The Internet Personified: So I finally went to India's East side

A couple of days ago, I was sitting in Shillong's Dylan's Cafe, listening to Lou Majaw singing old rock songs, interspersed with a few of his own. It was our last night in Shillong, but I had already been to Dylan's once, a few days before, when I had a reading to a grand total of seven or eight people--and halfway through, the group of college girls giggling to each other, left. (The other audience included: K, my father, and the young owner of Dylan's Cafe. Oh, and a young couple, whose dinner I definitely interrupted, but because they were within my eye line, I guess they felt it would be too rude to leave.) Lou Majaw, "India's Bob Dylan" born April 15th 1947, so slightly older than the country we're in, known to all of us young(er) folk because for a time in the 90s, there was only Lou Majaw, he didn't have that much more of an audience than I did--maybe ten people, perhaps twelve, and he was so into his performance, singing and smiling and rocking out like the room was packed full of people chanting his name, that I resolved right then and there, that I would channel him for the next time this happened to me. I've had readings before where it's just two friends and the organisers, or someone from my publishing house. At a lit fest I was at last year, the audience once again had only my dad (and one or two of his friends + organisers). He doesn't even remember this, but I do, because we were going out for lunch afterwards.

I've gotten used to it now though. The back-of-my-throat tears feeling doesn't happen quite so often. I do my little reading, my little q&a and then I fuck off, get a drink, laugh about it later. Besides, by the time I got to Shillong, I was a bit spoiled by the large audiences I had had at the Brahmaputra Lit Fest in Guwahati just that week. Someone had warned me that the audiences in Guwahati were small, but perhaps to get around that, the organisers bussed and flew in large amounts of students from all over the place, even giving them a place to stay and free meals. It meant that not all of them were into lit fests, just the idea of selfie collecting (one set of girls took several group and individual pictures of me, so I said, "Please buy my book after all this!" and they said, "And your name, ma'am?") But it also meant that a lot of students were actually very engaged with the sessions and hung about to listen, and asked actual intelligent questions, which I appreciated. I did a mythology conversation with a writer called Mallar Chatterjee, which was very fun, because both of us were so into the subject we went off on several tangents, It was refreshing to be on a mythology panel where I wasn't a) patronised by my fellow male panelist and b) where we both had a CONVERSATION instead of showboating about how much we knew. Mythology interests so many people that the audience loved it too.

Another fun session was with Jai Arjun Singh, Devapriya Roy and Annie Zaidi on reviewing books as writers ourselves. Because all of us knew each other, we were able to swiftly fall into a fun, but also respectful conversation where everyone's viewpoints were heard. (And people told me afterwards how much they learned, which was great.) I also did a session on feminism and #MeToo, but I was sitting in an awkward position: three sofas on stage, two writers on the left, the moderator in the middle and me on the right, so it was slightly stilted, she had to keep turning back towards me to ask me anything. I do think seat placement is half the battle won with these things.

All this to say that I had a good time in Guwahati. Since it was a government sponsored festival there was no booze at the official festival dinners (buffets in the Novotel basement), but we found a way around it. For me and K (and later, my dad who was also speaking) that was next door to the hotel at a place called Hendrix, cheap booze, Chindian food and often, live music. For other less intrepid festival attendees, it was happy hours at the Novotel (big rip off, often they "forgot" to deduct the happy hour charges).

From Guwahati, we made our way to Shillong, which was lovely but crowded, so we hopped off to a little village on the border of Bangladesh called Shnongpdeng, which has the most beautiful river flowing through it, transparent water, and clear skies. It made up for the VERY BASIC homestay (just a hut on stilts, and an outhouse in the back, plus the blankets, while not dirty, were definitely not clean). In fact, since we were trying to save money, even in Shillong we booked into a cheap place called Ha Sharing, which was THE WORST. It makes you realise how much you value things like hot showers, and no noises next door until 9 or 10 am at the very least. Good thing we spent more time outside Ha Sharing, only returning when absolutely necessary.

(Like an idiot, I didn't take my Aeropress on my travels, assuming that the Shillongese would be a coffee drinking people. Never let me do that again, okay? I spent a LOT of my trip jonesing for a decent cup and being tired and sleepy all day, also because I wasn't getting a proper night's rest, which is why I probably sound grumpier than I should about Shillong, which is not fair, because the city itself is super cute.)

Oh, we also went to the Laitlum canyon, a bit of a drive from Shillong, which was GORGEOUS, as well as checked out the cleanest village in Asia, which was eh, a village, I guess? Kinda boring, like being in a residential colony somewhere, no character, even the food was daal-roti-sabzi. (A nice article in Scroll about how while the village might be clean, the road leading up to it is full of garbage.)

This week in A Cool Thing I Did: In an effort to "diversify my brand" because as long as you are on social media with something to sell, you are a brand. It's true. I don't make the rules, I only follow them like a sheep. Anyway, so my new Brand Diversification is to move all reading and book related stuff off my own personal Instagram (decemberschild: travel, cats, selfies, hanging out with friends etc) to an account called minnareads, which is not an original title, but hopefully one you will remember. Dutifully logging all of the 170 books I have pledged to read this year, plus re-reads, plus like Honest Thoughts? So you'll never see fluff from me. Please follow me.

This week (and last) in stuff I wrote:

New Mythology for the Millennial column! This fortnight: on Sarama, the original Good Dog.

Anyhow, Sarama rose to fame when a gang of robbers called the Panis, stole Indra's cow herd. Indra first sent a bird, Suparna, to get the cows, but the bird is too easily bribed by dahi, and goes back and tells Indra that there are no cows. Indra then kicks the bird in the stomach, which seems like a cruel and unusual punishment, but this causes Suparna to vomit up the curd and be branded a traitor. In goes Sarama, she's fully diplomatic, and convinces the Panis to return the cows as well as securing a deal with Indra that her future children will always be able to have milk whenever they like. (As a cat person, this is sounding very suspicious to me. Cats are the diplomatic milk drinkers, guys!) (Actually, that is a common fallacy. Cats are, in fact, lactose intolerant. Do not feed your cat milk.)

Speaking of animals, I also wrote a love letter to my cats, where I ponder mortality and how death is always near when you love a pet.

You can't love everything, especially when you know they're going to die one day. It's a lonely feeling. I see why people might be tempted to have children; unless things go very wrong, your children will outlive you, and you can die happy, knowing that the creatures you love are safe. How many cats will I bury before I die? There's probably an exact figure written down somewhere where the universe keeps all of our secrets.

And a new book recommendation column!

I too felt as angry as Deshpande did when my books were dismissed as women’s writing or women’s work. I too felt sidelined — actually, I don’t know a single author who doesn’t feel the same way. Deshpande’s memoir is very much a Writer’s Book, which is to say, you’ll definitely love it if you are a writer. Deshpande’s early struggles, trying to get foreign recognition and then wondering why it matters so much, balancing a house and kids and writing at the same time, going to lit fests and being patronised because she was wearing a sari, and the assumptions people make about women in saris.

Oh, plus I gave some tips on how to read a lot for a video for Juggernaut. (It's pretty short, so you can totally watch it in your next break.)

This week in I Know You Guys Mostly Open This Just For The Links So I Collected A Bunch For You:

What are your pet faves? Mine include: having a friend come over and having two bottles of Good Wine that you squirreled away in your cupboard for just such a time as this, the joy of a Perfect Outfit that just works for the occasion you're going to, and (I know, it's terrible) the sound the plastic makes when you take it off a full packet of cigarettes.) This article is about embracing the shit that makes you happy.

As I sat on my balled up coat, negativity coursing through me, I considered my pet faves. When elderly women call me “baby.” When the doors of the train I’m on open as the next train I need pulls up across the platform. When old couples walk down the street holding hands. Paying with exact change. When I am the only person with no one sitting next to me on the Chinatown bus. When I see a shirt I love, there is only one left on the rack, and it is my size. Falling asleep on a road trip right as I leave and waking up right before I arrive. Putting dry socks on dried feet after swimming. When someone I love hugs me and later that night I put on my coat and can smell them for one second. When I forget to turn my early alarm off, wake up, and realize I have two more hours to sleep.

RALLY looking forward to Benjamin Dreyer's book.

This may be a particular peeve of mine and no one else’s, but I note it, because it’s my book: Name-dropping, for no better reason than to show off, under-appreciated novels, obscure foreign films, or cherished indie bands by having one’s characters irrelevantly reading or watching or listening to them is massively sore-thumbish. A novel is not a blog post about Your Favorite Things. If you must do this sort of thing—and, seriously, must you?—contextualize heavily.

Every time someone asks "So why the Mahabharata?" I point them towards my early reading of Amar Chitra Kathas.

ACK defines Indian identity via stories—which naturally appealed to a bookish child like me who constantly escaped into the worlds of Philip Pullman, Garth Nix, and C.S. Lewis. Most histories in the comics feature virtuous Hindus who fight against evil rulers, an encroaching Muslim horde, or arrogant British imperialists. The religious stories are drawn from (usually Hindu) epics, sacred texts, and folktales, and they frequently weave the same gods and heroes among minor vignettes and massive story arcs. Though many ACK issues could stand alone, roughly 30 pages at a time the series constructed a limited and tonally consistent India sanitized through a distinctively Hindu lens.

On performing new motherhood on Instagram.

I longed to be one of these Instagram moms, a woman unphased by the unpleasantries of new motherhood: the incessant dripping milk, the stretch marks, the uncertainty about how to navigate parenthood. There were the ones who acknowledged their leaking tits and distended bellies, but only to express radical body acceptance or a determination to get their “old body” back. There were a fair share of the “my tub needs cleaning and the floors are dirty,” but it was followed quickly by messages of “I don’t care, I love my baby.” Rarely did I find posts of women in the thick of it, trying to find their way in a new, sometimes broken-down body with hormones on full blast. I wondered where their nice fitting clothes and constant bliss came from. How their hair didn’t look like a rats nest, how their feet shrunk back to size so quickly.

Sure, you're recycling. But what happens after you separate your garbage and pat yourself on the back?

It turns out that nearly all packaging is theoretically recyclable, but whether it is or not depends mainly on whether there is a facility to sort it, a plant to process it and a customer to buy the end product. Black plastic for example, generally isn’t recycled because the optical sorting machines can’t “see” it against the black conveyor belts. Plastic milk bottles, on the other hand almost always are because you can bank on the demand: the processed pellets are sold straight back to the milk bottle manufactures to make new ones. I began to understand that the complications of sorting rubbish was only the beginning of the story of the recycling industry.

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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