KitKat Tales ~ A Cat-shaped Disruption

Kitkat’s a tiny child-of-the-wild kitten who’s adopted us a little over a month ago. This evening she’s running from the living room to the kitchen and back, she can smell the chicken boiling but it’s not in her yellow bowl. When the chicken and some warm water (or what K calls ‘soup’) makes it to her bowl, she will only eat if the bowl is placed close enough to the sliding door that faces the garden. 

We’re still figuring things out, Kitkat, K and me. I’m awkward and clumsy, K is infinitely patient and ginger-colored Kitkat is a scared kitten always on the edge, jumping at the slightest sound. This scrawny kitten has wounds from fights with other neighbourhood cats and is constantly watching out for intruders. She adopts us till she disowns us -  she disappears for days and weeks together and then suddenly turns up at dinner time.

KitKat reminds me of what it must be to be a new mom but surely it takes more effort, caution and less clumsiness. There are no routines to teach - Kitkat doesn’t have the patience for humans and their antics. She sleeps on chairs and couches, and K’s lap and in the box. She mews when she wants the doors opened, or if she’s hungry and scratches the couch if she has to pee. She rubs herself against us after her meal - that must be a thank you gesture for the meal, right? She turns over and starts rolling - does that mean she’s happy and want a belly rub? Do cats like belly rubs? 

I’m new to the idea of cats in the house. When cats are mentioned, I’m the one who pipes up “I’m not a cat person. Eesh.” The one-time she cuddled on my lap, I had to turn skyward and breathe in gulps of air - her tummy vibrated against my legs, her tail curled inwards and out, when I tried to pick her up her claws caught on to my trousers and scratched my legs. What do I do? The other day, I fed her minced chicken whilst wearing shorts. She then rubbed herself against me, I squealed and jumped. She bolted in the direction of the mint garden and didn’t come back for 3 days.

This is all really new and challenging to me - there’s someone who’s now a part of our life, whose needs are different than ours but have to be considered on par with our own. Though all of this wasn’t of our choosing, we did choose to go with it.  But she can’t be domesticated, this wild kitten. Someone for whom we pick up minced chicken every week doesn’t stay long enough to call her, our pet. Someone who doesn’t have to scrounge for food and doesn’t have to fight for survival comes back bruised and wounded every other night. 

We have to make soup for her on days when she’s in, let her out at her convenience and make space for her on the couch when she’s in a cuddly mood. Oh, yes…We also have to clean up after her. A week ago, she ran to the bedroom upstairs, found a few Fabindia paperbags and peed into them! Never having dealt with cat pee, I scrunched my nose and hid myself in the other bedroom and K cleaned up after her. (“No, Kitkat. No!”)

She’s learned that a loud No actually means No, and a hand pointed down accompanied by an instruction to sit means she should stop at the kitchen door and roll on the mat outside. Our Sunday evening has been interrupted by KitKat threatening to come underfoot as she and we scamper from kitchen to living room and back with her bowl. She’s frightened of a toy we picked up for her. She poops in our garden and then eats in the living room. None of that ‘don’t shit where you eat’ stuff for her.

The clothes and couch are covered in cat fur, there’s no room for my revulsion. The only lesson I have learned over the last month is that no good is going to come out of me over-reacting to anything that happens in my life. The constant stream of OMGs and the WTFs that made up my days?

No, KitKat, no.

Cape Town, in watercolor

Painted by #Waterlogue

What I’m Lovin’ This Week ~ Waterlogue, the watercoloring app

Madly, deeply in love with a new app called Waterlogue. 

Waterlogue for the iPhone (and iPad) turns your photos into water-colour masterpieces. Plain and simple. If you’ve tried the water-colour filter on Photoshop but wished there was something with more nuance, you ought to try this. 

Select a photo, apply a filter and the water-colour painted-photo(?) is ready. The hook, though, is the water colouring process. After you’ve selected a photograph to be watercolored the app goes through the various stages of painting a picture. It’s strangely addictive watching the ‘painting’: the picture being drawn, colours being selected, the wetting of the brushes and then the shadows and hues slowly being layered on before the final water-colour emerges.

I thought I’d stick to just a few photos for my 2014 album on Facebook but ended up painting half the photos on my phone. The landscapes turned out gorgeous. K even exclaimed “Does this mean we can now print these out and put ‘em up?”

My selfie from the bathroom mirror didn’t turn out all that great - I turned into a giant polka dot with multiple rainbowy polka dots all over. Here’s why (according to Waterlogue): 

Waterlogue turns your photographs into watercolors by selectively removing information from your image. When working with faces that take up only a small part of the frame Waterlogue may treat the two sides of a face slightly differently. Unfortunately the human visual system is exquisitely tuned to recognize human faces. Slight anomalies in a picture of a face are much more noticeable than similar anomalies in pictures of other things. 

Waterlogue is available in the iOS/iTunes App Store for Rs 170. Please buy, beautify your life? :)

What I’m loving this week ~ No Nasties

There are many BIG problems that our Indian cotton farmers face. Here’s what the numbers look like: 

Cotton is the “dirtiest crop” - 55% of all synthetic pesticides in India are used in cotton farming.The average rate at which farmers commit suicide in India is every 30 minutes. There are 60 million child labourers in India - nearly the population of the UK. 

If I were to estimate the size of this BIG problem and try very hard to boil it down to an equation, this is what it would look like:

BIG Problem = Conventional Cotton Farms x Regular “Nike-style” Factory x Exploitative Brands x Greedy Customers

All of these obviously cannot be solved by our armchair activism. But armchair shoptivism (yes, I just coined that word) could help solve a teeny-weeny bit of it and that’s where No Nasties steps in.

I love the approach they take. They take each bit of what makes up that equation and do their bit to change and improve it! How’s that for multiplicative effect? 

No Nasties makes t-shirts. With 100% Organic Cotton. Which are 100% Fair Trade. They sell them through their 100% Awesome Store. We get to own 100% Cuddly-Bunny Soft Tees that keep us 100% Happy. 

The cotton used is pesticide free, the dyes used have no carcinogenic chemicals and the packaging has no plastics

What’s amazing is they are doing this while building an ecosystem of No Nasties around them - sustainable business taken to a whole new level. No Nasties also works with designers to build a community that regularly contributes with artwork and all their tees are delivered through Mirakle Couriers that employs low income deaf adults.

If you’re still not convinced about how all of this feel good, no nasty business works, here’s what they have to say:

”You may be tempted to ask if purchasing a single t-shirt matters; if participating in something so small can really make a difference?

We believe it can! And it starts with you! Start small; do your bit. Sooner or later, the others will join in. And then some more - and more - and everyone will do their small bit. And one day, there won’t be any more left to join & the world will be a better place. Magic!”

Shoes and Other Hurts

Go forth on high heels, come back on

foot. Post-lunch trauma. The tragedy that

strikes black stilletos and my twisted feet

shall only be spoken about in hushed

tones. Deference to the departed.

The slinky black stilletos now lie

wrapped in a neon pink plastic bag in the

trash can, their next-to-last resting place,

on Robertson Boulevard and Melrose

Avenue. Right outside Cecconi’s.

This tragedy which was followed by dinner at

Louie involved the consumption of

generous servings of mussels and clams,

whilst further drowning in the charms of

Mint Juleps and Sparkling wine. The

mourning spilled over into the morning,

where I helped myself to

pizza with Italian Sausage from Terroni’s

and gulped down mouthfuls of French

Vanilla flavored coffee from the

neighborhood CBTL.

May the shoes rest in peace.

They had seen better days. 

Memoirs of a Mad Cook →

Memoirs of a Mad Cook

There’s no point kidding myself any longer,
I just can’t get the knack of it ; I suspect
there’s a secret society which meets 
in dark cafeterias to pass on the art
from one member to another.
Besides,
It’s so personal preparing food for someone’s 
insides, what can I possibly know
about someone’s insides, how can I presume 
to invade your blood?
I’ll try, God knows I’ll try
but if anyone watches me I’ll scream
because maybe I’m handling a tomato wrong,
how can I know if I’m handling a tomato wrong?

something is eating away at me
with splendid teeth

Wistfully I stand in my difficult kitchen
and imagine the fantastic salads and soufflés
that will never be.
Everyone seems to grow thin with me
and their eyes grow black as hunters’ eyes
and search my face for sustenance.
All my friends are dying of hunger,
there is some basic dish I cannot offer,
and you my love are almost as lean
as the splendid wolf I must keep always
at my door.

by Gwendolyn MacEwen
from The Armies of the Moon
Toronto: Macmillan, 1972

Via loeufnoir.

Story of my life, our household.
He cooks, I eat.
I grow wider, he grows leaner.
I eat his food, I don’t eat his food.

The Flower Sellers of Bhopal

Flower sellers at Peer Gate, Bhopal

Here florists do a lazy job of making jasmine garlands - they string them together using a needle. I remember my Grandma doing it differently with more finesse:  the flowers in bud stage placed diagonally and woven together. Here, this is what it is and this is how it shall be; the florist ignores us, chattering away on his Nokia and deftly piercing flower with needle and string.

The streets are unbelievably clean. People quietly sweep the streets gathering flowers, leaves in newspapers. I don’t see where they dump this waste, a vegetable seller with a cart brimming over with greens impatiently kept asking me to get out of his way. I am a clumsy ladki in places like these.

Remember Monsoon Wedding where Vijay Raaz chabaos a single sunshine yellow marigold? There are gendaphool garlands piled up everywhere. Weddings indeed look better in shades of orange, gold and marigold. 

I am 20

A film made in 1967 of the hopes and ambitions of Midnight’s Children when they turned 20. 

Young men and women born on Independence Day in 1947 were selected from different parts of India and interviewed to discover their hopes, desires, ambitions and fears. They spoke about love, they spoke about their heroes and they spoke about their frustrations. The result is this unique film. 

40 years since the movie, there is still an India, there is a Bharat and now a Hindustan…and these shall never meet? Indians then and now speak of similar frustrations- bribes to be paid for “seats in a college or school”, security and stability in the form of a government job, sitting in a comfortable chair in an air-conditioned room, a desire to “be a cog in the machine." 

It seems the more things change, the more they remain the same. "We have a hopeful tomorrow but our today is very precarious” as one wise PN Subramaniam says in the film.

Paranoid Android

This happened last evening: I’m standing outside office on the dark lonely but traffucked street that runs by Alliance Francaise, trying to hail an auto. I see a guy in a white maruti 800, yawning and at the same time, driving towards the pavement. Everyone has had a long day, I think to myself. 

Next minute I see the car next to me. There’s a bearded guy in a black tee waving frantically asking me to get in. WTF. My god, the guy’s grinning AND waving. *blink blink* WTF. It’s strange the ways your brains has all these thoughts buzzing around for that fraction of a second: I could get a lift till the signal. OMG, what am I thinking. That guy could be a rapist. Why is he so persistent.

Then it strikes me. That’s my friend, Nakul. Absolute horror to serendipity in 30 seconds. 

-

Standing on that stretch of the road always leaves me afraid, vulnerable and defensive. I don’t want to stand too close to the edge of the pavement while I’m hailing a rickshaw because I don’t want a guy on a bike to grab my boobs or mow me down while he attempts to beat the traffic by driving ON the pavement. I shouldn’t be distracted by my phone while I hold my bags close so that nobody has easy access to my body parts. And god forbid, somebody tries grabbing the phone while I’m busy ensuring I stay aloof and my body, defensible.

Nakul makes for a good anti-climax, a friend remarked.

Yup, that. I don’t like being on my guard all the time. I don’t want to think the worst of every man who passes by. It also makes me very angry- when these very real fears are dismissed as paranoia, the workings of an overactive imagination, when good intentions are almost always overshadowed by the what-if. On my worst days, I wish upon them nothing more than what I go through: why must I alone be full of fear, be up for grabs every time I’m out in public. Y'know, I just want to hail an auto-rickshaw and go home. Why must something as mundane as that be so hard, so agonizing?

Delhi dur ast

I hadn’t been to Delhi till October this year. When I went to pitch at the Global Impact Award, that was my first time and then in a matter of 2 days, I was back for the Inaugural Janaagraha L C Jain Memorial Lecture at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Both of these were amazing experiences and deserve posts of their own. Will get to that later.

When I went to Delhi in the last week of October, Delhi was sunny. There was freshly mowed lawn, primary colored bean bags, endless cups of coffees and friendly geeky people in the nook that was the Taj Mansingh and Taj Ambassador.

A gap weekend of Diwali and so much had changed. Everything was jumping out at me - loudly, unabashedly. I was in Dally. 

Smog veiled the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the trees, the planes, the people, everything. So much like the polyester grey dupatta aunties wear over their nighties when dropping kids to school - so boring, it’s not even a distraction. But that’s a pity because (New?) Delhi is a mesmerizing city - there are rich people, famous people, armed people, babu people, safari suit people, politician people everywhere; there are barbed wires and red sandstone buildings; there are regular people lazing in lawns in roundabouts; there are people afraid of cops who will pull them up for not wearing a seatbelt, there are people who are driving and taking notes on their hands. CAPITAL City.

I felt severely underdressed, even for walking down the street. And then when I did get to the street, I felt undressed. The unstopping, penetrating gaze of the regular Delhi man never left me: The cab driver, the hotel staff, the shopkeepers, the pedestrians. Rupali at one point told me I’d stop noticing it. Or maybe she meant I’d stop feeling so naked. Or maybe that with time I’d forget that all-consuming sense of violation. Inviolate City?

If I squinted at the rows of sparkly lights in Khan Market, all I could see were shiny, happy, angry, powerful cars. A corner restaurant that smelled of freshly butchered meat served the softest Kakori Kebabs that I’d ever eaten. My bar wasn’t too high, I’d just eaten the most bastardized version of mutton biryani the previous evening. Plump bush-tailed dogs kept guard, children with sun-bleached hair burst firecrackers on pavements. So many white people smoked on the streets, so many young Indian couples tottered around hand-in-hand. Lal battis with black caps had young girls with scrunched noses who drove away without paying for parking, attendants banging on their tintless rolled-up windows. Segregated City!

At the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, signs in varied fonts - a Times New Roman here, a sans serif font there - asked you to keep quiet. Monks walked around, activist people in handloom clothes asked for free books to stuff into their swinging jholas. Someone mistook me for someone else. Monkeys swung from tree to tree, a noisy bird had no takers for its mating calls. Mrs Prime Minister was given 6 different options for tea - with milk, without; with sugar, without; with milk & sugar, without. All she wanted was a separate saucer to place her teabag. Vrinda Grover kept introducing her daughter to everyone around, someone air-kissed so loudly I jumped. Socialite City, Socialist City,

Dally. Batter than Bangalore? Batty-er than Mumbai.

Cupcakes - Then & Now

We had cupcakes from Cupcake Company for lunch today. Bangalore has come a long way from that day in 2010 when I had an unbearable soul-destroying cupcake craving.

I woke up on the 1st weekend of October 2010 with an unbearable cupcake craving. This was also the time I’d just returned from the Bay Area where I was spoilt almost every other weekend with Kara’s cupcakes, in all flavours, colours and sizes. K decided he was going to be the knight in shining armour and buy me cupcakes. I don’t know how many bakeries and confectioneries he called up asking, begging, pleading for cupcakes. No one had cupcakes.

Spoonful of Sugar decided they’re going to give cupcakes a shot. At 8 pm, I was presented with a box of 4 ‘cupcakes’ - 4 dense muffins topped with chocolate and hundreds & thousands sprinkles.

The next day we drove to Pondicherry and dug into some soul soothing Darjeeling Tea flavoured macarons.

-

Here’s where you can find some ridiculously good cupcakes.

Everything it seems I likes a little bit stronger

My weekends have gotten even more precious ever since I started working with Janaagraha a year ago. We work on 2 Saturdays in a month and 3, if it’s that dastardly month with 5 weekends packed in. Where these 5 weekends would once be a cause for celebration, it’s now the most stressful part of my life. Distressing even. Or at least enough to send me into paroxysms of anxiety (when do I do my grocery shopping, laundry, meet Dee for dinner) making lists of all the things I’m missing out on(mostly sleep and lazy brunches and too much mimosa) till it finally all comes to a head.

The long weekend had finally kicked in. It started with the most lofty of ambitions: a drive to Koramangala to dig into pillowy idlis at Kamath, some baking - perhaps an apple downside upside down cake, a movie, a quick detour to the Department of Horticulture to pick up some dirt, gardening, beer with friends. A little loving, a little exploring, a little excitement, a little adventure, a perfect weekend plan.

On Saturday, I bolted awake at 4.30 am - I had an interview with BBC Radio at 5.30 am. The alarm hadn’t gone off (In my head, I played out an entire “what if my body hadn’t bolted itself awake?” scenario), the cabbie hadn’t called, I didn’t have the cabbie’s number. After much hand-wringing, waking up cab companies at 5 am and other such unkindly acts at unearthly hours I made my way to the Hyatt on M G Road.

The sun hadn’t come up, Bangalore was lovely, dark and a few potholes deep. Kate and Mark at the BBC were kind to offer me a couple of coffees and let me by myself - talking politics, potholes and portmanteau words (Bollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood!)

Later in the afternoon, seven of us sat crouched around a long wooden table at a smoky pub and talked about work, mutual friends, our lives that were and what we wanted our lives to be. We drank mugs of Apple Ale, and then another, and then another.

This was a different time with pitch perfect timing, we didn’t have somewhere else to go or anyone else to be. A raucous afternoon, a subdued evening - Our voices hoarse with laughter and chatter, our minds emptied. This is what tumblers of good ale, plates of simple delicious food and a heart full of warm friendships brings.

Monday would have made Sunday proud. Maybe it was the puddles of rain from the previous night or the indecisive temperatures - one minute a chilly wind blowing and the next, shafts of piercing sunlight or the bacchanalian excesses of the days before. Or maybe we just needed a lazy quiet morning. There was no fervour for a holiday gained, no time for elaborate plans and escapes. We stayed put. In bed, draped on the couch.

We ordered in Chinese food. Kitschy, junk, takeaway in little paper boxes accompanied by sauces with no names. Chilli chicken, Schezwan noodles, Kung Pao Chicken. What’s a holiday without a drink? We resurrected leftover wine, a few days away from vinegar, as Sangria with a dash of star anise, shavings of orange rind, splashes of OJ, leftover watermelon cubes and diced apples.

Outside, the rain splashed, the autorickshaw stand stood framed in the sodium yellow of the streetlights, the train station buzzed with activity. Inside we licked the chilli sauce from our forks and sunk further into our torpor.

Advice to Little Girls - Mark Twain

“Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances.“

A quirky and mischievous little story by Mark Twain. Here’s what the Amazon description for an illustrated version of the book says:

When Mark Twain wrote the sparky short story “Advice to Little Girls” in 1865, he probably didn’t mean for it to be shown to them. Or maybe he did, since we all know Twain was a rascal."

Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances.

If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one, you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless. And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able to do it.

You ought never to take your little brother’s “chewing-gum” away from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster.

If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud–never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots.

If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won’t. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment.

You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you are indebted for your food, and for the privilege of staying home from school when you let on that you are sick. Therefore you ought to respect their little prejudices, and humor their little whims, and put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you too much.

Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged. You ought never to “sass” old people unless they “sass” you first.

Found it here.

What I'm Lovin' This Week ~ Sufi, Koramangala

Sufi at Koramangala is our Happy Place
Located above Empire near JNC

Eating at Sufi has now taken on shades of a ritual. We seat ourselves comfortably on the diwans and order a large pot of Persian Tea and in preparation for the dessert that they always seem to run out of, ask them to keep aside a couple of bowls of Sholezaad.

Persian Tea is served in little tumblers that have portraits of the Shah and comes in a blue ceramic teapot. So Iranian. This is followed by a bowl of Haleem Bademjan with a Naan. (They don’t have the Taftan unfortunately.)

Sometimes I’m a boring non-experimental eater unlike K. I came upon the Chenjeh Kebab(Boneless pieces of lamb) and have been faithful to it for 2 years or so now. K’s standard order is the Logmeh Kebab. All of this had with platefuls of Chelo and at least 4 little sachets of Amul Butter.

Two weeks ago we had a friend visiting and that was an excuse to try out something new on the menu:

Kebab-e-Shishleek
Lamb chops and spareribs 

Kebab-e-Negindar
Grilled minced meat of beef and lamb topped with chicken

Followed by the usual order of Kebab-e-Logmeh
Juicy pieces of minced lamb 

In typical Persian style, all of these meats are skewered on swords so they come to the table all flattened out and served on blue ceramic plates.

We go to Sufi because it’s our happy place. We go there when we want our “creatine fix” or we’re craving butter and rice and kebabs or because we’re suddenly hungry at 5 pm on a Sunday.

Sometimes the charming owner Dr Karimi is around, telling us stories about Iran and India when he moved twenty years or so ago. One of those Sundays when we landed up at 5 pm and there was no one around we met a group of folk singers from Rajasthan who then went on to sing for the better part of an hour while we sat around on those diwans digging into meat.

Sublime and spiritual.

Papa

My grandpa is in the hospital. No, scratch that. Right now he’s freezing in the morgue. 

There are so many people in the house on a Monday morning. Someone’s muttering prayers, an aunt is crying in the corner. My grandma breaks down when she sees me and then asks “Have you had breakfast? Do you want tea or coffee?" 

His chair has been moved. To make place for everyone who will come to pay their last respects. His bed is now storage for everyone’s bags, baggage from faraway countries. His walking stick is nowhere to be seen - someone has probably already laid claim to it. A distant relative has brought meat puffs for us for breakfast and a neighbour has taken them away. He loved meat puffs from Vaz Bakery; the neighbour says "No meat for the mourning." 

I’m not mourning. I’m just missing him. 

I sit at the kitchen counter, just like I would when he made omelettes because I refused to eat fish. My grandma asks me "Why didn’t you come here on Saturday? He was asking for you!”

I don’t have the heart to tell her that mom didn’t tell me he was asking for me. She didn’t tell me he was on his deathbed. Another aunt tries her hand at fifteen seconds of fame at a funeral: “He was waiting for me to arrive. He raised his hand and blessed me.” Mom chips in, “I was feeding him water with a spoon till his last breath.”

There’s going to be no end to this. 

I wait in the living room. It’s noon. The body is here, someone announces.

The body? That’s my Papa they are talking about. 

“

Laurie Penny’s Saudade

There are more of us than you think, kicking off our high-heeled shoes to run and being told not so fast
The best minds of my generation consumed by craving, furious half naked starving-

Who ripped tights and dripping make up smoked alone in bedsits bare mattresses waiting for transfiguration.

Who ran half dressed out of department stores yelling that we didn’t want to be good and beautiful

Who glowing high and hopeful were the last to leave the gig our skin crackling with lust and sweat and pure music

Who wrote poetry on each other’s arms and cared more about fucking than being fuckable

Who worked until our backs stiffened and our limbs sang with the memory of misbehaviour that was what it was to be a woman

Who dared to dance until dawn and were drugged and raped by men in clean T-shirts and woke up scared and sore to be told it was our fault

Who swallowed bosses’ patronizing side-eyes stole away from violent broken boys in the middle of the night and vowed never again to try to fix the world one man at a time

Who slammed down the tray of drinks and tore off our aprons and aching smiles and went scowling out into the streets looking for change

Who stripped in dark rooms for strangers’ anodyne dollars because we wanted education and were told we were traitors

Who sat faces upturned to the glow of the network searching searching for strangers who would call us pretty

Who bared our breasts to hidden cameras and fought and fought and fought to be human

Who waited in grim hallways with synth-pop crackling over the speaker system for the doctor to call us clutching fistfuls of pamphlets calling us sluts whores murderers

Who crossed continents alone with knapsacks full of books bare limbs clear-eyed vision running running from the homes that held our mothers down

Who filled notebooks with gibberish philosophy and scraps of stories and cameras to prove we were there keeping our novels and the name of out children close to our hearts

Who were told all our lives that we were too loud too tisky too fat too ugly too scruffy too selfish too much too and refused to take up less space refused to be still refused refused refused to be tame

Who would never be still.

Who would never shut up.

Who were punished for it and spat and snarled and they shook the bars of our cages until they snapped and they called us wild and crazy and we laughed with mouths open hearts open hands open and would never not ever be tame.

Sara, I’m with you in hospital, in the narroe rooms where you have put off your veil to count your ribs through your T-shirt, short hair and secrets and quiet defiance crying together that we don’t know how to be perfect-

Lara, I’m with you in mandatory art therapy, where we draw pictures of weeping cocks and are told we are not making progress-

Lila, I’m with you in a north London bathdroom, watchhing unreal maggots crawl in the cuts in your arms and listening to your girlfriend drunk and raging through the wall-

Andy, I’m with you in Bethnal Green where you love ambitious angry women with heart brain pen fingers tongue and you have a line from Nietzche tattooed over your cunt-

Adele, I’m with you in the student occupation, with your lipstick and cloche hat and teenage lisp drawling that there’s not enough fucking in this revolution and we must take action-

Kay, I’m with you on the night bus, half drunk and high dragging bright-eyed boys home to our bed, where we watch them worn out sleeping and whisper that we will never be married-

Katie, I’m with you in Zuccotti Park, where a broken heart is less important than a broken laptop is less important than a broken future and we watch the cops beating kids bloody on the pavement for daring to ask for more-

Tara, I’m with you in Islington where you have thrown all your pretty dresses out of the window and flushed your medication so you can write and write-

Alex, I’m with you and a bottle of Scotch at two in the morning when you tell me that no man will make us live for ever and we must seduce the city the country the world-

We are always hungry.

There are more of us than you think.

”

—

Laurie Penny’s Saudade, from Fifty Shades of Feminism (via mollycrabapple)

There are always more of us than you think

Bo Kaap, Cape Town

Bo Kaap, Cape Town

“Famously known as a Malay neighbourhood (it is sometimes referred to as "the Malay quarter”), the Bo-Kaap has always been racially and culturally diverse, first housing Europeans and some Asians in the 18th century. After slavery was abolished in 1834, many freed slaves made the area their home. Islam was brought to the Western Cape in the 17th century and the Bo-Kaap soon became a hotbed for its teachings. The religion was attractive to former slaves, who rejected the Christianity of the British and the Dutch. South Africa’s oldest mosque is in the Bo-Kaap.

Although it is predominantly Muslim, historically up to 40% of the neighbourhood was Christian. The area remained racially and culturally diverse until it was designated a Malay area under the Group Areas Act. It remained one of the only sections of the central business district (CBD) that housed nonwhites throughout apartheid.

But the Bo-Kaap is changing. Booming demand for prime real estate in the CBD has made the neighbourhood increasingly appealing to outsiders. Its famous cobbled streets, coloured houses and homey atmosphere, coupled with relatively low house prices compared with other parts of the CBD, make it especially attractive to young creative types who want to get off the beaten track but still stay close to the city hub. In some parts of the Bo-Kaap, you are now as likely to meet a young, blonde German-born filmmaker, a skinny-jeans-wearing, soya-cappucino-drinking fashion editor or a Jo'burg business executive as you are an imam or artisan at one of the neighbourhood’s many corner shops.“

What I'm Loving' This Week ~ BiteMe Cupcakes, Bangalore

BiteMe Cupcake Company
100 ft Road, Indiranagar

I’d seen Divya’s recipes for cupcakes, had heard about Bite Me’s cupcakes and pupcakes when she started her home bakery and now that Kingsley and Divya have started a store on 100 ft Road, I knew I had to try it.

Wonsaponatime - October 2010, to be precise - K attempted to get me cupcakes. He couldn’t find any so he convinced Spoonful of Sugar to bake chocolate muffins and add sprinkles on top. That was the first and last time I ate “cupcakes” in Bangalore.

Till last night, that is.

K and I hopped over to the beautiful little store located opposite Chroma on 100 ft road. Kingsley was around, upping the geeky quotient of cupcakes? :) And there they were: Butterscotch and Blueberry and Cookies & Cream and Dulce de leche and Red Velvet and Orange Marmalade. Nope, not my helpful elves. Just little bites of yumminess. 

So! No more muffins pretending and aspiring to be cupcakes. Yay!

Moist (maybe a tad too moist?) and light, the cupcakes are delightful. The flavours aren’t overwhelming and being perfectly bite sized, you don’t have to worry about flavour boredom. They also hit the sweet spot of being well-priced - Rs 100 for 3. Is that a steal or what?!

Kingsley mentioned that they would start serving coffee soon so that’s a bonus. If you’re looking for plug-points because you want to hang out at a place that’s “startup friendly”, fret not - they’ve got it covered too.

Be warned, there’s also a downside to all this awesomeness: You start off eating one and before you know it, you’ve got fingers sticky with 4 out of the 6 flavours in the box. Many a slip between the cup(cake) and the lip and all that. Heh.

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They’re open from 11AM to 9PM every day. (Except Tuesdays, I think)
You can reach out to them on Twitter at @BiteMeCompany