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The Life We’ve Delegated

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When the Washing Machine Stopped It was a couple of minutes before I realized that something had happened. I looked around. Everything seemed to be in place. Mani was still at his desk, typing furiously, as if one line refused to behave. The house help was not back from the market. The cooker had yet to whistle to announce it had done its job of cooking. But yes, something was missing. The sound in the background had stopped. I sighed, stopped what I was doing, went into the kitchen, switched off the gas, and went to check. The washing machine showed 5 minutes remaining. it had stopped mid-spin. I lifted the lid to find damp clothes sitting in it, waiting for further instructions. I pressed some buttons. They beeped as if trying to humour me, but with no intention of actually doing anything. I jabbed at the panels, tried again. No response. For a minute I felt oddly betrayed. Not because of the inconvenience, the...
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Buying the Colour, Missing the Story

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Puce, and the Pink That Wasn't   The day temperatures have already bounced to 33°C ( 91.4 °F) - quite shameless for the month of March. That also means  conducting the annual exercise: woollens in, summer clothes out, for  those in the northern parts of the country. As I hung my salwar suits on hangers, that pink suit caught my eye again, the one that had rather trespassed into my wardrobe. I had wanted a pastel, brownish pink. Not just pink, but a very particular pink. The readymades online either had synthetic fibres or designs I did not like, so I decided to get fabric and have it stitched. Two shops later, I still hadn’t found it. In the third shop, I told the shopkeeper what I wanted. He disappeared behind a small door and emerged with half a dozen bolts of fabric in different shades of pink. Then he switched on all the lights. Spreading the cloth across his chest, he said, “Dekhiye didi, yeh igjactly wahi hai.” (See sister, this is exactly that colour.) At ev...
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Suspicious Dates on the Calendar

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Beware the Ides of March "The Death of Julius Caesar"  (or  La Morte di Cesare ), oil on canvas Italian artist Vincenzo Camuccini.  I should clarify at the outset that I am not superstitious. At most, I am sometimes a little “stitious”, if that is even a word. Today, the 14th of March, finds itself neatly sandwiched between two dates with rather dramatic reputations: yesterday was Friday the 13th, and tomorrow is the Ides of March. Curiously enough, the calendar arranged the same ominous sequence last month as well. For most people on this planet, each date is perfectly innocent unless it marks an important development in their own lives or those of their near and dear ones. But these two dates seem to carry a hint of mischief for anyone who has read history or Shakespeare. The Romans, who gave the day its name, used the word Ides simply for the middle of the month. Their 31-day month began with a Kalend, days 2-6 were ‘before the Nones’, day 7 was the Nones....
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When Women’s Day Falls on a Sunday

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Annual Goddess Upgrade- Sunday Edition   Tomorrow is International Woman’s Day (IWD), the one day in 365 when women across the globe are officially promoted to the rank of goddesses. There will be phones pinging right from midnight with IWD messages and by the time she wakes up, she would have received 50 individual & group Whatsapp messages- flowers, breakfast trays, serene mountain houses, motivational messages, GIFs, quotations in glitter fonts. Last year I even Googled what ‘A woman is like a tea bag’ means. I still have the same doubt; after all, a tea bag works only when dipped in hot water.    She’ll scroll through them replying all with the folded hands emoji and sometimes copy-paste, ‘Thank you, same to you,’ while she tiptoes into rooms to check who is awake and expecting their morning tea. Yet tomorrow is a Sunday. And Sundays are supposed to be relaxed days for the family, a day traditionally devoted to rest, family, and slightly more complicated ...
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Break-up Day: The Quiet Counter-Festival

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When endings happen in silence We celebrate success but failure is a private funeral. We have inaugurations, ribbon cuttings, housewarmings, but rarely do we speak of closures or endings. There are no ceremonies for what quietly falls apart, no polite announcements for what no longer works. No wonder then that when a relationship dies, it is seldom acknowledged publicly. Haven’t we seen that couples who once had grand weddings, when they speak of their divorce later, do so with a faint touch of apology, explanation, or sometimes accusation in their tone? As if endings must justify themselves in ways beginnings never have to. Why am I thinking of all this today? Valentine’s Week, that carefully curated emotional calendar of all things rosy, officially ended last Saturday. Each day had a name- Rose Day, Propose Day, Chocolate Day, every gesture assigned its slot, every emotion given a stage, finally culminating in the grand exhibition of it all- Valentine’s Day. And then came Ant...
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Two Years of Trying to Like Beetroot

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My heart does not beet for it! Beet Harvest II (or Harvesting beetroots II), a painting by the Polish artist Leon Wyczółkowski (1852–1936),   National Museum in Warsaw. This tale began with one beetroot tikki (Indian style cutlet). Most of the time, fried, unhealthy foods are tastier than their healthier-cooking-method versions. But this pan-fried, dark magenta, supposedly healthy, roundel on the plate had not even made an effort to be palatable. Sitting on its own high horse, it had presumed I would relish its spiced-up avatar as I chewed it wondering, why! To me it felt like it had already lived a life and should have been ordained moksha . You know how insistent Indian hosts are, “Beetroot is so healthy. You must eat it.” People eat and serve beetroot dressed as salad, emulsified in soup, grated in raita, crushed with spices in chutney, shaking hands with hummus, in a dip, killer-sweet in halwa , or some other reincarnation. They begin with extolling its virtues as if they...
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On Extending the Life of Objects

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The Slow Death of Perfectly Useful Things For years, I have typed fast, chasing thoughts before they escape. Then one afternoon this week, my keyboard decided to follow the Buddhist way of living - slow, intentional, deliberate. I was eating dal and typing at the same time- delusionary multitasking. The universe waited till I lifted the bowl to my mouth- drinking dal straight from it to hasten the process, the bowl perfectly poised over the keyboard, my eyes on the screen. Yuk! is all I could say as the bowl tilted at the wrong angle, crashing on the keyboard, and a sea of hot sabut moong (whole moong beans) splashed all over. The next hour was spent cleaning. When wet and dry rags failed to do the job, I had to call in the armoury. I removed the batteries and focussed on the increasingly delicate act of cleaning something I had never operated on earlier. Cotton swabs, sanitiser, toothpicks, pushing, prying, coaxing. The keys that felt slow, uneven, or did not spring back, needed...
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