Leisure

Blue Mojitos and even Bluer Mondays

Posted on by Roshni Anand

I’m back. Back in the city I grew up in.

The city that turned me into a woman.

The city that I left, not too long ago, in search of a better life, with suitcases stuffed to the brim with clothes that were too big for me and dreams that were bigger still.

The city that I then ran back to, tired, beaten and worn, with barely any fight left in me. It’s hard not to feel like a failure when you’re back in the same place you once declared, “This is it, this is the point where I’m going to change my life.”

If those dime-a-dozen loquacious LinkedIn influencers with half a million connections had rubbed off on me, I’d say this isn’t the end, just another beginning. “Rejection is just Redirection,” they’d parrot, with their veneer white smiles glitching out the pixels on my laptop screen.

As aggravating as I have come to find them, I must marvel at their ability to push out 300-odd characters using the 4-1-1 rule, the 80/20 ratio, the hashtag cluster hierarchy and other soulless digital decrees that seem to value optimisation over authenticity. I scroll past a post with the headline, “To fail is to be human. Here’s how AI can help turn cold leads into offers,” and I feel my lungs tighten the same way they did when I realised the first boy I ever loved was a cryptogeek.

Well, Tyler the Creator once said, “If it’s hard to breathe, open a window,” and as I sit in the balcony of my aunt’s house in the middle of a plantation, in a far-flung corner of the backwoods of Bangalore, I regard his words with a grave solemness. I’ve missed the smell of Luru – the sui generis blend of petrichor, vehicle exhaust and the faintest hint of Indie Mint.

It is only my second day back, but I feel better about my life already. Which is surprising, given everything I’ve had to deal with in the last 48 hours. I lost my phone, and subsequently, access to my bank accounts. Truly amazing where the mind of a twenty-something woman will go once faced with total financial shutdown. Also, I’ve been feeling nauseous all week, and the flight only made the impulse to throw up even worse. Again, amazing where the mind of a twenty-something woman will go when she wakes up to hurl three nights in a row.

I digress.

Comedic tragedy aside, I finally feel tethered again. For the longest time, I felt like I was floating aimlessly in open water, trying to fool myself into believing I had some sense of direction when it was taking everything in me to keep afloat as the waves knocked into me. Sitting in a mostly-empty cafe in Yelahanka, sipping on a bright blue citrus lemonade, was the most present I’d been since March. I didn’t realise I’d been watching myself live through horrifically life-changing events for months, instead of actually letting myself experience them. Maybe that’s self-preservation – my brain protecting me from feeling things that I’m not capable of handling – but I’m not very fond of psychologists at the moment, so I’m gonna nip that thought right in the bud.

Yes, this picture is terrible, but I wasn’t planning on posting it anywhere when I took it.

This cafe was nothing to brag about – imitation limestone walls, mosaic tiled flooring and plastic blue tableware. But with a menu that had an Indo-Chinese section right next to a list of wood-fired pizzas, I could tell this was not ye olde run of the mill homage to Greek dockside eateries. Nah, this was where I was gonna spend the rest of my day. I slunk into a booth by the brick pizza oven, connected all my devices to the ingeniously named “Free WiFi 2.4 GHz”, and kicked off my Converse, my eyes settling on my first drink of the afternoon.

Six hours later, I’d downed a disastrously dilute frozen mocha, stained my lips and teeth with a blue virgin mojito, and eaten my way to the loosest notch of my belt. Note to self – if a place has chicken and egg fried rice for less than 200 rupees, the rice will be doing most of the heavy lifting. That being said, I just about licked the bowl clean. I wish I could say I’d had similar levels of success on the long list of tasks I had set out to do that day, but all I’d done was set up two meetings with people I had absolutely no business demanding face time with, submitted a shoddily put together content plan for a sketchy asset management company, and cancelled my Indian SIM card with no plans of reactivating it.

It was at this point that I became aware of the fact that I was being watched. Looking over the corner of my laptop screen, I met the unblinking stare of a gaggle of girls. They couldn’t have been older than ten, which I brilliantly deduced from the cake on their table with candles that read “1-0”, and were all dressed in pink. No adult in sight, I assumed their chaperone had better things to do than supervise half a dozen children at a cafe where the biggest threat was death-by-paper straw. So, with nobody telling them to mind their P’s and Q’s, these girls could bore holes into the back of my laptop all they wanted.

I suddenly felt the vinyl of the seat under my thighs cling painfully to my skin. Something about being witnessed in the act of trying to piece my life back together made me want to run away. I had to get out of there. I had to leave. This feeling, the need to run, to escape, was all too familiar.

It’s exactly how I’d felt the night before my flight to India. Curled up in my duvet, I lay awake with wet eyes and a dry mouth. My mind was playing all my biggest fears that had come to fruition in a sadistic, never-ending loop. I couldn’t hear my own heartbeat over the drone of “You failed, better give up while you still can.” That night, India was a lifesaver thrown to me, and all I had to do was tread water until I could leave for the airport.

But I was wrong. That feeling was still there. Still festering inside me, demanding to be noticed. And I’d just been pushing myself further away from it in hopes that it would leave me alone.

All I could think of as I waved down a waiter for the cheque was how self-awareness was the worst fucking thing to come out of a decade of therapy.

The chicken was crispy, but so was the egg, and I’m not sure if it was intentional

I wish it took more than a stream-of-consciousness blog post to make me confront my self-destructive behaviour. This post was supposed to be a review, just a few words expanding on the notes I’d scribbled in my journal at BlueBrick Cafe. So to conclude this, here are my thoughts:

Food: Could have been a little more generous with the protein, and maybe it’s because I’m biased, but the lack of a Caesar Salad docked a couple of points.
Beverages: Presentation? Fire. Temperature? Ice cold. Flavour? Left something to be desired. Also, as someone who is indifferent to a mocha at best, I probably shouldn’t have ordered one.
Ambience: Free wifi, comfy seats, open-air seating with a closed-off party area. It was a really pleasant place to work at, and the playlist of lo-fi covers of pop songs softly playing in the background made me feel like an NPC in the best way.
Overall thoughts: I racked up a bill of ₹640. Ultimately, this spot is pretty great if you want somewhere you can sit undisturbed and get some work done. Aside from the odd IT guy and coy college couple, there weren’t a lot of patrons around. With a few friends and a board game or two, I could see this place quickly becoming one of my favourite spots to spend an afternoon.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

Silence of The Lambs- a Hair Raising Read

Posted on by Roshni Anand

Silence of The Lambs, the 1988 novel by American novelist Thomas Harris continues to be one of the finest paradigms of the thriller genre in literature. Hailed by critics, this novel caused waves in the public upon initial release in 1988 and continues to raise hairs on the necks of readers everywhere. Hot on the heels of his first thriller novel Red Dragon, Harris lives up to his reputation as a master of thrillerdom with Silence of the Lambs, a blood-chilling tale of a young FBI agent. Also in this book, Hannibal Lecter, a man who played a small role in the earlier novel, finally takes up the mantle of being the most feared Machiavellian villain in fiction.

In the novel, the FBI have their hands full trying to track down an infamous serial killer nicknamed ‘Buffalo Bill’– an unidentified man who targets and kills young women and skins them. Jack Crawford, the FBI agent in charge of the case, send his young trainee Clarice Sterling to gain insight from the homicidal genius Hannibal Lecter. Dr Lecter proceeds to play mind games on young Clarice, drawing out her deepest fears and playing on her trauma. He agrees to help Clarice track down Buffalo Bill, but on the condition that she reveals details from her life to him. Wary of the intentions of the murderous criminal psychiatrist, Clarice refuses initially but eventually agrees to the terms. He drops nuggets of invaluable information about the identity of Buffalo Bill, and Clarice gets closer to unveiling and capturing the crazed killer.

When Buffalo Bill strikes yet again and claims another victim, this time daughter of a congresswoman, the FBI are driven to desperation and are forced to strike a deal with Lecter who claims he knows the identity of the killer. After dropping several red herrings and sending the FBI on a wild goose chase, Dr Lecter escapes during his transfer out of the asylum, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Meanwhile, Clarice Sterling, after following up on the clues given to her by Lecter, finds the man nicknamed Buffalo Bill– who turns out to be the former lover of one of the patients that Lecter treated and eventually killed. She shoots him and rescues the congresswoman’s daughter. The novel ends with a letter written by Lecter to Sterling, congratulating her on her big win.

The novel, although told through a third person’s perspective, is successful in communicating the terrifying ordeal Clarice goes through to hunt down the serial killer. A major part of the book follows her on her endeavour, but this narrative is occasionally broken up with tales of her life before the FBI, and Hannibal’s own experiences as a murderous psychiatrist. Hannibal in the book is Harris’ manifestation of all-knowing, self-aware evil– his success lies in the way he toys with Clarice and the readers as well. Harris’ characterization of Lecter as a self-controlled yet ruthless malevolent force served as the archetype to other popular sociopathic villains in modern literature and film, a character type that continues to unnerve audiences. While the free man on a murderous rampage is definitely an active threat, it is the nefarious villain behind bars that the readers grow to fear the most. 

Silence of The Lambs by Thomas Harris paperback

Harris is no novice to the art of terrifying readers. With chapters in the novel dedicated to Buffalo Bill’s hunt for his victims and attention paid to every gruesome detail in describing the murder of Hannibal’s victims, Harris’ descriptions conjure up images to make even the most stoic readers lose sleep. He delves into mundane descriptions of moths, prison cell bars and FBI protocols, and turns what would otherwise be filler chapters into parts of the novel dedicated to creating a world that pulls the readers in headfirst. On the flip side, his nonchalance in the handling of abnormal situations like the discovery of a bloated corpse and Dr Lecter’s cannibalistic tendencies throws the reader for a loop, making them question their judgement of what is morally good and bad, acceptable or abhorrent. The novel’s ending too is ambiguous, leaving the readers stranded in a cloud of suspense and yearning for more of the unimaginably sinister Dr Lecter. 

After careful consideration, I would give the novel a rating of 7/10, docking 3 points because of the overtly transphobic nature of the descriptions of transsexuals, and the terming of transgender individuals as mentally unstable. Moreover, the novel’s assumption that gay men are by default perverse individuals who envy and resent women perpetuates several harmful stereotypes about an already villainized community.

The popularity of Harris’ novel garnered international appraisal, and several accolades as well. The novel won the Bram Stoker award for best novel in 1988, The Anthony Award for best novel in 1989 and was nominated that same year for the World Fantasy Award. Lauded by novelists like Roald Dahl and David Foster Wallace, Silence of The Lambs is an incredibly thrilling story bound to have readers looking over their shoulders as they flip through the pages. 

Coming Out

Posted on by Roshni Anand

I was 16 years old when I switched schools, leaving behind all my friends and the life I’d had in favour of ‘higher education’, choosing to embark on a new adventure. That’s a lie– we moved and my mum didn’t want me spending 2 hours on a bus everyday– not very flashy, but it’s the truth. Also, this story contains mentions of depression and self harm. It’s a happy coming-out one though, I promise, so stick with me on this.

So there I was– 16, depressed and painfully shy. I’d never been one to open up to people easily, and the fact that I didn’t have the school uniform until two weeks after school started meant I stuck out like a sore thumb. The subjects I’d taken were all so alien to me, and my quiet battle with mental illness pushed me further and further away from anyone I could have possibly called a friend. Until she showed up.

Now I’m not one to toot my own horn, but I will admit that I was a good student. For years, I thrived on academic validation. But now, in a new environment, there was competition. Specifically, a girl in my English class. Every quiz we had, every little test that we took, she was always one step ahead. Growing up in a heteronormative home (which has since changed, thankfully) I assumed that the palpitations I felt when I heard her name called out, the reason my hair stood raised when she sat next to me, the reason I couldn’t utter a word when she was in the room was because I truly couldn’t stand her. The first time she said my name, addressing me directly, my palms started sweating and I knew that this girl scared the hell out of me. That is, of course, until I woke up one morning with butterflies in my stomach and her face in my mind. This wasn’t hate.

I didn’t take this idea well. In fact, I rejected it outright, and tried to convince myself that my feelings were misguided. But once I walked into class and saw her smile at me, I knew I was screwed. I, a woman, was I love with…a woman. I knew what this meant for me. The world I grew up in wasn’t kind to people like that. I remember my parents’ disgust when they spat out the word ‘Lesbian’ when I asked who Ellen Degenres was. And I was scared. Terrified that my friends and family wouldn’t accept me.  So I decided that I was going to keep this to myself. I would write about it on the notes app in my phone, type out all my ‘deviant’ thoughts on that silly little screen and read them from time to time to see if my feelings changed. They didn’t.

One day, I came home from school to see my phone on the coffee table with a letter beside it. A letter in my mother’s handwriting. She’d gone through my phone– as mothers do– and found every single one of those notes I had written. To summarise, shit had hit the fan. My life at home was hell, with my parents refusing to look at or even talk to me, my school life plagued by the girl I had such strong feelings for and to top it off I had no friends to talk to about this. The six months that followed were the last months I thought I’d live to see.

The funny thing about families is that we are very fickle people sometimes. Mine were extremely orthodox and religious, and believed that people shouldn’t deviate from the norm. When they saw how much pain their beliefs caused me, the convictions they’d held for decades began to disintegrate. It’s been five years since then. My family and I spent hours in therapy, had a lot of uncomfortable conversations, shed a lot (and I mean a LOT) of tears to get to the point where my mother sends me a picture of every rainbow coloured thing she sees with the caption “this is you”.

This was supposed to be coming out story, but I guess I can’t call it one because I never got to come out. Not to the people that mattered most, I guess. I know a lot of queer folk who’ve had their moments robbed from them, and trust me it hurts. To have your sense of identity ripped from your delicate hands and showcased to a word that expects you to defend it is traumatising in a way that colours every conversation you have with another queer person. But I’m here to say it’s not the end of the world. You will find your tribe, people who love and accept you for who you are. Coming out isn’t all there is to you– your queerness lives in every word your speak, every verse you write, every note you sing. You identity is yours alone, and nothing can change that. As for the girl I fell in love with? I didn’t tell her how I felt.

And I don’t think I ever will.

Cream and Chocolate

Posted on by Roshni Anand

Things go wrong all the time and humans, the naive little creatures we are, cling on to the hope that one day they might not. We look for a ‘silver lining‘– a single sliver of goodness in a giant sea of plain old bad. This can prove to be exhausting, especially when you have to go looking for the silver lining to reassure yourself that the universe does not, in fact, hate every fibre of your being. 

I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs and I’d be lying to myself if I said that no matter how hard the current against me was, I stood firm in my belief that there would come a rainbow after this storm. Of course, I didn’t. There were extended periods in my life when I’d trudge through dates in the calendar as a gelatinous, sleep-deprived blob wrapped in a blue duvet, trying to make up for her serotonin shortage with garlic breadsticks and instant ramen.

Nothing seemed to be going my way. After attempting to attend a normal high school and failing twice, I’d given up on institutionalised education and finished my degree through an open school, completely isolated throughout the process. The anti-depressants and anxiety medication I was on was making me pack on pounds like crazy, and this didn’t help my already low esteem. Throw in chronic autoimmune disease and I might as well have had ‘God’s Cruel Joke‘ tattooed on my forehead. Everyday I woke up wishing I hadn’t. And then I found my old baking equipment.

You know how people say they remember the exact moment they decided to turn their life around? Like an addict checking themselves into rehab or an estranged father reaching out to his family? Yeah no, that didn’t happen. I’m not going to say “The second my hand touched the silicone spatula I was transported to my grandmother’s kitchen where I’d bake cookies with her after school,” or any other saccharine shit like that.

What really happened was I’d been instructed to clean out the guest room wardrobe for my visiting family, and accidentally stumbled upon a drawer full of cake tins, sprinkles, whisks and piping bags. My mum gave me an ultimatum, saying she’d throw the whole lot away unless I used them. Maybe that made me realise I missed baking, or maybe my sweet tooth made me cave, but I decided I was going to make a triple-layered chocolate mousse cake. 

Anyone who’s tried to make mousse knows that there is very little margin for error. Whisking it too much or too little, letting it boil for a little too long or not long enough or even piping it the wrong way can ruin the light airy texture that it’s supposed to have. The recipe I’d chosen called for 3 kinds of chocolate mousse, each with different consistencies and flavour profiles. And I, a novice baker who hadn’t set foot in the kitchen for over three years, had set myself up for failure.

After 4 gruelling hours in the kitchen, I stared at the monstrosity I’d created with wide eyes. It had an unsightly dip in the middle and the bottom layer was oozing out of the biscuit base because I’d put too much chocolate and not enough heavy cream in there. Predictably, I went on a tirade about how I could never do anything right and I’m a no-good failure and yada-yada, but ultimately the aforementioned sweet tooth made me take a bite of my ghastly creation. And it was…..pretty fucking good.

The bottom layer that I’d put too much chocolate in tasted like chocolate ganache. The middle layer that I’d left in the fridge for too long had frozen into milk chocolate ice cream. The top layer had white chocolate in it that I’d whipped a little too vigorously and melted in my mouth like whipped cream. I’d messed up nearly every step of the recipe, yet every spoonful had me reaching for another one.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t mess up cream and chocolate. Sure, maybe you don’t get the decadent ganache you wanted, but you get a chocolate thick shake which, in my opinion, isn’t a bad trade-off. The forces that appear to be working against you might actually be steering you towards something else, maybe even something better. If I’d stayed in any one of the two schools I’d dropped out of, I wouldn’t have met the amazing people in my support group or any of the friends I made through poetry. If I hadn’t spent two years at home, I would never have bonded with my sister the way I did. If I hadn’t opened up that drawer full of dusty cake tins, I would never have felt so embarrassed by the goopy mess of a cake I made that I put in hours of practice to make sure I only turned out quality creations. 

I wouldn’t trade the experiences that shaped me into the person I am today. I lived through the pain and the sadness and everything else the world threw at me, and I bear my battle scars proudly because the life I have now is worth doing it all over again.

I said there would be no saccharine shit in here. I lied.

The Big Chop

Posted on by Roshni Anand

I was born with a head full of hair.

At least, that’s what my mother tells me. The doctor held me up for everyone to behold and the nurses marvelled at the dark coils on my tiny scalp.

When I was 1, my mother refused to take me to Tirupathi to shave my hair off as a sacred offering to god. She claimed that God had blessed her child with beauty, not vanity, and there was nothing unholy about the gorgeous mane on my melon-sized noggin.

When I was 5, I was experimenting with safety scissors in art class and cropped off a good three inches of hair. My mother nearly flayed me alive and made me write an apology note to my fallen locks.

When I was 9, I was at a friend’s birthday party and I heard some girls sniggering in the corner of the room. They called me names and said I smelled of coconuts. I ran my hands down my oily braids and bit the inside of my cheek, trying to will the tears to go back from whence they came.

When I was 13, I went out for ice cream with a small group of classmates. I’d tied my hair up in a bun because of the blistering heat, and everyone said they’d never seen me with my hair pinned up before. They liked it, and so did I.

When I was 15, I convinced my mother to let me get a tiny strip of hair dyed red. She drove me to the salon herself and watched with pursed lips as the stylist snipped away at my split ends, chatting with me about how much I could experiment with my tresses. The entire time, I could feel my mpther’s eyes boring into the back of my skull.

When I was 16, in a fit of boiling teenage angst, I stormed into my bathroom, cut off nearly two feet of long, straight shiny hair, stuffed it into a mug and presented it to my mother with a smug look on my face. She was devastated, and her reaction gave me a moment of satisfaction before the reality of what I’d done descended upon me. Oh god.

When I was 18, i was sick of what I looked like. I bought myself a packet of bleach and some hair dye and three hours later I emerged from my bedroom with a shock of blue framing my face. My mother screamed and dropped the bowl of peanuts she was shelling.

A week ago, after having blue hair for nearly three years, I decided I wanted a change. I rooted through the boxes in my uncle’s storeroom and found my grandfather’s old shaving razors. I FaceTimed my parents to show them what I’d done, and my mother let out an elated cry. She called me brave. My father called me beautiful.

My sister just called me bald.

Recovery.

Posted on by Roshni Anand

I am trapped .
In a shallow pit .
I could get out if I wanted to .
And I should want to .
But somehow, I cannot .

This wasn’t a pit to begin with .
It was a sinkhole .
It plunged into darkness.
Everything avoided it.
The light.
The warmth.
The air.
But somehow, I did not.

It was blacker than any night I’d spent awake.
It was colder than any blade that had grazed my skin.
It was emptier than the plates of food I’d flushed down the toilet.
It was hopeless.
It was joyless.
Escape should have been impossible.
But somehow, it was not.

I used my fingers.
I used my teeth.
I used my voice and made my throat bleed.
I clawed my way up.
Up the cold slimy walls.
Until the blood ran down my arms and into my mouth.
I should have stopped .
I should have fallen .
But somehow, I did not.

Now the light is just a breath away.
My fingertips yearn for the warmth.
But my body is torn.
And my mind is broken.
And the air is thick
With the smell of my trials.
I should rest for a while.
I deserve it.
To close my eyes and dream to be free.
But somehow, I cannot.

You see,
When I shut my eyes,
The darkness envelops me,
And the feeling of sinking
Back into hell,
Back into hopelessness,
Clouds my senses.

I should be able to fight it
For a few minutes more.
For surely, how do ten minutes compare
To two years of desolation?
But somehow,
Somehow

They do.

Have you ever been in love?

Posted on by Roshni Anand

Have you ever been in love?
Not with a person,
But with a memory

I remember my mother taking me on long drives all over the city in her old beat up 1998 Maruti Suzuki Zen. It was dark green and we used to call it the Beetle Wagon because it looked like a bug. 

I remember getting in the car before we’d set off on one of those drives and sifting through her cassette collection to pick out our playlist for the day. I remember accidentally unspooling an entire cassette of 1990’s love songs. We’d blast The Bangles and Britney and Natasha Bedingfield through those tiny speakers and sing along to the muffled lyrics. We’d get the words wrong- we didn’t know this until years later when YouTube karaoke became a thing- but that didn’t stop us from singing to them like we were performing in front of a stadium full of people.

I remember she’d sometimes pick me up from school and take me to the Juice Junction in Indiranagar before these drives. ‘Fuel for the journey’, she’d say. Our order was always the same- veggie sandwich and watermelon juice for her, a chilli cheese sandwich and chocolate milkshake for me. She’d always say I should eat more vegetables but she’d never stop me because she knew it made me happy. Maybe I should have listened to her more.

I remember feeling so safe in that tiny vehicle. It was objectively a pitiful car, but I was small enough for it to feel like a chariot, like royalty on my way to a ball. My mother was so proud of it, how could I not be too? I remember her being so proud to be the first person in our family to make a huge purchase, to learn how to drive, and to teach my father. I know now that the car was more to her than a mode to get places. It was a means for her to get away.

 I miss those car rides. The car got sold nearly a decade and a half ago, the roads we’d take don’t look the same, the cassettes we’d listen to collect dust in the back of my grandmother’s bureau. My sister never liked singing in the car, and once she got older the music was turned down and we’d talk to each other instead. My dad would join in on the singing occasionally, but he’s a talker too.

I miss you, Ma. Singing isn’t the same without you.