What’s so funny, girl?
I’m a little baffled when people say feminists have no sense of humour. I’d be less surprised if someone told me feminists laugh too much. To me feminism is not the reasoned explanation that follows after I’ve stopped laughing. It is the reason I’m laughing. However, I do sympathise with male and female amateurs who...
This month in Elle: Why I Write
(In March, Janice Pariat, Tania James, Supriya Dravid and I were featured in Elle. We each have a short piece about why we write. Here’s mine) 1. My nephew is telling me a story. He is 3 and a bit. Currently the story (Joycean in length and references) is about Monkey. In a few minutes you...
Poolside Display
For five of the six years I’ve lived in Delhi I’ve had a pre-paid phone connection, in the same way a musician friend refused to buy curtains for years. We were going to leave soon, we told ourselves, so why commit? We were perennially leaving, perennially staying, like Nora Ephron’s wallflower at the orgy. This...
Break up, Make up
Shortly after the whole city and half the country shut down twice is perhaps not the best time to urge people to be grateful. But if you are reading this, it’s probable is that you do have tons of reasons for gratitude, certainly three: you are literate, not facing sniper fire and have...
Sari, Wrong Number
Is Delhi a different city if you are in a sari? Auto drivers insist they clean their autos before I step in, policemen give directions with a white-gloved benevolence, elderly people address me in long, idiomatic Hindi sentences that they would not otherwise presume to unleash on me. In other cities I’ve been in, the...
The dumbing down of WikiLeaks
DID ANYONE else get the feeling that the Mayawati- Julian Assange exchange this fortnight sounded like the trailer of a romantic comedy? A trailer for the kind of film that has a raging, warring couple whose defences break down only in the last 20 minutes. The kind with a fiery Beatrice-like heroine who, when asked...
If It is Sweet
THE THIRD World is so useful. Like that shirt you wore for 10 years and are now using to mop the kitchen floor, you can always find one last squeeze. In 2010, American giant Kraft Foods acquired old rival British confectionary Cadbury globally (including the Indian operations) for $19.6 billion. India is one of...
Why Are We Such Angry Birds On Twitter?
IF YOU are addicted to the British tabloids, you will know that between 2002 and 2007, British confessional columnist Liz Jones and husband Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal had a very public courtship, marriage and break-up. Jones’ widely read Sunday column had a blow-by-blow account of everything that happened in her love life. During the marriage, Nirpal...
We’re not like you. We don’t think so much
YOU’VE HEARD people say, “I thought my parents were liberal.” This is the moment when a lover is brought home. The moment when you hear parents using unfamiliar words in your mother tongue. You learn precise invective for people your family considers alien. Words that ascribe meaning to the length of legs, the size of...
Porn At The End Of the Rainbow
THE MOMENT in which your innocent sex tape turns into porn is the moment when English news channels talk with long faces about privacy and the Hindi channels, with less long faces, use variations of the phrase ‘zaleel harkat’. Until that moment, the sex tape1 was something you made one bored afternoon or slightly drunken...
Vamps and margins talk back
WHEN BRITISH journalist Sarah Harris made a documentary on dev-dasis and sex workers in India, who could have guessed the twist in the tale? She hung out with members of Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP), a 5,000-strong collective of men, women and transgender sex workers in Sangli, Maharashtra. Duly a film was made and Harris...
The Jat Mutation
In the late 1990s, when kitsch was still cool and Channel V was the best friend everyone had been waiting for, Udham Singh arrived on his haunches. Props: a buffalo, a lathi and a dangerous, deadpan sense of humour. Udham was a Borat before his time, both playing out the stereotypes of a Haryanvi Jat...
