I'm reading Nora Ephron and am seized by the desire to live in New York, and be single, in my 20's. My 20's are nearly over, and I am married to a man with whom I live in North Carolina- which is pretty damn far from New York, in every way that seems possible.

The way she speaks of New York, with its charm to residents and difficulties for visitors reminds me of Geneva. When I lived there it was great- visiting it is tiresome. I do not enjoy the high prices of everything, and the lack of belonging. Perhaps this goes for all of Switzerland. It is pretty, but visiting it only makes you feel outside of a perfect bubble of joy and beauty. Which isn't even necessarily true. Switzerland is full of annoying things even for residents, and there are many such bubbles to be found in the world. Perhaps even in North Carolina.

The Farthest Field

I am currently reading The Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War, and am not enjoying it as much as I had hoped. It pains me to say this, but the prose might be too florid for me, I didn't think I would ever say such a thing but my tastes in literature appear to have changed. Too many curlicues, and similes, and flowers. Too much ponderous description. It is starting to feel like too little substance wrapped up in a whole bushel of shiny, complicated bows.

I feel a bit sad because I like war stories, and World War II stories in particular. The author was a couple of years ahead of me in school, so I am predisposed to love his work. And yet I cannot because there is just too much flourishing about, and clever use of words (I do not want to be looking up more than one archaic word per page- this is non-fiction not a Scrabble game). It is tiring.

I believe I shall go and read some Nora Ephron. She is not as evocative about Calicut, or Madras, but that is ok. We will get to the point sooner, and there might be fewer idlis, but there will be greater comprehension.

Okbye.

I don't think Beyonce is that great.
Clearly I am not getting it.

Procrastination

I have a deadline coming up. So have been doing a vast amount of cooking.

In the last few weeks I have made

1. Paneer from scratch, several times
2. Paneer paranthas
3. Quiche with paneer in it, and a base made from scratch
4. Fancy khichdi with many bits and bobs
5. Less fancy khichi
6. Sambarshadam
7. Chow mein like the LSR cafe
8. Lobia
9. Black dal
10. Orange dal
11. Mattar paranthas
12. Aloo paranthas
13. Aloo-gobhi-mattar paranthas
14. Gobhi paranthas
15. Puliyogare
16. Baked french fries
17. Hasselback potatoes
18. Potatoes Dauphinoise
19. Lamb meatballs
20. Chicken meatballs
21. Beef meatballs
22. Cashew celery soup
23. Endless salads. Admittedly J makes most of the salad dressing. But I find all the other bits and bobs to go on.

Of all of this I have only one picture- of the quiche- but here it is. It was better than my photography skills.

Now I am tired. I have run out of things to cook before this paper. Must write the paper in a rush of activity and can then return to my customary sloth.
Sloathe

Ab ki baar America yaar

So I find myself moving house one more time. I've not lived all over the world like some of my friends, but I feel like I do a fair bit of shifting house, and this time it is the furthest away from my old house that I have ever moved.

Here is a short list of all the places I have lived, which means all the places I have boxed up my books and clothes for, and unpacked them in.I don't know which is more tiresome. It is possible to procrastinate more about the packing, because you can only last so long without unpacking your undies, and once you've begun you might as well empty the suitcases and hide them till the next time.

1. Home (Blr)
2. Boarding School
3. Home (Blr)
4. Hostel (LSR)
5. Home of kindly granduncle who let me crash at his pad while prepping for finals
6. Home (Blr)
7. Home of a kindly uncle in Dwarka (D.U in it's infinite wisdom had begun classes but not allotted hostel seats)
8. Hostel (DU)
9. Home (Blr)
10. Delhi- Apartment in Alaknanda
11. Home of kindly friend who let me stay even though everything prompted either a rant about men or tears, sometimes both together 
12. Home (Blr)
13. Delhi- Room in N Campus
14. Delhi- Apartment in Jor Bagh
15. Home (Blr)
16. Geneva- Room in student housing
17. Geneva- Flat with 2 Francophones
18. Geneva- Flat with Spanish, Danish and French flatmates
19. Geneva- Flat with Dutch girl, then 2 Italian boys
20. Geneva- Flat with 2 Italians
21. Home (Blr)

22. Home- USA- in less than a week.

How scary, how tiring, how far, how fun. At least this time there will be two of us unpacking.

Summer fun

I just had my first mango of the summer. I look forward to more tomorrow. 

How to keep yourself from being masturbated at by strange men

You may think it is enough to build walls, put up a roof, and live in the house, to keep yourself from being jacked off at by random men. But this is not enough. Should you be lucky enough to have a garden, put a gate around it, make it high, but this will not keep someone from sitting on the road and playing with his penis at you.

You may think that this is not related to you at all; it’s just a man caught at a stray moment on a road that has a decent amount of tree cover on a hot afternoon. This is not true. You know this because he is sitting right outside your gate directing his gaze at the young woman working inside the house, at her desk, doing accounts, The light is on, and you can see her typing. This is obviously highly arousing (perhaps you will want to make this her fault- she was provoking him by poking at her calculator).

But for the last few moments his gaze has been on you, and because you are weighed down by the bottles of detergent and club soda that you carried home from the store on foot, you aren’t really paying attention to his hand rapidly moving up and down. When you notice him pointing his penis towards you unfortunately the instinct is to shriek and run inside. An instinct you have to fight to reach into your bag to hunt for your phone. Should he threaten you, you could run into the house and lock yourself in, but should he overpower you and come into the house with you, there is little you can do.

And then before you know it he does, and he takes off around the corner, leaving you with the unpleasant image of being threatened by some strange dick, and the fear that this situation could escalate to something even more physically threatening.  The police are no help. You did not have the presence of mind to take down a full license plate number, and without this they do not want to interrupt their Sunday afternoon nap. You have the last two digits, but that is not enough.

The men who look after the neighbouring house for some fancy politician type do not care much, they have a camera trained on the road, perhaps they can get me a license plate off the footage, but they seem bereft of all expression when I request the footage.

This has happened before, another man who works on the road tells me. That time this guy hung around for 45 minutes, and frightened a group of young girls returning from school. But no one complained. We do not know if it was the same guy. He was wearing a helmet, so I have at once seen too much, and not enough of him to be able to recognise him.

The police return my call after 30 minutes. If it happens again please let us know. Again we will interrupt our snooze to hear you complain. He didn’t do anything to you right? So why do you care? Let it go madam, we have other things to do.

It seems like there is very little you can really do to keep yourself from being masturbated at without your consent.  Perhaps by next Sunday afternoon, which is really the only time the road is this deserted in daylight hours, I shall buy a gun (look I married an American, it was bound to show eventually). A girl can dream.