The Internet Personified: Started out okay but then I began to think about death edition

How I envy my friend in Sydney right now, where it is just about getting cold. Maybe we should move to a hill station, pleasant climates through the summer and a bitterly cold winter, spent sitting by the fire, not moving very much. In the self-written obituary, I did for a series on Mayank Austen Soofi's blog a few years ago, I did predict that we moved from Delhi in 2024, almost upon us and divided our time between Bangkok and the Himalayan foothills, so who knows, maybe some writing I tossed off on a whim will turn out to be really truly true. (Going through the series now as I link to it, I realise I am the one of the few people who chose to live to be a hundred years old, everyone else killed themselves off in their thirties. But life is so interesting, I don't want to leave before I see everything.) (Morbidly, I'm now thinking if I die this year, that'll be the line people keep quoting and weeping over.) (At least, I ASSUME people will weep, but like, not in a fake way.)

Why is it that people are so obsessed with death, and it happens to every single thing that breathes, or grows, and we still don't talk about it a lot? Or even if we do talk about it, we're accused of being morbid? We all have to die, even though the other day, I caught myself saying "IF I die." Maybe that's it, maybe we all secretly believe we're immortal. The dream is to die peacefully, without pain, not in a scary violent way, and if you're very lucky, you'll also die after you've done everything you want to do: wrote that book, had that kid, lived in your dream city, finally got a dog. But not everyone can be lucky, that's why they call it LUCK, after all, so I guess the second best thing is to die being everything you want to be. I am still figuring this part out, but let me know if you have a secret lifehack. The Bhutanese encourage you to think about death every day, that is apparently the secret to their happiness. Repeat after me: I am going to die. And even scarier: everyone I love is going to die. And now go live your life with that knowledge.

This week in Speaking Of Things To Do Before You Die part one: Over the weekend, a friend asked us to go to the Not In My Name protest at Jantar Mantar for the victims of Kathua and Unnao. Now I'm not entirely sure how I feel about protests, it seems to be another way of paying lip service, just like changing your Facebook profile picture for a day to all black or tweeting some outraged words. I was still not convinced while I was writing that last sentence, so I looked it up, and here's an excerpt from this piece that quotes from a Harvard study.

A clever analysis by economists from Harvard University and Stockholm University finds that protests do in fact have a major influence on politics, just not in the way you might think. Their research shows that protest does not work because big crowds send a signal to policy-makers—rather, it’s because protests get people politically activated.

This is definitely true. Unlike just putting up my own outraged tweets, and slowly but surely developing fatigue with the movement and then forgetting all about it (my usual cycle), attending this, my very first protest, had two very distinct benefits:

1) It made me feel less alone and apathetic and depressed about the state of our nation.
2) It made me feel like I was doing something.

Now, the turn-out was pretty small, I'd say not more than 200 people, mostly young, urban, educated etc. But by adding our bodies to the crowd, we were adding two more. As K said, "It's like voting, you as an individual don't make that much difference, but as a whole, it sends a message." Then, of course, the conversation turned to Hitler as these conversations often do, and whether he would even have existed if the Germans had protested. (They did try, poor things, but were unable to unite the different forms of opposition and then later, they were just too scared to do it openly. Another lesson: protest now before you are too scared to do it openly.)

I don't think one protest is going to make much difference, but it might snowball and by protest number 50, maybe we'll get somewhere. It is a democratic right though--dissent--and it was interesting exercising it.

This week in Little Visitors: We had an alien in our flat for about ten days, when Bruno brought in a young squirrel. We separated him as quickly as we could (I made eek! eek! noises and so did the squirrel) but then the chap ran away and took up residence in the kitchen. And there he stayed for some time, so quiet, so well mannered, like the best house guest, he left no trace of himself, and we thought he had left. But no! Squirrel Amarchand appeared again, washing his face very coolly and calmly, strolling along the kitchen floor, and K fell wildly in love with him and left him seeds and water, and Bruno and Squishy took up Squirrel Watch 2018 with new vigour.

Then he got out of the kitchen again, and I heard Bruno thundering through the house, and this time, he took up residence in my study, but we still couldn't find him and there it lay for another two days, and then Bruno caught him again and long story short, K managed to trap him in our laundry basket. (I stood on hand to redirect with two mosquito racquets and more eek-eeking.) And we took him down to the park to release him and for a moment, he stayed in the box, but then I took a step back and his whiskers quivered and he was off like a shot. We were both really tempted to keep him but Google said no.

This week in Speaking Of Things To Do Before You Die part two: A family dinner, in honour of a visiting aunt, and we all went out to Bukhara at the ITC Sheraton, where so many presidents and things stay that they have a massive slide show in the lobby that we all stood gazing at open mouthed for a very long time. Anyway, you might have already been to Bukhara if you grew up in Delhi like I did, but it was my first time. Packed on an early Tuesday night. The food was all sorts of amazing, and they give you this bib to wear so you don't get chutney all over your nice clothes. They ONLY have kebabs and roti and that famous daal is the only thing with gravy, which was interesting for an Indian restaurant. I guess it's what Barbeque Nation was trying to imitate, but badly.

Cheaper than Bukhara but also really yummy rolls are available at Al Quereshi's in Alaknanda where I was yesterday. I got a seekh kebab roll and it was a very good one.

An abbreviated Thursday link list because there wasn't much on the internet this week!

What can you as a writer do in these troubled times?

Excerpt: Everyone in wartime is not a soldier, nor can everyone in times such as these be a lawyer or activist. Masons, plumbers, teachers, doctors are still needed; there are still houses to be built, children to be taught, leaking taps to be fixed. For a long time I told myself my usefulness lay in doing my own work. Is this true or is it merely a way of legitimising my desire to somehow carry on living only as I know how to? I don’t have the answer.

The writing is kinda academic, but this is an interesting article on being Dalit and using online dating apps

Excerpt: What the sexually liberated savarna woman does is accepted as a credible political response, but when done by the Dalit woman it is perceived as shameful. Casual sex, being with married men and having open relationships, which are touted as sexually liberating and indicative of a sex positive culture does not hold the same meaning for Dalit women. Particularly in the case of men having savarna women as partners, their interest for Dalit women outside of the legitimate relationship is simply an urban/modern version of upper caste men sexually exploiting disadvantaged Dalit women that work in their fields/houses. And in most cases, the savarna partner is not threatened by this arrangement; she continues to be the legitimate entity in the equation while the Dalit woman is relegated the task of satisfying her man’s unconventional sexual desires.

On living in an era of flaking on plans and how that's not good

Excerpt: “If someone cancels on us, it still affects the brain like a social pain or psychological threat to our safety,” says Swart. “Something called ‘loss aversion’ means we are twice as affected by a perceived loss than an equivalent gain, so being bailed on feels much worse when we are on the receiving end than it does when we do it to someone else. It is important to use empathy to imagine how you would feel and respond if someone bailed on you before you decide to do it to them.”

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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