wool socks
pants
two tshirts
a sweater
a jacket
a shawl
It's so cold I can't sit.
All this talk about the warmest winter in 50 years. What about my poor feet?
I could get used to this life. Writing first thing in the morning. Writing till you fall asleep. Leaving the house only for food and cold little walks. Rainbow socks. Websites that tell you to not despair, the plot is there, somewhere under the crap that you have written.
First day of holidays. I have a WHOLE fortnight off. This morning though I am in withdrawal from the madness of the last two weeks. Year end issue done, Fiction issue done, glorious illustrations and all.
Home and dry, despite Jai nearly killing both of us by driving us into traffic (hands off the steering wheel, waving both his hands describing how he thinks the India Today Sex Survey issue was put together.)
First day of holidays. I have a WHOLE fortnight off. I am not sure what to do. But the first order of the day seems to me the dim sum buffet and vast piles of murder mysteries.
I think I've settled in. When Archangel and MP came home suddenly we had to use our brand-new curtains in lieu of bedsheets. Now if anyone comes home I don't know what we will do because the damn things are up there hanging below what (everyone knew this except me) is called pelmets. Pelmets! Really. That is as bad as lanyard, the thing that you use to hang your cell-phone around your neck. If you do, I won't tell I promise. Hang one, or know one by its middle name, I mean.
I still don't have bookshelves but apart from that, it seems we have settled in.
In other news: Tehelka's Hindi website managed by the hot-boy team of Dubey, Bahuguna and Chaurasia has entered Google's Top 10 ranked Hindi sites. No. 7 to be precise. Even for a mugged-essays-about-Holi-to-pass-exam illiterate like me, the snappy, stylish prose is attractive. Look them up.
To the ladies who Ph.d, you know who you are, I'm promising an incentive of a mani-pedi party in Delhi as soon as the damn things are done. The thought of you and me in Amatra pretending to be with it should urge you past this last, lousy, lovely lap.
The woman who inspired the tamest cartoon strip in the world The Family Circus, Thelma Keane died recently. I enjoyed the strip when I was nine, killing summer holidays in rural parts with the assistance of hard-bound collections of every comic strip in the world. But its pure tameness has inspired utter fury and Tourette's syndrome in people (and not just comics loving people) for decades. It has also inspired a lot of parodies. The Dysfunctional Family Circus is rarely funny but the true charmer is the Nietzsche Family Circus which combines Keane's panels full of round, curly-haired children with random Nietzsche quotes.
NS Harsha, Cosmic Orphans
1. Get mildly drunk afterwards at Thugs so the summer haze is even hazier as you clutch your books on the way home.
2. Buy Ikea catalogues even if you have no interest in light Scandinavian furniture. Because apparently its a national pasttime and do you want to be left out.
3. Buy Vadehra Art Gallery's March 2008 auction catalogue and gawk. Yes its already on the streets and thats the closest some of us will ever get to possessing beauty.
4. Wonder if you married NS Harsha, as L wants you to, would you ever wander around buying second hand books in Daryaganj except as an ironic experience.
5. Wonder why you have no control over your finances but still feel guilty about buying new books.
A cathedral in Maastricht, Netherlands which has been turned into a big, beautiful bookshop.
(more vintage shoe ads here)
It struck me last week that I have not had a girls' night out in five years. Bunch of girls... shopping... coffee shops... pure helium quality giggling? No, not in five years. And today straight out of nowhere, came a perfect specimen. L, the Princess of Bela-Rus and I went shoe-shopping. I bought three pairs and threatened to buy more.
Then we had a four-hour bitch session. All the while, I suspect, L, the Princess and I were each secretly wondering how the hell this had happened. We each are such tight-assed misanthropes in our own Delhi-hating way. It was incredible to lay off the irony and just have fun. I don't think I have felt this light in a year. Perhaps I don't only love gay men after all.
PS. All the time I was writing this post I continue to feel the terror of being girly. I hate Ms. Bradshaw for making this so difficult. But The Princess says that when she knew me at 21 I was super-girly. Really? I don't remember. Some degree of insanity I do remember. I went to college in Pune in the summer in just a orange, very brief cotton slip one sunny afternoon. I was very popular that day. It didn't occur to me for years that I must have been temporarily nuts.
But today, I bought a pair of high heels after years. Yes, yes they are pink. Diana Vreeland was right when she said pink is the navy blue of India. But she was even more right when she said narcissism was wrong and that vanity was wonderful. Yo, go out and buy a pair of pink high heels.
I am definitely receding. Watching music videos is more appealing than anything else these days. I wonder whether when I leave Delhi I will be the girl who has forgotten how to talk to people but has read everything on her unreadable-books list and has discovered an ear not entirely made of tin. This week, glam rock, next week Chinese opera? Will I ever be thankful for my exile in the national capital?
Perhaps not. The day before yesterday, I went to work in what used to be everyday clothes before Delhi. A kneelength skirt and a crumpled black sleeveless T-shirt. I suppose at traffic jams there were men peering. I don't know because I was reading a murder mystery. I say they were probably peering not because of the sterling quality of my legs but because in this village they stare. (Here's something I have never seen in any other city but happens ten times a day in Delhi. You are in a vehicle that's rattling along at 40 km/hour. If you look ahead of you, you are sure to see men driving vehicles at 80 km/hour with their necks twisted around, doing an excellent imitation of the chick in Exorcist. Now, here's the thing. They are not turning around for a second look because they have spotted a sexpot in the taxi. This is them turning around for a first look at what maybe a woman in a vehicle. It may not be a woman. It may turn out to be a hairy middle-aged man who also has his head twisted backwards. But how is one to know unless you look backwards like Lot's wife and endanger the lives of everyone on the road?)
Right. So I get to work and then most people have conversations with my knees. I believe that if you dress differently you must deal with people looking. (I reserve my right to be rude if I catch you at it though) So thus the day trundles along with my wondering as usual how Delhi happened, Tehelka happened... whose life is this...I want a brownie... can I watch the Mika video again at work... then my 40-year-old colleague from admin walks past me and comes to a shuddering stop. "You came from Dwarka in that! In an auto?" When I told her that I had, she clucked in alarm and said, "Make sure you go home early."
I said, "If someone is going to get turned on my fat Mallu legs, let them." Seeing the crazy look in my eyes, she backed off. I like her but she left me irritated.
My colleague from admin pretty much sums up Delhi. Show skin, be a complete fashion victim, if you are driven about, in a ridiculously large car by Bhaiyya, to and from social situations all of which maybe crammed with men and women who judge you on the basis of your appearance. In these cases Bhaiyya is very useful because he picks up things, drops off things, so you never have to get out of the car and be exposed to the eyes of Bhaiyyas who you or your father do not own. (My colleague L was shocked out of her wits last year when another colleague, whom we shall call Baby, arrived at her house to drop off some documents. Baby called L when she had turned the corner of L's street and asked her to come downstairs. L came downstairs and found a large car . The rear window closest to L rolled down and Baby was revealed in her weekend glory. Baby pushed her sunglasses back and smiled at L. Then she handed the papers to her driver who got out of the car, walked around the car to L and handed her the documents. Baby waved at L, put her sunglasses on, rolled her window up and then drove away.) The important thing to remember is that Bhaiyyas whom you don't employ always want to rape you.
For the record, I left work and went to Kailash Colony in an auto, went from there to Sarojini Nagar in an auto, took an auto from there back to GK2 and at night took another auto back to Dwarka. Was any auto-driver interested in anything other than telling me (not my knees) that the complete absence of a meter would not prevent him from chiding me for living so far from civilisation? No.
It seems unlikely that cities will have decent public transportation as long as they are keen on preserving class distinctions. Which is why the growth of the metro system in Delhi astonishes me. What will this city be like in ten years? A decade from now will Baby find herself sitting next to Bhaiyya in the metro at least once a week? I can't imagine it at all. Meanwhile my dabba Bangalore is turning into a city full of fortresses on wheels. Where do I take my knobby knees now? Like James Bond, I am beginning to feel like the World is not Enough
Flaneur is too grand a word for it. I am throughly enjoying my village bumpkin-ness in the Rajdhani.
The metro covers 30 kilometres from my little Russia to Connaught Place in sterilised organised comfort in one hour. It has smart-cards and tokens and security checks and disability access. I think its best feature is the whoosh sound it makes when it leaves each station letting you imagine that you are headed to Mars and not to Rameshnagar.
At Nehru Park, on a green hillock couples make out in stylised poses silhouetted against the sky. MP and I giggled thinking of the happy lemmings huddling on the wet rocks of Bandstand.
The Capital should be jaded by the abbondanza of Things-to-Hear-See-Do.But they are not because luckily they arrive late and leave early. Even for Kishori Amonkar.
MP and I craned our necks each time we saw double strings of pearls and silk kurtas bowing and scraping. Mani Shankar Aiyar, Ambika Soni, Sudhir Dhar. Was that Vinod Mehta? Mark Tully for sure. Don't point, MP admonished. My inner bumpkin grinned.
A man leaped up from the posh-er seats in front of us for a hatchet-faced couple. He had been warming their seats for them so they could make an appearance at the Kishori Amonkar concert but not suffer any musical affrontery from the small fry who preceded her. The dismissed flunkey ran away after several bows and listening to some sharply hissed instructions.
The pudgy silk-sareed MC was afflicted by near-orgasmic professional huskiness as she read from a hilarious script with enough hot air to power a Richard Branson ascent. After she 'facilitated' the flashy sarod player Parthosarothy whom she coyly called Partho she introduced Kishori Amonkar creating small Mexican waves of winces. "Kishoriji was a doyenne, a Saraswati, she dives into vast oceans of musical notes, she is part of a deep spiritual realm, she needs silence, she is a...."
Kishori Amonkar took a good long time to appear. Which was sensible because Parthosarathy's jamming was ringing in our ears for ages after he left. Also Kishori is a true fire-breathing tempermental diva. One who has in the past stopped mid-note and said to a chattering woman in the audience, "Either you leave or I do." Who a week back in Patna walked off the stage 20 minutes into the performance because of a noisy audience.
At Nehru Park she was brisk and polite to the bhaiyyas doing the heavy work on stage but barked at the organisers to switch off all the lights glaring in her face. When listening to her even musical donkeys such as I could see what they mean when they say "Its not in the voice its in the gayaki." MP says if Kishori deigns to sing you go down on bended knees and thank your good fortune. But this is the Capital where 74 year old divas who frowns at organisers and bark at video cameras are not too popular. After a bit the taunting claps began.
And this potential storm in a swarmandal was handled in the most foolhardy, so foolhardy that its almost adorable, manner by the MC who chattered into the night air. Because of course silence would be unbearable. She talks about the importance of silence for artistes for some time longer in the manner of a bunch of men I once saw entering the Bahai temple and exclaiming, "Kitna silent hai."
She goes away briefly and reappears bright as a magpie. "Please wait for a few more minutes as Kishoriji needed to go the bathroom." Rows of bhakts jumped in outrage. The princess pee? Terrible. Terrible. I had images of the diva hearing about this and the MC facing a wall at dawn. MP wondered aloud where they had got this dunderhead. But the Punjabi aunty next to MP chose that minute to tell her husband in admiring tones "Bolti bhi achchi hai. Angrezi bhi achi hai." Ah innocence, I cackled to myself.
In the sabzi mandi last night I reverted to halli-gugu. I was trying to remember what the Hindi word for garlic is. A scrubbed, trimmed, moustachioed flower of Indian manhood appears next to me with an anal retentive gleam in his eye and a green army camouflage (!) shopping bag. I thought I had imagined what happened next but Spellcheck says that he heard it too. The Man-flower tells the skinny, tired hawker, "I am from the SPG. What is the price of the gajar?" I goggled but the vendor ignored him and his increasingly shrill demands.
