Life in Pune

Well, life here is not all that different from life in Chennai in the most basic of senses. The kids here have the same angst, possesive bf/gf issues, transparent bra straps for low cut tops and halters (since - "oh! how can you not wear one?????" Doesnt matter even if you are a size 30 or 32 and it doesnt really matter. Or if you switch to strapless bras - then - "Oh! I hope that is your bra's top line, I mean, you obviously can't be not wearing one," accompanied by a sickly sweet smile), PGs are usually dirty, hardly maintainenced and dilapilated flats/bungalows breathing their last, etc etc
So, all in all, situation for youngsters from outside is pretty much the same as in any cosmopolitan city.

Of course there are differences : While Chennai has a decent immigrant student population, Pune overflows with it. read somewhere that urban Pune population is more than 60% students. Dark, pale and all shades in between, hunky guys and very consciously preening girls strut down streets. This city is what guys/girls from small towns would report to their homies in a gushy tone, 'Dude, so many fucking hot chicks,' or, 'machan....oorellam orae super figurudaa' . You get my point. You can replace this with its hindi or feminine version.

For me, the good difference is that alcohol is cheaper, not that Ive had much time to experiment with it. I guess now that ragging ( what 'they' refer to euphemistically as the informal induction 'process') is finally over, with its attendant assignment writing and hunting for bizzaire accesories and clothes -for the dress code, we will have some time to explore the pubs and clubs in and around Pune.

Went to Papa Johns a coupla days ago. My first time since coming back to India, umm, the cheese really does melt, and in copious amounts. Then we went to a hookah bar. In the spirit of properly trying things, I learnt how to inhale the smoke. There was a nice Paan flavour in one, and the experts in our group also picked an orange mint thingy, which wasnt as good.

Needless to add, the tobacco went straight to my head. Since, Ive had no previous exposure to tobacco, I understand it gets to one quick. Left the place feeling sick and happy. (I've heard thats what tobacco does, but never really understood it.) Now I know better. The happy is the slight intoxication due to the tobacco content in the hookah, and the sick is a kind of vague nausea underneath the happy. I also read somewhere that when an addict goes cold turkey on ciggies, the sick and happy turns to sick and unhappy very quickly. Don't think I'm going to be a big fan of hookahs. The nausea was not a good feeling. Give me alcohol any day!

The language is a problem for those who dont know Marathi, but imagine my plight, not even being able to converse in Hindi! Atleast I can understand the language, thanks to umpteen bollywood movies, and cousins raised in the north. I am trying to learn the hindi script now. Unlike Tamil nadu, road and shop signs do not include the English version. Even buses proudly proclaim their numbers and routes only in Hindi and Marathi. Hence the urgent need to learn Hindi.

More later.

Pondering in Pune

I wrote this a month and a half ago - just getting around to posting it.

We mostly don’t recognise when we have a good thing going. We realise what a good deal we had only in retrospect. But if we had realised that sooner, would we ever have new experiences, and adventures? Where do you draw the line at appreciating what you have and what you need to go in search of?


For example, I recently moved away from my family home to live in a strange new city, Pune, alone. While I was chaffing at the bit to get away, when faced with all the restrictions at my parent’s house, I did know what I would be giving up. Rules, curfews, innumerable calls in case of every ten minutes after the long needle hit the hour, anxiety if daughter is out after the sun goes down that no parent ever manages to completely quell in spite of respectable escorts of both gender accompanying said daughter. It goes on and on. I also knew the perks I’d be giving up. A higher middle class lifestyle, air conditioning in the room, clothes washed by servant or machine, dried, folded and or ironed and left on my beautifully thick mattress, or better, in my closet for me to pull out whenever. Food that easily aces inspection on nutrition, hygiene and taste.

Now, in a strange room, finally with the privacy and freedom that I’m yet to experience, I feel a pang of homesickness. Just for the three plug points for stove, fridge and laptop. Water that does not require waiting for the bucket to fill up, or a pump that needs switching on after trekking in your sleep wear through wet shrubs, weeds , ferns and the muck left behind by last night’s rain and residual croaking frogs that think that a cloudy morning is disguised dusk. (Which you know is a sure sign that snakes are nearby.)

P.S : there are snakes nearby - the girl who has the room next to me got a nasty surprise hissing at her when she entered her room last night and switched on the light.

The question of vampires and their diet

      I have read a bunch of vampire novels in the last two years, the popular ones and the unpopular ones, you know, Bella’s stories, Sookie’s stories, Vampyres being trained in a school that prays to Nyx, tried some of the vampire romances (hmm, hmm, done that too. The Vegas vampire series, for example. urgh!), some Jim Butcher ones that feature different types of vamps, stories of the necromancer who also slays vampires, on the whole, a lot of vampire novels. Now, the big mystique is the hotter than hot male vamps that are amazing as tortured heroes, or cunning chiefs, or just plain bad boys. I get it, and so do a lot of women, and hence the books sell.
    Now, my sis Y, who also reads a lot, and has a read a few vamp books, asked me in one of our many sensible discussions between drooling over the fictitious hero vamps, weather I’d have a relationship with a cow? It’s food for a lot of humans! She said. True, but I’m a vegetarian( which is also an argument in the Bella stories, Edward is vegetarian, so doesn’t eat cows, or human blood), so it doesn’t count, I say.
     But the argument stays. Would anyone sane, kiss, make out or have sex with a cow or a pig or even say a tomato? And would people pay to read about it? Unless of course the person we are talking about is gross and has very very unnatural sexual preferences.
      Even though the logical argument is solid, the stories still continue to enchant new readers–because of the basic truth- that girls love reading about bad boys, and girls love reading about boys struggling with their bad natures even better.

Books, covers and terrace chats.

I signed my first book contract yesterday with Hachette India! yay for me!It could take anywhere between 6-12 months for the book to hit the shelves, and I hear that this is a relatively short period and I should be thankful! :-)

Now, the thing I wanted to talk about was - the cover. I had two people apply to design the cover, even before the manuscript was fully written, one was my sister the art student whom we shall call 'Y' and the other was my newspaper designer friend, the graphic guy. I love both their styles, but there is no way that a newbie writer has final say on cover design. I'm not even sure how much of a say I would have in the matters outside of the words :-)

Now that it is official, I have many more people wanting to do the cover. lol. And graphic guy and Y, gracefully conceding that there isnt much I can say now for this one, are already fighting about who would hypothetically get to design my book covers and the art work for my next work, which has maps and stuff. :-D

I went for an audition yesterday for an advert, to play a young mother, and it was rather funny. I have done this before, but yesterday was the first time I felt I could and should connect to the character, mostly because I realised that most of my friends are mommies or are preggers or are wannabe preggers, and I'm happy aunt to a few tots.It's sad -only twenty five and already some one else is more important in your life than yourself. I think such self sacrifice can wait a few more years, don't you?

My only single best friend -K- (all other bf's are hitched- sadness) and me had a long bitching session yesterday about boys (Its time I started calling them men- but still) : her two men, one she plans to marry and the other she has on stand by :-) and my abortive non - affair non relationship with the writer guy,and about several other exes, one we kind of share(now, this boy was at one point dating another of our friends - But thats a whole other story :-)) on my high high terrace, cool evening wind on our faces, while sister Y and cousin A got high and drunky on the other side of the terrace. The chinese food was quite nice smelling, but they refused to share, meanies.

Anyway- my point is that- there is nothing as cathartic as a bitching session with your best mate- while stressing about a writing project, monies owed by ad companies, waiting on admission lists, and many other things.

Love, life and ...

Love, life and all that jazz.
Love, life and the beer can!
Love, life and dream on...

These are all titles of desi english novels or 'Indian Writing' published in the last couple of years. Why this fixation on naming their books with 'love, life ...' (Duh, that is what most 'serious' Indian authors do, we are adamant about being literary, which is writing about love and life, at least a part of us thinks that is the best kind of writing there is...about life....that is not the issue here, I love Ghosh, Roy, Verma,Bagchi, you name them) when other authors have done just that, that too recently enough to stay in people's memories.

Ideally, you'd want your book's title to stand out! grab attention! etc etc, and if you really really want the title to resemble something familiar to hook the reader browing at the book shop, which might entice them to pick it up - you call it 'Non-twilight', or an 'Unsuitable boy'. But why this fixation on "love, life...and three more words', I just dont understand.

Okay, will tell you why I'm ranting about this - I was at Crossword, Chennai two days ago, minding my own business and looking sadly at all the books I cant really afford to buy, and accidentally was recruited to attend a book launch thing that they were doing in the cafe they have on the upper level.

It was for 'Love, life & all that jazz' by Ahmed Faiyaz. Now, I have attended book launches as a reporter and enjoyed the experiences. But now I saw them from the author's perspective, given that it might be me doing the same thing at some point.(Fingers still crossed about being accepted for publication, signing contracts etc, but gasp, gasp).

And when the event began, the room was quite empty and it was really sad to see the plight of the organiser lady and the young author (relatively young among authors, probably a few years older than me) looked a bit lost as he scanned the empty seats. (I'm already dreading the situation, I'd probably go and hide if it was me- if I didnt have an obligation to myself and the publisher to sell as many copies as I could :-( which was what was making Faiyaz sit and continue. (reluctantly, you can conclude.)

The event began 45 minutes after it was scheduled, with about 10 poeple, but thankfully the seats filled up a little by little, and by the end of the event 3/4ths of the seats were occupied. I could actually see the author get more confident when people started arriving randomly from the floor below after hearing bits of reading he did.

I liked what I heard, and the book was reasonably priced, but I hadnt carried cash in hand that day, so stopped by landmark today to see if I could grab a copy. That was when I figured there were three books with similar names, all published in the last coupla years.

And hence the ranting. Can't we be a little creative? Atleast google titles we like to see if there are matches, and if there were some, whether they were recently published, things like that. I'm still going to read the book, but this is just making me think of why we find titles and want to stick to them, though they might work against us. I mean, if there was Swarchkopf, and Schwarzkopf, some people might buy the wrong one. Okay, that was a bad example, but you get the drift.

So long...

It has been a while since I put finger to keyboard to write a post here, because I have been well, pre-occupied. I have, in the past year and a half, been acting in ads,a television show and anchoring news at a private channel based here in Chennai, the latter of which basically means party propaganda in the guise of news, and most importantly, I have managed to get around to writing my first novel. (This is where there is drumroll in my head:-)

While I actually finished the writing between Sep '08-Dec '08, I had been languishing and feeling sorry for myself at the lack of response from any publisher I wrote to all through last year. (Now, I'd been sending in the manuscript to the editorial offices of the major publishers in India, as instructed in the submission guidelines each of them specify on their websites. Turns out thats not how you go about it(!) and Im not talking about getting it to a publisher through an agent, but that is another story.)

Here goes- you have a m.s that you think can be published (not talking about vanity publishing here- dunno whether it was intentionally named thus - anyway -the term is self explanatory- talking about proper publishing house that publishes your work and pays you money for it.), this is what you do :

You have to find out the name of the editor who deals with the genre of fiction your book falls under in whichever publishing house you are targetting and send your manuscript to him/her. Now, it seems simple enough when it is put that way. Except Publishing companies in India just do not give that kind of information clearly on their websites, and you just send it to the editorial department, it is put into the dreaded 'slush pile' and doesnt see the light o' day. And if at all someone there notices that you took the trouble to print it beautifully on bonded paper, with double spaces, send it and all, you get a even more dreaded 'form' letter, where your name is just inserted into the 'to' space and tell you 'sorry , we cant publish your book. good luck.' and usually dont even mention the name of your m.s.

Let's say you do call a publisher up and ask for info about who is the editor in charge of the genre you are writing for, and some kind soul takes pity on you, and gives you info without slamming down the phone on yet another 'wanna be' writer, you have to verify that info, because folks at publishing companies seem to be a very mobile population. Children and teen books editor at Company A one week is at the same position at a rival company the next.So your addressee not there, THUD, one more m.s hits the ever growing slush pile.

Now, once you find out and play the game, i.e, you manage to identify the editors you want to send it to - then the rejection game probably continues. So, you think maybe an agent is a good idea. Tringggggg. Wrong. They are even more beseiged with m.ss they want to read, but their reading lists are longer than editors.

And on top of all this, normal response time, if at all there is one, is approximately 3-6 months, leaning more towards the higher limit of the range.

So, all the bad things have been said. But there are some good things. You send it to the proper people and then good things could happen. For eg: I got a reply from an editor who told me how I could make the manuscript better, and also just because they said no- I shouldn't lose heart. And another editor responded within three days of my sending the sample chapters of the m.s to her to send the entire thing. Fingers crossed!

(Note : I know I have said more negative things here than positive for people who want to write - but so have a bunch of other writers- in fact there are books on 'why not to be a writer' and I found two such tomes at the BCL, Chennai. Seems writer angst funds a huge industry by itself :-)

I have also been experimenting with cooking along the way. I had a soup fixation for a while, and so roasted red peppers, roasted pumpkin, french onion, wild mushrooms, spinach, zuccinni, carrots and celery, and all types of quash were made into soups, and my family got bored after a while :D

The croissant bug arrived recently, and its all about controlling the melting butter sheets that envelope thin dough sheets and preventing it from frying the bottom of the dough instead of cooking it. And as Merryl Streep's Julie says, 'Is there anything better than butter?'

Forget the cake...eat bread

I finally made a perfect loaf of bread...it's a labour of love. Worked on and fermented for hours, just to yield one normal sized loaf. Baking a cake is 6th standard biology compared to bread making's understanding Grey's Anatomy. Cake batter is simple. You mix everything togther and bake it. Even if you did not do the sugar and butter creaming first, or added the eggs without separating the yellows and the whites, cake still tastes like cake.


Bread dough is so fickle.
The salt should not be directly added to the yeast+warm water mixture. the sugar should. too much flour, and your bread tastes like cardboards' cousin.
You have to knead and knead for ten solid minutes for proper gluten strands development.
Then it has to rise to double its size in the perfect temperature with good, living yeast of the exact right amount.
Then after the first time the dough rises,(it might not rise at all, if any one parameter is screwd up, old yeast, water not warm enough, water too hot that kills yeast,too much yeast it makes dough rise too fast and collapse, etc etc) you got to punch it down and shape it.
If you punch it down a little too much, your bread is flat and tastes a little of the alcohol that couldnt escape. If you dont punch enough, your dough will overrise and collapse.
After punching down and shaping it, it has to rise again.
Then you bake it in the oven at the exact right temparature, a small deviation could cause the crust to form too soon too thick that it cannot be broken through without a hammer.

So, after overcoming all the odds( many imperfect loafs later), yesterday I made the perfect loaf. Properly crusted outside, soft and spongy bread with good air-holes and slicing it was a peice of cake :)
Am thinking that now that I have troubleshooted and found out what I was doing wrong (it was the second rise, it just wouldnt rise, tuns out i was kneading again, when all i should have done was press the dough down softly a couple of times and carefully shaped it without pulling it too much) and perfected bread making, I should turn my attention to making croissants, which are much tougher, because of the many layers it has, that require folding and folding the dough over a rectangle of butter.

Did you know that money is called dough because of bread dough???? din't realise that before :) Too many conotations about bread being directly equalled to money in western idioms....bread and butter, which side bread is buttered on, put bread on the table bla bla....

To crossiants!!!!