The Internet Personified: That's FOUR-ESS, not fours

What makes a dive bar a perfect dive bar? In Athens, where we were about five years ago, the dive bars were ideal--the food was Greek tapas, the drinks were cheap, the people loud in a foreign language that made them sort of part of the scenery. When you don't understand the opinions of people around you, it makes everything so much more charming. I think with longing, also, of Rock Pub, in Goa's Siolim. It's been so long since I've been to Goa, since I've been to Rock Pub, run by Rock, with a friendly dog at your feet and an aloof cat sitting at the bar, and you're sitting right on the main road, watching people come back from spending the day at Mandrem or Morjim. In Bangalore, we went to a dive for New Year's Eve last year, before we went off to a house party. It was a pretty famous dive, the name escapes me, but it was in Koramangla, and everyone looked happy and the drinks were cheap and the food was nice--that's all you need really. Narrow walls, good food, cheap drinks, enough of a crowd around you to evoke that Dive Bar Feel.

And then there's 4S. Sometimes, I like to give myself credit for discovering 4S. Where were all you lawyers and journalists when I went there with my college boyfriend, when it was still positioning itself as a cheap family restaurant? We drank cheap drinks and we ate chilli chicken dry and we felt rich. Later, when I joined a writing group at the British Council and someone said, "Where should we go?" and I said, "Oh, I know a place" and I led them right to it, it was still empty, but we soon filled it out. They knew me already, cheap drinks and Defence Colony being right next to our college, plus we had so many friends who lived in Def Col, that we were in and out of 4S constantly. That was when I still drank Old Monk and Coke.

Somewhere in Delhi, someone else is saying the same thing as they lead people to 4S. "You know," they're saying, "No one used to come to this place, then I started bringing people here." What is the appeal of 4S in particular? You could say that it's because everyone comes here, but why does everyone come here? Because, like the snake eating its own tail--everyone comes here. It's in Defence Colony, so it's posh enough that you don't feel scared walking back to your car, but the decor is cheap enough for you to feel like you're slumming it, like you're making some big STATEMENT about how working class you are, but really, you'll go back to your mansions glittering in South Delhi, your split air conditioners, often, your mothers anxious to ask what you'll be eating for lunch tomorrow, your dad placing another bottle of Scotch in the bar, your driver who sits outside in the car, waiting for you.

How do I describe 4S to you if you have never been there? It's a small Chinese restaurant, somehow the cheap drinks in Delhi MUST be accompanied by Indian Chinese food, it's a rule or something. The tables are crowded next to each other, maybe four downstairs and five upstairs. There's a bar in the corner, and a smelly loo upstairs. The decor is all laminated wood with a strong aquarium vibe, that is to say, I cannot say whether or not there is an actual aquarium lit up with blue and green light, but it's the sort of place that SHOULD have an aquarium.

I went to 4S again two weeks ago. That sounds like the beginning of Rebecca: last night I dreamed I went to 4S again. Everything was the same, exactly how I left it two or three years ago. I had heard rumours that the upstairs section was closed, there was even a sign saying it was, but because the ground floor was full, they sent us upstairs anyway, and the only sign that you weren't allowed to, was that they didn't turn on all the lights upstairs. I had a Blender's Pride with water--50% off till 11 pm, and I am too old to drink beyond 11 pm. We were with a vegan, so we got chilli tofu instead of chilli chicken, and she got a cocktail, though I recommended against it. It was strong and hearty, her cocktail, and varied in shade with the next round. She said it was good, so maybe you too can order a cocktail at 4S. Maybe that's the way things are going now, even though the wine selection still just says, "red" and "white." We went outside to smoke a cigarette, the indefatigable mustached guard was still standing there, still saying "Good night!" each time we exited, even though we told him we were going back inside soon. He still produced from his pocket as he had ten years ago, a lighter shaped like a gun, and lit our cigarettes. "Is that lighter still going?" I asked, and he looked almost shocked, "Of course it is," he said, and replaced it carefully in his pocket.

I heard tell of a phenomenon called 4S Twitter. It referred, as far as I know, to a crowd that went to 4S together and then tweeted together. Perhaps it referred to a certain kind of journalist who went to 4S and picked up his news from there. Different, I assume, from Khan Market Twitter, I think both sides sneer at each other. "Too posh for 4S" vs "not networked enough to hang out at Perch." I find a lot of Twitter very cliquey. I find a lot of 4S and Khan Market very cliquey. I find a lot of Delhi very cliquey. Sometimes I am in the cliques and then I can say, expansively, "Oh Delhi is very warm and friendly" as I indicate my own particular friends. Sometimes I am outside the cliques and then I mutter under my breath about snobs and Leaving People Out culture. It does really depend, on a Tuesday night, 4S might be packed to the gills, but if I don't know anyone there I will say, "How sad, no one comes to 4S anymore or what?"

Anyway. Let's go to 4S soon, you and me?


Small announcement: You might not hear from me for a little longer than usual, I am having (minor) surgery on the 8th and might need a little while to get back on my writing feet. However, since Delhi goes to polls on the 12th, I will be dragging myself out of the house and going to vote, please also do the same. (I mean, this is my intention, but the best laid plans etc).

This fortnight in stuff I wrote:

My Mythology for the Millennial column focused on Kaikeyi this fortnight, a fascinating woman:

Kaikeyi herself was raised by her wet nurse, Manthara, who is also a lovely evil figure for writers and makers of TV shows to play up. An old ugly woman, who is beset with jealousy on her darling's behalf. An unverified story goes that the reason Kaikeyi didn't have a mother was because her father could understand birds, see? But the condition for this gift was that if he told anyone what he heard, he would promptly die. So, one day he's going for a walk in the garden with his queen, and he hears two birds telling each other a joke — apparently they were swans, but I don't think swans would be capable of being very funny, they are too beautiful for humour — and this tickles him so much he starts laughing. Now, obviously, his wife is all, “Tell me also!” and he's very insulted by this because how dare she ask him the joke, does she want him to die? So she's packed off, and never heard from again.

This fortnight in stuff I loved on the internet!

I liked this list on "ways to tell you are emotionally mature" so much that I sent it to all my friends.

You learn that part of what maturity involves is making peace with the stubbornly child-like bits of you that will always remain. You cease trying to be a grown up at every occasion. You accept that we all have our regressive moments – and when the inner two year old you rears its head, you greet them generously and give them the attention they need.

Nisha on kanji, the Kerala rice gruel, was a delicious essay even though I don't like kanji.

Kanji for Good Friday lunch is supposed to be an easily cooked and cheap meal to be eaten after fasting the whole morning, after 40 days of privations during Lent but a full two days before the good stuff such as meat and fish is broken out on Easter. In reality, this special occasion kanji fell into the fasting-that-looks-like-feasting category of foods. You know what I mean, right? You have been around those fasts that allow you to only eat dried fruits and delicious nuts the whole day? It always brings to mind the Reader’s Digest era joke about the young Catholic visiting his older brother’s seminary on a holy day, who exclaims at the feast laid out for relatives: if this is poverty, what is chastity?

I am very ghoulish these days because of writing my crime novel, but that's also a great excuse to be ghoulish in general. This article on getting into forensic pathology was fascinating.

Our problem was that these were drowned bodies. They were likely to be damaged, either by aquatic predators or by contact with rocks, bridges, boats or other underwater obstructions. Drowned bodies show all the discolouration and bloating of normal decomposition, plus some much earlier skin changes. Even if retrieved from the water within a few hours, those inevitable washerwoman hands can make fingerprinting difficult, and when there is a complete loss of the skin from the hands – called “degloving” – it can be extremely difficult or almost impossible to take fingerprints from the deeper layers of skin.

We are all going to the dentist too much.

Consider the maxim that everyone should visit the dentist twice a year for cleanings. We hear it so often, and from such a young age, that we’ve internalized it as truth. But this supposed commandment of oral health has no scientific grounding. Scholars have traced its origins to a few potential sources, including a toothpaste advertisement from the 1930s and an illustrated pamphlet from 1849 that follows the travails of a man with a severe toothache. Today, an increasing number of dentists acknowledge that adults with good oral hygiene need to see a dentist only once every 12 to 16 months.

Speaking of Khan Market, I loved this piece on the Khan Chacha wars.

Khan Market, a hearth for the arrivistes and the arrived, has become the punchline it always threatened to dissolve into. And Khan Chacha is no longer the plucky underdog stall among the other tony restaurants in Khan Market selling their tikka roomali rolls to students and celebrities, an odd combination which was somehow their prime audience. The fanciest cricketers, the political bigwigs, the very best and worst of Bollywood – they all showed up unannounced. It’s what made Khan Chacha an institution, ubiquitous to any food-map drawn out in Delhi.

When we went to Barcelona, we stayed in an Airbnb and loved it, but GOD, drunk English tourists at 3 am are the WORST. They never shut up. I kinda get why Barcelona's so pissed.

Some twenty million tourists descend annually on Barcelona, which has a population of just 1.6 million people. (New York City receives three times as many visitors but has more than five times as many residents absorbing the influx.) A lot of factors have contributed to the throngs in Barcelona. Policy decisions in Madrid, and in Catalonia, encouraged a boom, and framed it as an economic-survival strategy, especially after the global financial crisis of 2008. City officials successfully sold Barcelona to the international market as an especially fun European destination, with good weather, pretty beaches, lively night life, and just enough in the way of museums and architecture to provide diversion without requiring an onerous cultural itinerary.

Yes, we're all talking more like children these days.

Examples of kidspeak are everywhere, once you start to look. Take our newfangled use of the word because, as seen in sentences such as I believe in climate change because science and You’re reading this article because procrastination. Even 10 years ago, such constructions would have sounded like a clear grammatical error from someone still learning to speak English; today, they have become so widespread that the American Dialect Society crowned because 2013’s Word of the Year. The rhetorical appeal is easy to see: Stripped of its of, because transforms from a way of elucidating one’s case to a puckish refusal to do so. It helps its speaker hide behind the authority of the x—and avoid all the messiness of actual argument. In many ways, it channels the stubbornness of the little boy who asserts nothing more than “Because!” when he’s asked why he scribbled on the wallpaper with a Sharpie.

Great piece on Kanhaiya Kumar's first election campaign.

One of Kanhaiya’s campaign slogans is Neta nahi, beta (not a politician, but a son). This resonates with his audience for two reasons. First, they see him as one of their own. “You should be able to grab your representative by the collar and make them do your work," he says in meetings through the day. “They have boards saying ‘kutton se savdhan’ (beware of dogs) outside their gates. Will you ever be able to talk to them?" he asks. Access, as a promise, is not new. Only time will tell how open Kanhaiya’s doors will be.

And finally, relating to superheroes as a disabled person.

As a young girl growing up in southwestern Ontario, royalty felt easier to believe in than mutation, mutant though I was. I dreamt often about being a princess. Those were the stories I saw in books and on TV and so I did not think about what it might mean to be a superhero, to tell that kind of story. Princesses were always perfect, and perfect was what I longed to be.

I'd normally say have a great week, but I'm not sure when I'll be sending this next, so UNTIL NEXT TIME, BE GOOD. (And if you can't be good, be interesting.)
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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