Mental Excursions

Why Indian Men Don’t Knit   Tom Daley, retired Olympics champion, knitting at the pool Photo: Vogue Indian men can do many extraordinary things- build industries, run companies, launch missiles, cook elaborate curries, and deliver long lectures on self-reliance. Yet I have never seen an Indian man knit. Hand them two knitting needles and a ball of wool, and suddenly masculinity needs protecting. Men who carry guns without blinking, are unnerved by needles less than a foot long. Really? Not that I am an accomplished knitter or make heirlooms or Instagrammable cardigans, but knitting is my base activity in winter. Any time I am not officially occupied by cooking, household chores, or sundry existential issues, I pick up the needles. Growing up in Chandigarh, I learnt that knitting needles were an extension of woman’s hands. Women began knitting in the humidity of September, so that the family had fresh outfits for the season. A family function meant teamwork, one woman knitted t...

After the sirens fade. Monday morning, I peered again. The pigeon’s eggs on my ledge had hatched, two new chicks could be seen, glued to the safety of the wall next to the nest. For the last two weeks, my once-in-the-forenoon routine had been to open the window, peek, say ‘hello’ to mama pigeon as she stared at me with her round, pink-rimmed eyes, and click the window shut, lest she should think of me as a threat. I looked at the phone screen, checking the notifications. One message from a niece’s husband who rarely speaks in the family chat group. Since the news broke, my mind has been walking through buildings my child once knew by heart. I was not thinking of events. I was thinking of fear, how quickly it enters a place we once called safe, and how it refuses to leave a parent’s body. We are a family where many of our children have called Brown University home. Then I saw a message from my son. “The weekend was very tough.’ ‘ Log bahut dukhi hain (People are very sad)...

Why my doorbell rings more than my phone! The doorbell rang. Still chewing the spicy matthi , I put down my cup of tea, got up, and opened the door. A young man in a navy-blue suit stood there, another behind him carrying a tall, colourful cake box and a small bag which clearly contained paper plates and spoons. “ Cake delivery hai ,” the nattily dressed one announced.   “ Humne to cake khareeda ya mangaya nahin . (We did not buy or order a cake),” I said, covering my now chilli-burnt mouth. He helpfully added the name of the bakery, hoping it would jog my memory, “ Aapke yahan se cake order hua tha . (A cake had been ordered from your place).” Forever ready to help, I said, “ Humne cake to nahin mangaya, par aap dena chahte hain to de dijiye ! (We did not order a cake but if you wish to give it, please give it.)” For a split-second, the criminal in me tried to sprout, I even considered keeping the cake. His smile uncertain, he paused for a second, then asked, “D… yaha...

Meta-declutter: Too Much About Too Much My name is Anupama, and I am a decluttering addict. I began with a noble intention of decluttering my needlework cupboard stuffed with supplies and projects including incomplete or abandoned ones for which, somewhere along the way, I had lost the mojo. A simple, domestic act of sanity and an effort to make my son’s life easier. But somewhere between ‘simply your life’, and ‘outer order leads to inner calm’, I fell into a rabbit hole lined with experts, sub-experts, and sub-sub-experts. I didn’t reduce my clutter. I simply upgraded it, into meta-clutter. Suddenly my problem was not things; it was theories, methods, philosophies, newsletters, and gurus i.e. clutter about decluttering. Decluttering (and overcoming consumerism), has been not just a task for me, but has become a lifestyle, or rather, a full-time occupation. For years, I had gathered information on it and made complete word files, folders, sub-folders, flow charts and what no...

The world can’t resist Black Friday! Cartoon: Ladysmith News Much like Valentine's Day and Mother’s Day, two festivals India has adopted with suspicious enthusiasm, Black Friday too has quietly found a foothold in India. For the uninitiated, it was yesterday, the last Friday of November, the day after Thanksgiving Thursday in the United States. Because most global retail giants are headquartered in the USA, their shopping rituals inevitably drift into our markets. Thus begins their unofficial kick-off to a nearly month-long Christmas shopping marathon.    The name might puzzle you, black usually denotes sorrow, loss, and calamity, but here companies claim they spend the whole year ‘in the red’ and only on this miraculous Friday do they crawl ‘into the black’ with profits. No wonder they announce discounts so heavy they should come with a doctor’s note. According to some historians, the first Black Friday in the US traces back to the financial crisis in 1869 when two financ...

Signboards: Genius, Goofs, and Giggles Signboards are meant to be looked at and it is presumed, obeyed. Sometimes, they feel like the work of a creative genius and stay in our minds for long; other times, they lodge there for all the hilariously wrong reasons. And somehow, these wrong ones always turn out to be more eye-catching. After a few months of collecting such gems, here is a little gallery for you to enjoy, and occasionally shake your head and wonder where was the designer’s mind. First some great ones: The mind is a quiet parachute: closed, it rests; open, it rides the winds of imagination and discovery. Seen in a school in Vancouver, Canada. Evergreen Lake in Colorado,USA When your water is this clear, you don’t just tell people, you show them. Such a gentle way to say: pause, prepare, then proceed. Just loved this sign!   Order this way, adventure that way —  depends on today’s personality. Designers can be artists or eggheads. Above: Split it, read it, pond...