein’s, even do your dirty work for you by procuring children for you to have sex with. If you describe child sex abuse prettily enough, people will say that your novel is the “only convincing” love story of all time. It led to an interesting discussion between me and K about capitalism in general, so it’s a thought-provoking docu-series if you have the stomach for it.
What I’ve been reading on the www:
Germany’s “self proclaimed” king is a hoot.
Curtis Sittenfeld (!) interviewed by Judy Blume (!!!) about her new book which I am itching to get my hands on.
I don’t know how many of you are old enough to remember Small Wonder but this is a fun article about how a small show became a hit.
How did Zee News become a COVID hotspot?
How did Paris Hilton get left behind as an influencer celebrity?
Since I’ve been rewatching Community, here’s a great profile about their breakout star, Donald Glover (aka Troy).
It’s not just you, everyone is being kind of a dick right now.
The winners of some photography contest, I can’t remember which, but these photos are gorg.
I just watched this crazy show called The Act which is based on this article which I won’t spoil for you, but it is an INSANE story.
Pandemics are not about you, stop using it as a test of friendship.
I got pulled in to this story about a famous YouTuber “rehoming” her adopted child as though he was a puppy. Apparently it is quite common in the US and also in India.
What the express train back home was like for migrant workers from the North East. (Bad.)
Cleanse your palate with this deep dive into the rights war between two fan fiction writers of… werewolf erotica?
The first year of Modi 2.0 has ended. We’re not even pretending about “development” any more.
Dispatches from the front line from a doctor in the UK.
And finally, people are hanging out, they’re just not sharing on Instagram.
This week’s featured gifs are from the Black Lives Matter movement, which is also a good way to shine a light on injustices within our own communities here in India.
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 seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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