To the conventional eye, Vanessa Paradis is a pretty enough woman- with wild hair in the French fashion, and an emaciated frame. But every time I see her gap toothed smile, a small unkind and insecure part of me jumps back, startled. But I can think of no better example of true physical beauty. Sorry Aishwarya.

As somebody who has been at constant (CONSTANT) war with her body for as long as I can remember, I don't think it is very easy for Paradis to put herself out there, on a public stage suspecting that people could be making fun of you for not conforming to what they think Beautiful should look like. Of course, it helps that Paradis is rail thin and that she is married to Johnny Depp. A modeling contract with Chanel and thriving career in French Bubblegum Pop doesn't hurt either.



I think Paradis has been on my mind because I have been having some very one sided but fat-phobic conversations with a friend over the last 3 or 4 weeks. At the moment, I am an average sized woman and nobody on the street would look twice if I walked around the street eating an icecream cone. But there used to be a time when they would have. So I am not sure how to say that I don't just NOT agree with my friend, but that I am intensely uncomfortable with body prejudice.INTENSELY UNCOMFORTABLE, in case that wasn't clear the first time around.

The time of the year has something to do with ( it has been sweater and hot chocolate weather lately) but I spent a lot of my Sunday at the bookstore I am secretly in love with. And front and center, on their bestsellers table were 4 books by authors from the Subcontinent. Yes, FOUR out of ten. Aravind Adiga, Preeta Samarason, Jhumpa Lahiri and Indra Sinha.

All decent writers, and thank god - not one of them seemed to mention the smell of adulterated saffron or the swish of a cheap sari or the smell of burnt curry, except maybe for the Samarason woman.This is a good thing because writers should always write about what they know but not just. This is not such a good thing because if you are a wannabe writer, now what are the odds of -?

The book I really want to read is Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger which appears to walk on the seedy side of the Great Indian Dream, much like Sharma's An Obedient Father. The pervert in me totally adored and enjoyed reading that book.

What does it say about my current mental health that my favorite new tv show is Dexter, the series about your friendly neighborhood serial killer, that my favorite new author is Kate Atkinson, a magical realist who writes about gruesome family tragedies and my favourite new Mallu movie is Calcutta News."

In any case, there are things (oh so many things) that I have to tell you - but these are the few that are swirling around in my head at the moment:

- I went to Disneyworld and the Florida Keys on a long two week vacation and narrowly escaped being eaten by an alligator. True Story. At the end of the day, Disneyworld kicked Key West's ass, but only by a smidgen. Sorry, Blue Heaven. Also, Mickey is a lot shorter than I expected.

- Weightwatchers. Yes, that's what I said. Sadly enough for my skinny jeans, it has indeed come to that.

- I have joined a new bookclub. We actually talk about books here, unlike the other one where we talked about husbands.

- I used to support the smart, cool and sexy-intelligent HC but then she turned all shady and Karl Rove on me half way through her campaign. Now I am an Obama girl, but only on the inside.

- Song of the moment: Daydreamin' (Featuring Jill Scott) by Lupa Fiasco.



In addition:

- I have embraced my Mallu heritage totally and without the remotest sense of post modern irony: Vishu Kanni, Thiruvathira Nombu, Kerala Association and all. I can barely remember how I got here but it has turned out to be not as terrible as I feared.

- Speaking of irony, however: I hate hate hate doing laundry but I now work for a company that services laundry machines.

- I have found that after two years and many more to go, I still love my husband but not all the time and not always well.

- Life is full of woe and foreboding and chaos and uncooked dinners and dirty pillowcases but Spring is sort of here.

- I am househunting for a new home and for a new blog.

Is it really the 14th of January already???? What? Where? How? My outrage at this totally unreasonable pace of time aside, I tried to write a short story today. One of my goals this year is to sneak a piece or two into Agni

After spending ten minutes staring at my notebook, I came up with " I always imagine India in color." Which is fine if I were planning to apply for an copy writer's position with Tourism India, but perhaps not so awesome for somebody with literary airs, like you know who.

However this silence that has ambushed my pen and left it for dead does not bother me as much as baby-watching at the mall does.

I haven't made a fool of myself with a toddler yet, but I am at that point in my life where my body will sometimes send out little rays of utter panic when I see a child with a mother who sort of looks my age.

On the days I feel particularly low, I make odd bargains with my God, but so far I haven't told anyone about them yet. When I am this way, it is the secrecy that really makes me feel better, because my mind convinces me that this will give me an advantage over everybody else. I haven't met these imaginary adversaries of mine yet, but naturally, I don't like them already.

G thinks I am sound hysterical about the subject, but since we have been married for nearly 2 years, he has learned to be patient about it. Maybe this too will pass, like my one time fascination for Bikram Yoga. In any case, G. indulges me by switching his regular cup of coffee for green tea and adding Brazil nuts to his daily oatmeal. On the other hand, I have taken to sudden mood swings and have become obsessed by white bread, sugar and Amrita TV.

Still, so far my story is that there is no baby. In the meantime, India remains, as in my memory, full of color.

I was never a huge fan of Benazir Bhutto's politics (or her sticky fingered husband) but what a truly awful way to die.

In an effort to revive my comatose muse, I have been reading a lot more than usual. That, and my insomnia. G goes to bed by 11, and most nights, I lie next to him listening to him breathe and counting sheep. But I am not complaining: this is also my favourite time to read. I am not sure why...its not like I am rushed off my feet during the day, and I spend most of it by myself anyway..But somehow, the night lends itself to all kinds of thinking.

So yesterday I finished One Night @ The Call Center, after G picked it up from the local library. This is the last time I am reading anything my husband recommends. It is bad enough that Bhagat is a trite writer. But that is only a crime if one has literary aspirations..Bhagat is very proudly mass market in the saddest sense of that phrase.

What I have a definite problem with is its v.v. uncanny resemblance to Yann Martel's The Life of Pi. The two books share similar frames: both do that Story-within-a-Story/Arabian Nights thing, which Martel (controversially) borrowed from the Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar.

In any case, both Life of Pi and ON@TCC use a conversation between the author (who is a character in his own novel) and a stranger to lead into a morality tale about love and god and faith. "I have a story that will make you believe in God," Francis Adirubasamy promises Martel in an Indian coffeeshop. Martel's writing won the Life of Pi a Booker. In ON@TCC however, the tale disintegrates quickly into about 200 pages of melodramatic crap about phones, ex girlfriends, money, pizza, gurgaon and shitty bosses. Also, a lot (A LOT) of rubbish about the 'stupid' Americans ( you have to read the book to believe how bad it gets really.)

But my questions about Bhagat's book are mostly isolated to ON@TCC's last two pages which appear to be copied directly from Martel's book in both text and spirit. Like Martel, Bhagat waits till the very end to spring all kinds of messy metaphysical/existential choices on the reader. Unlike Martel, Bhagat harangues his long suffering reader into bringing his book together into some sort of cohesive form.

I am actually pretty surprised that nobody (including the hapless editor who had to read the first draft of this sad little story) picked up on this already. Though that might be because ON@TCC (or whatever insane acronym Bhagat is using to pimp his book/upcoming movie) was published and publicized in India. The book is however being published by Picador(?) in the US next year.

Kavya, meet Chetan.

Excerpts:

[note: I don't have any quotes from Life of Pi but I remember reading words v.similar to this in the last two/three pages of the book..particularly the part where Pi tries to explain his voyage to the Japanese sailors who are trying to understand what really happened. On an slightly related note, I once had coffee with Yann Martel and had a v. long conversation with him about India and he is a lovely, gracious man.]

.."Yes," I said.
"So you choose whichever version you want in the main story. It will, after all, be your story."
I nodded.
"But can I ask you one question?"
"Sure" I said.
"Which of the two is a better story?"
I thought for a second.
"The one with God in it," I said.
"Just like life. Rational or not, life is better with God in it."...

And After Discovering Your Brother's Orkut Profile:

Out of a million ways to remember you
I keep coming back to this one:

where the prairie rain casts shadows
over another Sunday afternoon and
me waiting to leave.

Your face saying something, almost
and then
changing your mind.

And it's not just writing. I don't feel like talking to anyone these days either; except of course for snide remarks about marriage. Oh yeah. In my book, there's always more where that comes from.

But about this curious silence that has taken over my life: So far, this year, I have not returned phone calls from family members and ignored important emails. Quit work. Also, discarded blank notebooks that (before they were converted to scratch pads for grocery lists) begged to be filled with prose in all kinds of sparkly. Instead, I have regressed from merely antisocial to being an antisocial insomniac. But on the other hand, thanks to late night HBO scheduling, I know a lot more about ancient Rome than I will ever need and have discovered that my inner patrician malcontent is alive and well.

Occasionally, after G asks me when I am coming to bed, and before I say "soon..when I feel sleepy.." G gets this funny smirk on his face. Anyone would think, he says, that you are having one of those sordid online affairs or something, what with all this late night surfing and such. But after a quick second of silence, we both laugh out loud because seriously, what a terrible idea that is for a happily married woman. Anyways, I think he knows that mostly I sit up till 5 in the morning to google recipes of home made ice cream. I kid you not, my mature and intellectually sophisticated reader.


Well. This is more than I have talked in two weeks put together. After reading Madame Bovary in college, I had always believed that there was something wry and poetic about drifting aimlessly through one's life. But recently, I have come to see that as with many of the ideas that will pass through your mind when you are watching TV in the dark at 3 in the morning: Lighting is Everything.