If you have an iPad...

...then download my story okay? :D

This is a series that my new company is launching and this is my first story for them. I write apps for the iPad for kindergarten kids now. Print dinosaur goes digital and all that.

Here's the write-up on it: Kandy Fish

Yay.

Chop till you Drop

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I thought I could go off lecture mode for a while, but looks like Uncle Vistor is not going to let me :D His comment on this post suggests that I climb my pedestal once again and deliver the wisdom that my long years have given me. Here are his questions:

After ruminating on your post, some questions popped up regarding editing:

Is the editor the best judge of what is saleable?
How does he/she determine what is to be edited?
Who is a good editor?
How do you as a writer, know which of the editor's rulings are sensible?

In other words, I am asking about traits and the job requirements of an editor.

A post on this as addendum to the series?

So here it is, Uncle V. Settle yourself under a Bodhi tree and then read!
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Before I joined the magazine, I had zero experience as an editor. I'd been part of the editorial boards of my school magazine and college journal, but I'd never worked professionally in such a capacity before. I was twenty two at that time and I'd just been given a 60-year-old magazine to run. Was I nervous? Not at all. I was extremely confident that I could do the job because I knew to read, I knew to write. I had clear ideas about what good children's literature is and I was in a position where I could give orders and have them executed. I was very enthusiastic about whipping my sleeping division awake.

But what is a plot without obstacles, eh?

An editor has two jobs to do: copy editing and decision-making.

The first is usually delegated to a copy editor in reasonably big concerns. A copy editor is someone who goes through the text, proofs it, ensures that it fits the page, checks if the accompanying illustrations/photographs synchronize with the text (for e.g, if Sita is admiring a red flower in the text and the illustration shows her admiring a blue flower, the copy editor has to make the appropriate change- sometimes it's easier to change the text to save time) and makes sure that credit lines for texts/images taken from elsewhere have been provided in the proper format.

The second, decision-making, is the most important function of the editor. The editor decides what content should go into publication. This, the editor does in consultation with the management and the other divisions of the organization. For instance, I was hired because the management had taken a policy decision to change the personality of the magazine (based on Marketing and Sales feedback). To change it from its only-mythology image to something more contemporary, something that children could relate to in this age. However, the change was not to be so radical as to alienate our current readers. And so, I had to fit in my editorial beliefs with the overall beliefs of the organization.

It's never easy to be the decision-maker when you are changing editorial policies. It can be a make or break situation for the organization. For instance, Target magazine, which used to be popular when we were children, underwent a personality change and completely lost its market. Consequently, they had to shut down the magazine because nobody wanted it in its new form.

So there I was, partly terrified by the enormity of my responsibility and partly kicked by my own importance. As is the case whenever such an upheaval of policies takes place, I had to face a lot of resentment and hostility from the editorial board that had previously decided on the content. They were still there and boy, did they hate the upstart who'd joined new! Not only was I new, I was 22! That was enough for most to write me off as the product of the management's eccentricity. We shall gloss over my trials and tribulations because those, while immensely fun, will need a whole new post.

I took in the following factors while deciding on what content should go in: a. What of the old version received positive feedback? b. What grouses did I have with those that received positive feedback? c. How contemporary should my new content be?

For the first factor, I had help from the Marketing survey that we'd done. I also consulted the other divisions to know what of the old publication needed to be retained (Sales, Customer Care, Online). Obviously, I had to retain genres that had come to define the magazine over the years. So I had to keep mythology (and I felt it was necessary to do so too)...but I had a problem with the way the stories were being written. They were riddled with stereotypes and insensitive language.

This is where the second factor comes into play- how do you educate your audience without changing what they like? You do it without making a hoo-ha about it. You do it in subtle ways that don't affect the text too much. For instance, the episodes from the Mahabaratha that we were running constantly justified Yudhishthira's actions. After he'd pawned Draupadi away, the writer had included a line that he probably knew this was how the war would start and dharma would be achieved. Bullshit he knew that. So yes, I chopped. The writer was a very senior well-awarded person and I received some angry mails, but I stuck to my guns.

As an editor, I was the bridge between my audience and the management. For instance, I was told to chuck the children's contributions section because it lacked originality and most of the writing was insipid. But I fought to retain this because I felt it was important that a children's magazine have a section that served as a creative outlet for children, no matter how amateurish their work. Disagreeing with the top is not always a pleasant experience, but the boss who hired me had great trust in my abilities and he let me get away with quite a lot.

As for the third factor- deciding new content, I depended on my literary education, tastes, and the market to frame this. Much as I love Roald Dahl, my audience was mostly urban middle and lower middle class and semi-urban sections. I had to keep in mind the cultural setups and exposure levels of my audiences when I was deciding what was contemporary. The stories had to be something they could relate to. Something that they could understand without the text under-estimating them.

I had writers writing for me- in-house as well as freelance- and whenever I made changes, if they were major, I always told them why I was doing so because this would prevent them from repeating it. For instance, N had written a story where a girl slaps a boy and I modified it to them having a heated argument because I did not want belligerent parents to write us emails about us encouraging violence (oh yes, they will! Once, we published a Ruskin Bond story titled Untouchable which is about a boy becoming friends with a child from the untouchable community- the story looks at the irony of the system and so on but a very angry lady abused us for printing words like 'untouchable' in the magazine!). A writer listens to the editorial feedback and if the reasons given are solid, a reasonable writer will usually accommodate the changes. My first book with Tulika- Aana and Chena- was inspired by the word aanachandam in Malayalam. The word describes a person who doesn't have beautiful individual features but looks beautiful all the same. This is one of my favourite words and my story revolved around it. However, during the editing process, the editors pointed out that the word was not easily translatable into other languages and since they were looking at a bi-lingual, they'd have to remove it from the text. I agreed, even though the word itself was going to be axed, because it made editorial sense to do so.

A good editor is someone who understands management policies, has policies of his/her own that, if in conflict with the management's, should be taken up for serious discussion. And very importantly, s/he should be someone who understands the pulse of the audience. Identifying sale-able material is a process that is influenced by and evolves through all of these factors. An editor isn't the lone person who makes this decision, but s/he is ultimately held responsible for it if the decision leads to failure. Such, is life.

My new magazine came out in November 2008. We started getting feedback for it from the first week itself. And when my boss forwarded the reader feedback to me, I sat back on my chair and cried a little. They loved it! They couldn't wait for the next issue! And that made everything...the fights, the rewrites, the endless proofings....worth every minute of it. I was glad to be the bitchy editor, I was.

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Uncle Visitor, do you have a halo around your head now? Arise!

Mallu Central

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Okay, so I'm from Chennai and when I'm being fake-ly intellectual, I say 'Madras' in the middle of discussions with NGO types. I've probably spoken more Tamil than Malayalam in my life because most of my friends are Tamil. I write in English. M is Telugu and I once woke up in the middle of the night when he asked me for something and surprised myself by replying in Telugu. I said, "Pettuko". Whatay. I'm impressed with myself even if you are not.

But I am a Mallu, you see. Though Kerala has never been home and I've never missed not being there. And when I've been there also, I've always wanted to go back to Chennai once I've had my pazhampori (Thrissur station pazhampori especially). But after coming to Pune where I zimbly can't talk to anyone in Hindi or Marathi (though I understand Hindi reasonably well now), I am beginning to get in touch with the Lolakutty in me. I got a bunch of Mallu movies for M to watch when I went to Chennai last. And I policed him throughout the movie-watching to ensure that he 100% appreciated the wonderfulness of it. I also burst into song in between and sang "Chembazhukkkaaaa chembazhukkkaaa chakara chembhazhukkkaaa!" in full gusto. I bet you don't know what that means. It don't matter.

I also catch unsuspecting Mallu people in market areas and strike up conversation with them. See, this is very unlike me. I'm not a big fan of random conversations with aunty-uncles. But if I see curly hair and the unmistakable nendram pazham in the shopping bag, I edge my way to let them know that I'm also Mallu, men. Though I don't have curly hair (dammit). It's not like I invite them home or something. I'm not that social or that psycho. But I like it when they acknowledge that I'm also a penkutty jest like them. M is vastly amused by this newly-discovered streak in me. So am I. I always thought I was a Chennai ponnu (I am still) but apparently, I am just like those Dubai people who call Asianet and request for Lalettan songs.

Enda karthavey.

Dinosaur

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N and I are writing a novel together (oh yes, clap your hands, children) and it's half-done. I'd mentioned this earlier in one of my old posts, but if you are not a S.Venkatasubramanian who has by-hearted (I love this verb) my whole blog, I will tell you again. N and I are writing a book that's aimed towards introducing gender concepts to children. This is being done with the noble intention of ensuring that children don't waste their time later unlearning all the lessons that they learnt for a good part of their lives. The kindly souls in Tulika have agreed to take up the book for publication and we've been working on it through the ups and downs of life (marriage, job change, laptop crashes- I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled).

So anyway, our protagonist is 12 and N and I have been digging into our memories, trying to remember what it was like when we first had a crush on a boy (I strictly liked only 12th standard boys. I had such high standards even then), what a period felt like for the first ever time (this was fairly easy to remember since it sucks till date), class politics (I was the Inglis snob of the class who everyone assumed did not know Tamil. Bleddy stereotyping buggers), sibling rivalry (both N and I have older brothers, so we gave our protagonist a younger brother and we're having fun making her bully him), mother-daughter fights (no refresher course needed there) and much much more. We were attempting to claim our memories and then modify them to the experiences that children in this day and age have. Then we realized how OLD we actually are. And how children today (already, the idiom of the ancients invades my sentences) seem to be another species altogether.

I get a faintly confused expression on my face whenever someone talks to me about their latest, totally rad cell phone. I have a vague idea of what bluetooth is, but if you asked me to explain, I'll probably get a prize zero. I was with M the other day at this popular eat-out here that's graced by several school and college students. And I honestly felt like an ancient. I was listening to their conversations, the way they held themselves, the group chemistry...and I thought of our awkward Ispahani school meet-ups in Cafe Coffee Day. Ordering Espresso without knowing what it is and drinking it though it tastes like someone made coffee with pavakka juice. These kids were definitely much cooler than what we used to be. I'm sure they all knew what an Espresso was, to start with. Just writing this book and constantly comparing the then-myself with what I know of children now is making me feel fossilized.

I'm not going to say we were more innocent and pure than the generation now. I'm just afraid some spanky new technology without which you can't breathe is going to come. And I'm never going to understand it. I'm going to hesitantly plug it on my nose like my mum fumbled with a mouse and then I'm going to pass out because I did it all wrong. Stupid dinosaur, me.

I'm a little sad that dinosaurs are all over the place now. What an exciting time it was when we saw that Tyrannosaurs Rex in Jurassic Park. Now, dinosaurs are there even in your tiffin box. What an indignity.

I should stop being nostalgic. Definite sign of old age. I should, instead, write emails to all my young cousins with inspirational quotes from the Bhagavad Gita. Maybe I'll write a paragraph for my status message on Facebook. Then I'll know for sure that I'm officially redundant.

Writing for a Living-4

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Once you have landed a writing job and are finally getting paid to do what you want to do, you begin to feel antsy. Because that's simply how our brain is structured. We like problems because they keep us occupied. They catalyze us from our static states of existence. They give us a justifiable reason for self-obsession. And this is why depressed people are people who don't know how to be sad.

Once you have landed a job where you are required to do work that you like doing, you begin to feel that all is too perfect. When you have to write because someone is paying you to do it, a part of you immediately resents this. You don't want your writing to be read and torn apart by a monster-editor who never seems to like anything you write. It is one thing to get your writing peer reviewed and critiqued, it is another to have it critiqued by someone who could potentially fire you. You begin to hate the red lines across your manuscript. Every time you open a Word document and type out the words, you delete them because you can see your editor wrinkling his/her nose up. You feel angry. You know you are a good writer. Isn't that why you were hired in the first place? If your creativity is going to be questioned all the time, if your lines lose the rhythm with which they marched into your head because your editor thinks they are too obscure, if self-doubt begins to creep into your words...and worse still, if you begin to write like your editor so your work is approved...what good will that be?

The fact about writing for a living is that someone is letting you do it. Someone is paying you to write and that someone has a right upon your writing. This is a fact that writers in corporate setups need to understand, digest, and embrace. Even if you are writing for a publishing house that has accepted your manuscript, you must share the ownership of your work with the editorial team there simply because they are investing in you. I've been a writer with corporate setups and have written for publishing houses. In both cases, your heart does die a little every time your lines get axed. Or rewritten. Or changed into something else altogether. And you are left saying, that is not it at all, that is not what I meant at all.

Coming to terms with editorial practices is a part of growing up as a writer. I was an editor and a writer at the same time- I was the editor for the English magazine in my last place of work; I used to write for the magazine as well as write for publishing houses. As an editor, I trashed perfectly good stories because they didn't fit what the magazine needed at that point. I chopped lines. I changed storylines. I axed whole paragraphs because the story went beyond the two pages that it was allotted. I wrote rejection letters to many writers, I got into heated arguments with writers who wouldn't want a word of their story changed, I never got back to some writers about their manuscripts because there simply wasn't any time. And as a writer, I spent hours refreshing my inbox to see if the publishers had replied to my hundredth mail asking about the status of my manuscript.

Publishing is a hard industry. It takes time for publishing houses to get returns on their investment. Like any other industry, it is about making money. And you, as a writer, are a very tiny part of it. Sure, without you, there is no book....but there are hundreds and thousands of writers who will write more books for the publishing industry to have its fodder. The sooner you understand how negligible you are, the faster you will make your peace. There is nothing wrong with making profits or wanting to. And it is the job of the editorial to find a balance between what is good material and what is sale-able material. The editorial will accept or reject, chop or keep your words keeping this in mind. And there is no point in virtuously walking away from this fact.

The reason why many of us are so wary of anyone touching our manuscripts is that we give ourselves way too much importance. This is understandable because the process of creation is exhausting (even the good Lord took rest after he was done creating). It is exhilarating and it gives you joy that is intensely personal. But the second it is read by somebody else and they point out your errors, the obscurity of the writing, the non-sale-ability of it, it dwindles into ordinariness. Your joy suddenly becomes foolish. This is a painful process only if you refuse to see the reasons behind the rejection. Achieving a balance between what you want to write and what you have to write at your work-place is hard work. I adapted myself to it because I was seeing the process from both ends- as an editor and as a writer. Writing for pleasure is one thing and writing professionally is another. The second might seem like a lesser god because of the money involved, but it is a tougher penance that will teach you many valuable lessons.

How does one retain love for the art while writing for a living? If you are not free to write as you please, can you still be in love with it? You retain the love by working hard to do so. By not lying to yourself about your insecurities. By respecting the views of your editors. And by understanding survival in a hard industry. You have a choice: to walk away and hide your art in the safety of your own shadow. Or to lay it under the sun with pride and walk away...while the world takes care of it.

(concluded)

P.I.G

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N and I used to do a comic called Interval for the magazine. I did the writing and N did the illustrations. It was a 3-pager, black and white, and was about this nameless boy whose life was remarkably like our own. It was a popular series in the magazine and we loved working on it together. I still have the mails and postcards that children wrote to us telling us how much they loved reading it. That bundle will probably be the first thing I take and run if the house is on fire.

However, since we've both quit and walked into the sunset since then, we can no longer work on the comic. Copyrights owned by the corporates and all that. But we miss working on the comic. And nothing can keep two good women down if they really set their minds to it. Especially if they are nasty and lovely at the same time.

So here it is, children: P.I.G

Most of the strips will be insider jokes because we're extraordinarily fond of ourselves. But we hope you will get some of it too.

Go on and be a pig.

Girlz

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After they made Boys, I fully expected a movie called Girls. You know, something that shows the rest of the world what girls are really like and how scandalous we actually are. That we like looking at boys (in the plural, not the one Rama that every woman is allowed) and sometimes at girls, have friendships with other women that are not based on shopping, have whole spheres in our brains where men are highly inconsequential, and are also blessed with enough personality to colour several white peacocks. But Girls never came.

Every year, we see more movies with bubbly heroines who seem to be in various stages of retardation. Innocent and jumpy, full of cute quirks and oh so chawming, ladies and gentlemen. And every year, my BP rises just a little bit more.
I can't stand Genelia in Santosh Subramaniam. Every time I hear that ha-ha Hasini and the whole let's-bang-our-foreheads, I want to bang her head on a nice big boulder in Mahabalipuram. And yet, so many men and even women find her to be 'adorable'. What's with this innocent-infant heroine obsession?
I was pissed with Arvind Swamy in Roja because he made a big deal about the whole pattikaadu thing and how he didn't want some urban woman who knew everything he knew because then, how would chemistry develop in the plot?

And when they do this whole Jessie kind of movies also, I get pissed. Okay, Gautam Menon, you tried very hard to show Jessie to be this speshul woman but just because everyone's whispering in Inglis in your movie, it doesn't mean you've created a 'different' heroine that all of womankind needs to be grateful for. Every time Simbu said 'Jussi' and did that whole soulful face, I was wondering why Jussi wasn't getting phenomenally bored. And just because one soulful boy creepily follows you around, you don't fall in love with him. Especially when you've had half a line conversation with him. Same for Madam Sameera Reddy. Though there, Surya was phenomenally hot. So at least, that makes sense to me.

Why don't we ever see films that give their female characters some depth in characterization? And I don't mean make them into Phoolan Devi. I don't even mean make woman-centred cinema. I just mean...give the woman some life! I'm sick of fluffy-heads and their 'va di polam' bimbette groups. Female friendships exist in our films only in relation to what the hero needs at that point. Does he want the friend to convince the heroine about his lurrve? Does he want the friend to carry his message to the locked up heroine? Or does he want an evil double-cross villi to make the plot more interesting? I know popular cinema is just for popcorn, but still...they always have some amount of boy bonding going on. Heck, even Rajini has boy bonding with Vadivelu. On the other hand, women are always hating other women. Wicked second heroine hates innocent first heroine, MIL hates DIL, women bitching about other women all the time. Or if at all they show women bonding, it will be the first wife magnanimously letting the second wife into her large heart.

Cinema, for the most part, is unreal. And I don't expect it or even want it to have gut-wrenching verisimilitude. I enjoy the masala-padam genre. I revel in nonsense. But I just want to see women on screen with the 20% spunkiness of women I know in real life. I'd like to see women liking each other, for a change (and I don't mean to indulge your hostel-lesbianism fantasy).

I switch on the TV and women are everywhere- scratching one half of their face to test for dry skin, buying anti-aging creams to look impossibly young, trying to prevent armpit sweat, measuring their fairness, colouring their hair because they are worth it, eating one grain of rice and what not. I see it everywhere all the time to a point when I start feeling that I'm unreal for being the way I am and thinking the thoughts that I think. Then I look around me and I see women. With enough spunk to give me goosebumps and an odd feeling of love in the pit of my stomach. And then I switch off the TV and come and rant on my blog.

Angst

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N read the previous post and we went down memory lanes and jungles and all that. This involved digging into our mail archives and finding a million poems and assignments and stories we'd written and sent around for review. We also found a lot of mails that are full of angst, growing-up pains, tragedies of the world and what not. I sound insane in most of my mails to N, I was vastly amused to discover.

The following is a mail I sent to N and A when I was in the UK, in the middle of my self-induced and highly ridiculous depression. Parents, do not be disturbed by what you see below, be glad that I've grown a brain since then. I'm posting it here because this is an angsty part of me that I've left behind, but I'm still glad I went through it and got over all the pain and yada yada of my existential crisis. It's good to have I-used-to-be-an-ass days to look back upon. Also, I sound mental in it and I like that.

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Hey,

Feeling lousy and very bugged...so decided to mail you guys, who else do I have, eh?? I went to the beach..hahha...some 1000 drunk people were there. What ayy new year. It was very windy though, so I got back home earlier. Some random people on the road and all shook hands and said happy new year...one crazy drunk guy wanted to hug me and howl or something. Haha. Anyway, happy new ears to you yaars. I don't know what I'd do without you guys, serious. I can't stand anybody else and I just want to go and sit on a hill top and jump from there with a parachute. I feel like making a dumb girls-only movie and weeping or something. Sisterhood of the Pants or some shit like that. Haha. I'm going to get solidly drunk one of these days and do something utterly nonsensical. Okay, that's it. I don't know why I came here and what am doing here. I'm pretty much lost. I don't know why I did half the things that I did in my life. So utterly pointless. How on earth do people manage to live to be a 100 and stuff? Don't they ever feel like giving up? I think I've had enough of everything...I really don't want to stay alive and go on flaying my own skin every day. Do you like the word 'dollop'? Notice how it blooms in the middle like a snowshoe [no idea what that is though] and drops like a shot bird. Dollop. Hahhaa. My life is a dollop.

I wish it were free to call you guys. I'd seriously call you 20 hours a day or something. You guys at least listen to my rubbish without having to go somewhere and do something and be useful. I mean, I don't mean that as an insult...I think our combined redundancy is glorious. If I make a movie which I shan't get directed by woolly headed K who by the way, I think sucks and is not the genius B thinks he is considering the way he acted in N*******, I will call it Redundant and cast the two of you alongside myself. We shall wear sunglasses.

Here are 10 New Ear things I want to share with the world:

1. Yeah, happy new ear, so what?
2. Hate your roomies
3. Stay Single
4.Be best friends with best friends
5.Buy Winnie the Pooh socks for the people you love
6. S will look lovely with dots on his eyebrow
7.Live alone
8.Live with a dog if you must
9. Don't eat bread
10. Clothes are boring

Okay, over. Now, I will sleep.

Dearest N and A, I love you.

***
There are very few times in life when I've felt happy to have grown up. This is one of those times. Happy graduation day to me.

Writing for a Living-3

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Writing is a one person sport. You make the rules, you change the game, you abandon it when you want to. It doesn't matter who won or who lost because it's all the same.

And then, out of nowhere, you realize that someone is watching you play. They are watching you play your game and suddenly, your hands hang loosely by your side and you don't know where to put them. You know this turf and yet, it bothers you that someone is watching. You play to impress. You swing with flamboyance. You swing and miss. And you are embarrassed. You see the smirks coming. And then, you pretend you never did play and walk away. It's better, you think, to go elsewhere and play. Some place where nobody can see you. Because you don't wish to change your sport to please someone else.

If one wishes to write for a living, however, one cannot afford to take the sport to the closet. One has to lead it into the drawing room like an elephant. Draw as much attention as possible. Break a few doors. Trumpet your arrival. Because a sport needs its spectators and you should never deprive yours of them. A problem that many writers have is simply the lack of readers. There's a difference between readers and see-ers. The see-ers are the types who will glance through your work and say 'nice' or 'good'. The readers will go beyond this convenient list and offer you what you might not want to hear to start with.

I was fortunate enough to be blessed with readers right from the time I began to write- my mum and my brother. Both of them read whatever I wrote and gave me the sort of feedback that I didn't appreciate much back then but am very grateful for now. My brother laughed at the sappiness of much of my writing. The whining tone. The artifice of borrowed wisdom that I tried employing as my own. The ridiculousness of my sad themes when I knew so little of sadness in my own life. My mum, too, drew parallels between what I wrote and what I was like in real life. I still remember this poem I wrote in Class VI about keeping your surroundings clean. I showed it to my mum; she read it and said, "First keep your own room clean." Though that's a very mum-like response, it's a response that I've stored in my mind to restrain myself whenever I've been tempted to write about things without conviction, just because it is convenient to do so. Staying genuine in your writing is one of the principles I try to keep up in my writing. If it doesn't ring true to you, a reader will see through it in no time.

In college, I met N and got myself another reader who minced no words when telling me what she thought about my writing. College was a time when we began as insecure amateurs but led ourselves to believe that we were accomplished. In a state like that, when you have just finished tearing up over Keats and Ginsberg, and believe that you at last know what good writing is, it is very hard to take criticism. Because you are now educated in what good literature is and you should be able to create your own. It is, however, vital to recognize that the bigger your sport grows, the more important your spectator is. N read my writing, helped me shape it, told me what was trash and what was not, improved my narratives with her suggestions. Spent time over my prose. Made me tea. And also, illustrated the first batch of stories that I wrote. We've spent several hours over our manuscripts (N writes too and I've been her spectator many times as well), falling in love with what we'd written, even setting it to music sometimes, and yet...always, always keeping the honesty in it. My test by fire for anything I write is N because if I send it to her, I know I will get a response and I can trust that response to have in it an honesty that I might not find anywhere else.

Once you allow your sport, willingly, to have a spectator, your job is not just to play; it is also to entertain. And by this, I do not mean that you should give your audience what it wants and forget about what you want. Play in a way that your audience understands the new rules you are making and wants to see more. The way children are drawn to make-believe games. Admit your spectator's right to be entertained, to be bored, to tell you to play differently, or even change the game. You still hold the bat, don't forget that. But listen to the gallery calls. And oblige if you are convinced.

I managed to find writing jobs by chance. My job with the magazine grew out of freelance assignments that I took up on the side. I was working for the development sector then (a job with a government institute that my father helped me find because I was so depressed about my unemployed state) and wanted to do something concrete because my day-job was such a bore. So I'd come back home at around 8 (I was working in Sriperambadur then; it's 2 hours from Chennai), eat dinner, and edit stories till 10.30. It so happened that the then-boss at the magazine liked my views on children's literature and offered me a job. And there, out of nowhere, a writing job fell into my lap. I wasn't planning on it at all and yet it happened. And I was ready, though I didn't know it, because I'd been playing all along.

*to be continued*

Across the Universe

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I've seen this tag on many of the blogs I lurk around and have been chuckling at the lists I've read because I identify with so many of them. So I thought I'd do it too and give myself a break from pontificating about my profession for a while. The tag started here. How much across-the-gender behaviour do you exhibit? If you want to sound high-brow scholarly- how Ardhanareeshwara are you?

1. I hate dressing up. In fact, M first knew about my existence when his mum saw me at my cousin's wedding and noticed that I'd arrived in jeans and a faded kurta with zero jewelry. She told M about this strange-funny girl and M apparently remembered this when his parents broached the topic of shaadi. My mum gave me a lot of grief for the said appearance that day, but see how the Universe conspired to get you what you ultimately wanted, Mummyji? Well-settled daughter. I wore jewelry for my wedding though. Partly because I didn't want to overdo the rebel thing (not when I was doing one super conformist act of getting married anyway) and partly because the jewelry looked good on me.

2. I hate cosmetics (with the exception of kaajal which I generously use). I don't understand why so many women want to smell like fruit orchards. I'm not against deodorants- they come in handy when you are traveling or are having a long day- but why spray yourself every time you need to step out? Stinking is one thing and your natural body smell is another. I don't use all those flavoured lip balms either. They give me a headache. I also think hair conditioner is a corporate scam.

3. I'm a messy person. I can live like a pig and be happy as a clam. I don't mind dirty sinks (I draw the line at dirty toilets though), scrunched up clothes, unmade beds, crushed papers in files. I detach myself from the mess and observe it with fondness. M, on the other hand, is a clinical cleaner who waltzes through the house like Monica (Amma, I know you're thinking this is going to put my marriage in trouble one year down the line. Relax and let the Universe give you what it wants to).

4. I hate shopping. My mum has bought most of my clothes. I don't go to the tailor either, so all my clothes have V-neck because that's the first and only measurement the tailor took of me. I get really bored when I shop and usually make super-quick decisions about what I'm going to buy. Before M and I got engaged, we had to buy each other groom-bride clothes. So we went shopping together. M wanted a grey suit and he spent a lot of time visiting shops, looking at patterns (everything looked absolutely the same to me), analyzing the quality and so on. I was ready to collapse and die after the second shop we visited. (M, if you want to defend yourself, do :D)

5. I eat well. This might not seem like such an 'across-the-genders' thing, but it really is. Half the women I know only eat salads or share meals whenever we're out for lunch/dinner. I enjoy eating and I eat what I want to eat. I don't obsess about my weight and I think gundu is an acceptable body shape. I'm not advocating obesity, but really, I think women need to love themselves more (not in a Dove ad types...but just you know...don't worry so much about what every man thinks about you...they are thinking about Man U or some bore like that anyway).

6. I'm not sporty, but I'd like to bungee jump and para-glide before I die or die when doing either. I'm very impatient with people who say they are scared to get on some ride in an amusement park or get nauseous every two minutes.

7. I hate spending time in the kitchen for more than what is required. I enjoy cooking whatever it is that I cook, but I don't see the point in cooking a million dishes or making things that take time and can be bought from shops anyway. I appreciate the effort of women who do this; I eat whatever it is that they produce with great relish, but I don't see myself doing the same. I cook because I have to eat and that's about it.

8. I make all my decisions on my own and hate being told what to do. Whenever my dad says things like 'Oh now I don't have to worry about you because M is there to decide', I snarl and deliver a long speech on how I'm not a cow. Though I know my dad says many things just to provoke me and have fun. I hate it when people say things like 'Your husband gives you so much freedom!' Nobody can give anyone freedom. They can only take it away from you. Your freedom is yours and it never comes for free.

9. I don't like being given flowers or heart-shaped objects. I find them silly. In one of the Seinfeld episodes, this guy gives Elaine a flower and she thinks 'Now for how long do I have to hold this?'. That basically is my reaction too. I hate seeing hearts with arrows through them on every damned thing. I find it very annoying.

10. I love traveling alone. One of my grand plans before the whole marriage drama started at home was to go to Egypt by myself. I used to travel around a lot by myself when I was working for the development sector. I was greedy for the peace that my own company allowed me. I get irritated by women who act like children and need to be accompanied everywhere they go.

On the other hand, I cry very easily- at the movies, if I read something I loved, if I get into fights, if I feel bugged...and sometimes, just because I feel like it. I love the 'sisterhood' relationship that I have with my female friends- they know everything that goes on in my life, no holds barred. I don't know too many men, any man, in fact, who shares that much with his male friends. I love my nose-ring. I can't live without kaajal (I said that already, but so what?). I'm good with children and love spending time with them. I enjoy making other people feel special. I think women who are funny are funnier than men who are funny. I'm not going to be March 8th types and declare that I love being a woman. But I do.