The Internet Personified: Wouldn't it be nice if we were older
You'll forgive me (again) for being late with this but my excuse is that I got MARRIED, you guys. And now I'm sort of on my honeymoon? I say "sort of" because we are back in our Goa house, and I am back to work, which at this point is researching the second book in my Girls Of The Mahabharata series, meaning a LOT of reading, note taking and cross-referencing. Book two in a series is harder to write than book one because now you have to build on the hints you left behind, and you need to focus on the world building a little more.
But you don't subscribe to this for writing updates (or do you?) and anyway, the only thing worse than listening to someone go on about their recent vacation is listening to a writer describe their "process," despite what the Internet listicles would have you believe. It's a really easy article: Five Writers On Their Writing Day and you click because you are feeling frantic and desperate and why-have-you-failed-me-English-language and you learn nothing at all, because processes are as individual as fingerprints, and you can try to do what one guy did and wake up in the morning, have a shower, get dressed, kiss your wife goodbye and go for a walk around the block, only to come back home and hole yourself up in your room, the idea being that the getting dressed and the kissing goodbye will trigger some sort of "I'm going to the office today" response in your brain. Or you can do what I do, roll out of bed, make my coffee and sit at my desk waiting for something to happen. Sometimes things happen, sometimes things don't, sometimes you have to be a Big Girl and force things to happen because Writer's Block is an affected myth, and the only time you are not blocked is in the middle of a manuscript, so maybe get to that middle in order to reach this state.
Once again I am wittering on and not going into my wedding at all. Side note: why do brides always go "my" wedding? It totally belonged to K as much as it did to me, except maybe because he didn't care as much as I did, I get ownership? But that way if you have a kid, right, and one parent is more parent-y than the other, would you be justified in saying "my" kid? Weddings are waaaay more fun than children anyhow. Especially ours. We decided from the start that we didn't want a Big Fat Indian Wedding, whether it was Andhra or Malayali (or Punjabi, since we live in Delhi.) I knew that I wanted no religious rites and fire rounds, especially once you start to look a little closer at these things and see how patriarchal they are. All this boiled down to a court wedding and a party for our close friends and family. (And my mother wanted to throw a party for HER friends, so we wound up with three parties anyway, including our bachelor/ette dos.)
Getting a court solemnisation though is the least romantic thing in the entire world. After you make one appearance to submit like a KILO of documents, you go back the next time, dressed nicely (because after all, this is the only wedding ceremony you are going to have) plus witnesses, plus various family members who want to check it out and then you wait in this grotty, pan stained government building, lots of people going in and out, maybe TWO comfortable chairs, definitely no fan or air conditioning. You amuse yourselves as best you can (we played word building games and twenty questions) until the magistrate finally appears, you go and sit in front of him and say, "I [insert name here] the bride take [insert name here] the groom as my lawful wedded husband." And that's IT. Except for some more hours of waiting around after for them to process your wedding certificate.
This is the way it goes for the Special Marriages Act anyway. (Here's a nice blog post about the legal bits behind it.) Also the way it goes for actually solemnising your wedding at court. The other way to do it is to get married with a priest or whatever and then come with your wedding photos to court so they can give you a certificate. Unsurprisingly, this is easier than actually doing the ceremony at court. Also unsurprisingly, a lot more people choose that option.
After which, we all had a rest and then in the evening we went to En, in Mehrauli, a lovely Japanese restaurant with a view of the Qutub which was all specially lit up in pink and which was waaaay more Instagrammed than anything else at our wedding. Asian food is basically our Thing, whenever we're in a "what shall we eat today" it's some kind of Asian cuisine that breaks the tie, and sushi is one of my all time favourite foods, plus we had really nice drinks and a really small crowd (for a wedding) so it was a party after my own heart. (K was running around being a good host, so I got to chill and mingle with everyone.)
And then two days later, we set off for Goa, where YAY the house is still standing, even though the garden is totally wild, all our favourite haunts are open and the clothes I left in the Godrej almirah eight months ago survived the monsoon with no casualties.
So a good two weeks, all in all. To the link list, Batman!
Today’s job seekers, meanwhile, are uniquely vulnerable to getting duped. Newspapers once limited the number of public job listings and charged a fee for each one, making it relatively difficult and expensive to run a scam. Now, most people immediately turn to the internet to search for openings. Yet scammers have realized that the accessibility and anonymity of the web offers the perfect vehicle for deception.
- Amazing deep dive into the fake job industry in India.
It had been a strange half-hour, and now for the first time, Arya smiled broadly. “Ma’am,this is all I was looking for. The case will be solved now. This evidence proves there were others in Hemraj’s room that night. In the narco test Raj Kumar told us that he, Krishna, Vijay Mandal and Hemraj had been drinking in Hemraj’s room, while they watched a Nepali TV channel, and when asked what was playing on the channel, he hummed this very line.”
- Fake news and the Arushi murder.
When I walked into the living room, my dad was in his chair, holding a small white box. As my mom explained that he had a dead daughter named Jeanne (pronounced the same as my name) “without an i,” he opened the box and looked away. Inside was a medal Jeanne had received from a church “for being a good person,” my mom said. My dad said nothing. I said nothing. I stared at the medal.
- When your dead half-sister from another life is also your namesake.
I called my editor and confessed that in a moment of weakness I had accepted a free mattress from an online mattress reviewer named Kenny, and that I wanted to write about this bizarre industry and its even more bizarre David-and-Goliath legal battle.
- Going to the mattresses, a long form expose on the mattress blogging industry, which YES, is a thing.
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 (suppport me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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