The Internet Personified: Some Pig

This week in pop quizzes: Thinking about one of my favourite books, can you guess what it is from the title of this newsletter? Correct guesses get to discuss said book with me back and forth in emails!

I have to warn you in advance that this is a Very Delhi Edition of this newsletter, all my recommendations and things are Delhi-related, so if you don't have much to do with this city, I suggest you just scroll down till the links. I just got my period today (TMI?) so I have No Patience for my own rambling sentences, which is why everything I'm writing is very To The Point today.

This week in appearances: I will be doing a reading from my essay A Cross-Section of My Bad Boyfriends, from the collection Eleven Ways To Love tonight at 7 pm, ATM, Sundar Nagar. With me will be Shrayana Bhattacharya, who wrote this incredible essay about the Rich Delhi Dude and loving them, and sort of tying it all together with economics? It's a great piece--I don't just say that because we're friends. And Dhrubo Jyoti, with his essay on being queer and Dalit. Both of these pieces are far weightier than mine, in fact, I hope to be the "light relief" at this party.

I used to think being a writer was just writing, but, truth be told, it is so much more. It is primarily a marketing job, you are constantly "building your brand" and trying to get people to buy your books. Then there's the performance aspect, which is when you must read aloud in front of a room full of strangers, and also make your reading good enough that people will be interested enough to buy a copy (see: marketing) and also remember, that most writers took to writing because they are not great talkers, or speakers. I have to break myself of a mumbling habit as well as slow down when I'm talking so people can hear what I'm saying. But training yourself to be a better read-alouder actually has some benefits. If I remember to pause and breathe between sentences, I actually have a good time sometimes.

Anyway, the reading is open to all, and is on from 7 till 9.

This week in eating out: Another slightly disappointing new restaurant in Delhi--I should really stick to the tried and tested ones, I think. This time The Grammar Room at Olive. It was... okay. Really full, so they made us sit OUTSIDE IN A HEAT WAVE and didn't even give us water or anything while we waited, and then finally, friend went back in and hovered, till they gave us a table. The food also was sort of average. I asked for a Vietnamese iced latte, which was just cold coffee, not at all like the delicious one I always have at Little Saigon (temporarily RIP.) And the food was hit and miss--I liked the mushroom toast thing, but not the curry bowl. Eh. It might be nice in the winter, and the cocktails look interesting, but it's a fully glass structure, and one of the ACs was suffering. It reminded me a lot of Perch actually, and I like Perch, but I don't need two Perches.

(My face when confronted with a new restaurant that's not new at all)

This week in eating in: Have to mention my favourite Indian/Punjabi food place--RP's. It's in Malviya Nagar and is strictly no frills, but their dhabha meat curry is truly magnificent. I've tried almost everything on their menu, and can recommend it highly if you're within delivery radius. Also their portions are huge, so today's lunch is just leftovers from there.

Also, a shout out for I Say Organic's masala nimbu paani concentrate. It comes in a 250 ml bottle, you add a shot to a glass and dilute with water or soda, and it's also great for when people come over and you're like, "Would you like a nimbu paani?" and there's always nimbu paani. It's very old school, even if you're a 90s bitch.

This week in stuff I wrote: My monthly book recommendation column, which is my Joy and Delight, is up again. Here is a link.

Excerpt: Lately, I’ll admit, I’ve been a bit disenchanted with the Big Indian Literary Novel. They all seemed like so much work, as though the writers were putting together a story by deliberately wanting to make it an uphill climb for the reader and make it harder for you to read a book in one full sitting. But Anuradha Roy’s much-heralded new novel, All The Lives We Never Lived, revived my hope for that genre, for it is so readable while, at the same time, being so lyrical and dense with details, I could not put it down.

This week in stuff I read

Finished my Alison Weir Katherine of Aragon book and have queued up her Anne Boleyn book for my Goa holiday (next month!). In the meanwhile, here's a great piece on Anne Boleyn (who used to be my least favourite Anne, but this article made me rethink that.)

Excerpt: The big question is, of course, whether Anne was the cause or a symptom of Henry’s decision to dump Catherine. Was she a wily enchantress, luring the King away from his beloved Queen by casting dark spells on his dick? Or did she arrive back at court and catch Henry’s attention after he’d already started looking for a new wife? Catherine’s sympathizers preferred the dick-spells theory, with Catholic propagandist Nicholas Sanders writing half a century after Anne’s death that she had six fingers on one hand and a cyst under her chin, both of which were thought to be the markings of a witch. I guess it’s possible that, while in France, Anne learned not just blow-job skills but also black-magic skills. Who even knows what goes on in France? That being said, it’s absolutely no coincidence that Henry’s realization that Catherine would probably never bear him a son happened at roughly the same time as his burgeoning obsession with Anne. While it might be tempting to analyze their eventual marriage as the result of six years of cock-blocking, Henry was probably already looking for a new wife when his eye happened to wander in Anne’s direction. The fact that Henry began asking the Pope about annulling his first marriage less than a year after Anne’s return to court is evidence of this.

I will never stop reading think pieces about Little Women, and this piece theorising Jo March as queer and kinda... hot for her sisters is very fun. (Look away, Alcott purists.) Um, also I watched the BBC mini series of Little Women which was... nice, but I can't believe I'm saying this: almost TOO faithful. Snoozy.

Excerpt: Jo’s favorite spot is a corner of the sofa, where she appropriates as her “especial property” a “repulsive pillow”: “hard, round, covered with prickly horsehair, and furnished with a knobby button at each end.” By the time they are grown, “Laurie knew this pillow well and had cause to regard it with deep aversion, having been unmercifully pummelled with it in former days when romping was allowed, and now frequently debarred by it from taking the seat he most coveted, next to Jo in the sofa corner.” Are you with me so far? Jo’s “especial property” is a “repulsive,” “hard,” “prickly” pillow, which she uses to beat Laurie or to prevent him from getting too close when they’re on the “family sofa.” Wait, did I mention this pillow is called “the sausage”?

What happens on Snapchat once everyone leaves Snapchat? (Also this excerpt I've chosen is SO ME.)

Excerpt: When I made my own humiliatingly verbose and confessional posts, I never imagined the audience to be the few real-life friends who also used the website. I was often embarrassed or even annoyed when these friends referenced those posts in offline conversations. What I loved about LiveJournal, in my early online days, was that it felt like a public space in which I got to talk to no one, a place where I could yell into the void. Putting any part of one’s self online is always a cry for attention to some degree, but sometimes, against all logic, the desire is just as much for the opposite. I want to confess things out loud and be ignored. I want to say the things I can only say if I believe that I am nowhere.

The new technologies that might let us talk to animals.

Excerpt: To my dismay, the app didn't seem to work quite as advertised. Over several trials, my simple message ("If you can understand this, make a sign!") was translated into a seemingly random series of barks, yaps, and, weirdly enough, growls, each different from the last and none earning any sort of discernible response from Scoob. In fact, he never once looked at me or my barking phone; he was too interested in getting Gram to play tug-of-war.

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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