Travel Odd/ Travel Free

I’m not sure when the 'odd-travel' bug kicked in. Maybe it was post my board exams when everyone went to Goa, and I was hauled off to Bangladesh as a treat, by my hippie mum and ayurvedic-reflexologist aunt. “It’ll be so much fun!” They said with excitement as I sulked over the un-ringing landline, thinking of my friends donning bikinis (!) on beaches. Despite my whiny apprehension, it was fun. It was a whole lot of fun. We spent a few days in Calcutta and then made our way across the border by bus. We caught a boat and then floated down the rivers of the Bangladeshi Sunderbans for days…lying dreamily on the top deck watching bruise-like sunsets, buying fish from tiny boats going past, trekking barefoot through mangrove forests, chasing tiger paws, listening to Jim Morrison renditions early morning. I was 15 with a terrible “boy cut”, braces and baggy jeans but I’d never felt cooler, and when I got back to school I knew I’d been somewhere better. I’d been off the beaten track…

This year, 12 years later, my aunt, mum and I took another trip. This time we chose to explore the Kingdom of Sikkim. Once again we flew to Bengal (Bagdogra this time…my mum and aunt are both half-Bengali which may explain why we cosmically route everything through there), and took the road across the border at Rangpo. What followed were the best ten days I’ve had in a long time. Craggy peaks, Changu Lake surrounded by snow, yaks with woolen orange horn warmers, a million orchids, rosy cheeks, the Dalai Lama, ancient monasteries and baby monks skipping past us at every step. I came back misty-eyed, breathing easier.

Every time I’m back home from an ‘odd’ trip, once I’m through with Phase One of reminiscing, I put up a whole bunch of photos. Yup, I’m the girl that bombards you with an album full of sparkling blue water, cute kids, location-specific fauna, meals from afar and swoon-worthy scenery, every time I re-enter Delhi. And every time I do, I get a lot of comments on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the other numerous noisy portals I use to communicate with the world. People write to me saying, “Those are beautiful,” and “wow,” and what not but most, most often I get this message: You’re so lucky.

Now here’s what – I won’t for one second tell you I’m not lucky. Because I am, and I am eternally grateful to God, the Universe and a guy called Nauriyal, who all changed my life in some way by making my main means of income travel. But I’ll also say this, that the Facebook album is a lie. Well, half a lie. It’s true, you only get to see the good bits. But there’s a whole different album and diary that you haven’t seen. For every luxury trip to the Maldives there’s a trip to a place like Digha. For every journey by business class, there are so many on three-tier trains that arrive in village destinations at 4am. And for every meal made in a French kitchen, there are five in a row that taste exactly the same as each other. My Spain album had a generous amount of pictures of me kickboxing with hot men on the beaches of Barcelona, but it didn’t tell you that we slept an average of 3 and a half hours a night, got in trouble with the police, got food poisoning and STILL shot a record 8 episodes in 10 days. There’s always a flipside…for instance, the Andamans are gorgeous, but they’re also a prime place for spiders in your teacup, scorpions in your shower and snakes slipping past your feet (all three did happen).

I began to notice that a lot of people confused ‘good’ travel with ‘luxury’ travel, too often. That a place is only worth oohing over if Anthony Hopkins was the last person to have slept in your bed (yes, that was at Tony Robbins’ resort in Fiji – Namale Spa). But that’s not true. I took one of the best trips of my life when I agreed to travel the Himalayas for someone for a month for a tiny (really it was TINY) amount of money. Because it was the Himalayas. Because a small compromise may be the richest ticket you ride. And by limiting your idea of great travel to “fancy-ass travel” you cut down your options (of course), but you also cut down how you see the world. If you won’t take a train, if you won’t trek, if you won’t live in a tent, if you refuse to walk, if you won’t eat from a street stall…you wont do a hundred other things either. And those other 100 things are all something you want to do.

I asked a few friends to come with me on certain trips. The non-luxury variety of trip. I promised it would be fun, and that all they had to pay for was their own travel there…in some cases, even this was taken care of. Some of the people I asked were the ones who had most mailed me complaining about how “dull” their lives were and how “lucky” I was. It was surprising then when most of the replies I got went something like this, “But where will we stay?” or “Do they have good food there?” Some even went as far as to say, “But I’ve heard there’s nothing to do there.” Of the ones who did come along, it was very few who saw the trips for what I did – as an opportunity to get out of the city, explore a weird (and maybe wonderful) new place, get lost, forget yourself and come back refreshed. There were consistent complaints about a lack of booze shops, the quality of hotel, the shitty restaurants and the bad service. This was small town India we were traveling and tiramisu was unfortunately not on the menu. I was disappointed. In fact, I was disappointed enough to blog about it here…something I haven’t done in a long time.

No adventure comes clean. Adventure is not easy. You cannot view the entire valley if you don’t climb to the top of the mountain. So here’s what…you can cry over dirty sheets, ugly hotels, cockroaches and musty rooms; you can complain about not enough food options and a tear in a towel, and that’s okay, but are you willing then to miss out on secret beaches, hidden treks to spectacular viewpoints, random gems, meeting beautiful strangers and being the first person to step foot in a new place? I have used the worst loos and I have gone hungry for hours on end but I have also dined on foggy hills with baby monks, and had them walk me through secret forests…I have eaten cherries fresh of trees that weren’t aware they had sprouted them yet. I have swum in freshwater lagoons so lonely, they have wept and turned to salt on seeing me. I have thrown up for two hours from seasickness then jumped into freezing cold water anyway, to have a shark grab the cage I’m in and shake me around like a leaf. I have wandered through Haryana’s dry hinterland for hours to find a mosque in which there was, housed and nurtured by a priestess, a temple and a gurudwara. It’s not hard to ignore the discomfort for a bigger dream.

Here’s a story… I took a boat ride out to sea one day in Orissa. The boatman told me for 500 rupees he would show me something special. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this but I had an hour to kill and it was hot. I took a look at the boat and found it grubby and mouldy with a floor full of slime. “It’s worth seeing,” he said half-heartedly. I felt a bit sorry for him so praying what he wanted to show me wasn’t a knife or his nether regions, I trusted his kind face and set off in his boat. He began rowing and I noticed we were heading towards an island just off the mainland.  When we got there I hopped out and scanned the beach…I found there wasn’t a single footprint on it. He got out of the boat and began walking…I followed him and he walked me down the sand to a point where the river met the sea. We stopped finally and he breathed in the salty air. “Look,” he said, “how even though they’re both water, one is one shade of blue and the other is another.” Then, shaking his head he said, “ How is it, that this one doesn’t turn to salt…and that one doesn’t become sweet.” It was special indeed. I had a feeling while standing there that we may be the last people left on Earth. Sighing he began to walk on…I thanked him for showing me something special but he shook his head and pointed further up the long beach. We walked for a while, silently, no sound but the water, the wind, the shuffle. In the distance I saw a shadow, and as we approached it he said, “I found her here yesterday, but she’s gone now. The fishermen injured her…idiots.” On the beach, quiet and sad was a huge Olive Ridley Turtle, still majestic even in death. We sat there a long time quietly, nameless to one another, and mourned in the breeze. Then almost at the same moment we rose and walked back to the boat both affected forever by what we had shared in that long moment of sadness.

There is adventure knocking at your door at all times. But adventure doesn’t wear a pretty summer dress and smell like roses. Adventure is what takes you to the perennial valley of flowers. The choice always hovers. But it’s yours to make.

The two images here (above and below) show aspects of the same locations. The ones above are the ones I showed friends, the ones below are the meals I ate alone at each place, and are images I chose not to share.

Below: the stunning Buddha statue that HH Dalai Lama inaugurated while I was in Sikkim. Right next to it is the loo I used between the inauguration speeches. If only I could have captured the odor!

How do I explain?

I’ve been wondering how to explain to people, to men, what it feels like to be a woman in India. I’ve been struggling with it. I had begun to write something a few months ago but abandoned it in frustration, thinking, ‘I can never explain…’ With the events of the last month bringing this very issue to the forefront of national and international discourse and certainly to the frontier of my life, I realized with some urgency that the time to complete this piece was NOW. But I still struggle with the words.

How do I explain what it is like to be painfully aware of every movement your body makes? To be aware that you can’t raise your arm too high if your armpit isn’t shaved…that’s not a problem men have, is it? Or to not know how to sit. I can’t slouch because it isn’t ‘feminine’ and besides my top might slip too low and show some cleavage. But I mustn’t sit too straight either because that’s suggestive, isn’t it? Or is it aggressive? I’ve forgotten now what its fault is, but there was something. And my legs – does a real lady cross them or not? If my knees fall away from each other for a moment in relaxation, is that an invitation? How do I even begin to explain that you can never know what it’s like to walk down a road and be looked at only for your gender and have every inch of your visible and invisible skin crawl with the gaze of hungry, glazed eyes as they ravage you. It makes no difference whether or not I am beautiful or sexy or in a salwar kameez or mini skirt. One option apparently makes me easier to rape, the other makes me harder to. One option makes me invite rape, the other option lets rape gategrash. Frankly for many women in India, waking up invites rape. But I will still get looked at – just because I am a woman. As a woman I never walk out of my bedroom without checking what I have on. Even if I’m just roaming around the house, getting breakfast or reading a book on my couch, I am incredibly aware of whether I have a bra on under my tee shirt, or whether my shorts are too short, or whether my hair is untied and provocative. Every moment, marked with exhausting self-awareness.

Maybe it is that self-awareness that has made us the more introspective sex. I asked a male friend the other day, “Why do you do this to us? What have we ever done to you?” And he said, “You make us feel so insecure.” It’s the most honest thing I’ve heard in a long time. Because rape, let’s face it, is not about sex. It’s more about assertion than insertion…more about humiliation, domination, and at the bottom of it all, insecurity. Beneath the insecurity though is a lack of education and awareness that a society that’s organized on the basis of institutionalized bigotry and barbarity has failed to give its members.

In the days following this rape there have been rabid calls for castration and capital punishment. But as the comedian and columnist Rohan Joshi (amongst many, many others) pointed out – castration only creates psychos and capital punishment will ensure post-rape murder. Rohan also pointed out something a lot of us, especially women, have been wondering about. Punishment is all very well, but how are you going to change the very fabric of a stained society? You may cut down a poisoned tree but what of its roots? I don’t have the answer either but as someone who has been jostled on public transport, leered at for 25 years, and told I can’t wear what I want, go where I want, talk how I want or do what I want, I have certainly given it some thought. My answers are in the form of more questions, but that’s only because I’m as unsure of the solution as you. Some may find them simplistic, but perhaps simplifying the problem may help.

To begin with, why in a country like India is it not almost compulsory to have co-educational schools by this point? While the police claim it is the cause for sexual violence I disagree. How many men and women will we raise who barely speak with the opposite gender before the age of 17? The sort of segregated education we still allow only encourages the idea of “feminine mystique” and of women as “the other”. The average Indian boy grows up with two versions of the Indian women – his mother (the perfect wife, homemaker and baby bearer) and the Bollywood beauty (delicate &wife-like or the hyper-sexual item girl). When the women he finally meets as an adult fail to live up to or rather succumb to either stereotype, the answer (as with smashing a new toy that fails to work) is violence, because he hasn’t ever had to view her as an equal who too will inhabit various roles, has opinions and is as human as he is.

In the same vein, why isn’t sex education compulsory yet? The only access boys and girls have to sexual information is pornography, which comes with the burden of guilt and the undertone of filth, not to mention the most obvious issue of all which is that porn most often subjugates women, and portrays rape fantasies as the norm. With the kind of film industry we have, where a Kambakht Ishq will play to packed theatres but a “French kissing” scene is censored, perhaps leaving sex-ed to porn isn’t okay? Is it okay that a Yo Yo Honey Singh is the first place a teenager hears the word "vagina"? Perhaps providing boys with information about a woman’s body – her breasts, menstruation, vagina and ovaries – may lead to some sort of understanding of it and you won’t have a boy puncturing a girl’s vagina with a screw-driver to bring on her delayed period (YES, this did happen). Perhaps showing them a film of a couple making love, rather than a girl being pounded in the woods by three men should be an option? As long as India associates sex with filth, Indian men will treat women’s bodies as the sinning grounds.

And it isn’t simply Indian men who are at fault. I feel ashamed to say that I too have encouraged patriarchy. You all have. When a beautiful woman walks into a party and someone makes a snide comment about how short her dress is, we’ve laughed, instead of telling them to shut up and mind their own business. That too counts as patriarchy, as sexual harassment. And how long before we stand up for ourselves? For each other? When will we live in a culture where we no longer hungrily devour media that survives on creating and portraying drama between women? Where a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are friends, where we don’t sleep with each other’s husbands, where we don’t shout at our maids because we don’t view women from a different class as our own. When will we allow our daughters to marry who they want, and tell them they can do exactly what their brothers can? I want to live in an India that stops falsely protecting its women by asking them to remain indoors, not wear skirts, and not go anywhere without a man. Where I can go to a gynaecologist and the words  “sexually active” and “married” do not automatically equate, and where a girl does not need to bring in dowry because she earns as much as her husband. Where do I go to report a boy brushing against me, or groping me as a rickshaw rolls by…grabbing my ass? What policeman will take seriously the words “He was walking too close to me” or “He calls me everyday even when I’ve told him I don’t want to talk”?

Instead of screaming for capital punishment, take a moment to think about what you sound like. Violence is borne of fear, and it almost always only breeds more violence. These men need to be punished, I agree, but more than anything they need HELP. Talk to boys, girls. Ask them why, ask them what we make them feel and tell them how we feel. And the boys that do things like this, sure, punish them, lock them up, keep them there, but can our government not organize ways to help them, to reform them, to figure out why someone would do this? A boy doesn’t rape for fun. A boy rapes because he knows no better. Because sex is that alien, elusive thing in the distance and when he feels powerless he combines the two. Men don’t rape because they lose control, they rape to feel in control. Here’s something interesting: not many newspapers are reporting a single disturbing fact about what we’re calling the ‘Delhi Rape Case’. The fact that the reason that horrific now ever-so-vivid “iron rod” was used, was in fact because they wanted to remove the DNA traces. That’s an act of fear, before it is one of violence. You don’t think of this ‘literally’ but there is a reason why we call a rapist a “coward”.

If you do want to cut off something, let it not be their heads or their penises or any such redundant appendage. Cut off their arms. Imagine not being able to eat again, or to work, or scratch oneself in public. To never masturbate again and to never, ever touch a woman again. Never hold another woman down. You find me cruel, but my life as an Indian woman is cruel. And it has been helpless, but no more.

To end, you ask me – why THIS rape? Why did you come pouring out for this one? I don’t know. All I know is that this rape sparked the fury of a nation, and if there is a movement that decies it and the structures that enable it, I want to be a part of it. When I went out there I found the critics were wrong – there were women there from every class, every religion, every state and caste and age. There were men there – old and young. This is not my struggle or yours. It is not a “student protest” or “youth movement” or the anger of the middle classes. This is no longer a struggle in isolation. It is ours, and it should not end, until a time comes when we do not just have the answers to the questions I ask, but we no longer recall the questions themselves.

The time is now. Our government may say that India is shining, but that’s just what it looks like from a distance. Come up close, join the fight, march with us in the streets and you will see they think this because they’re looking down from their high minarets. Down here you will see India is burning, and guess what? We hold the torches.

Some days I wake happy.

I don't feel like this today. I wish I did but I feel like my insides are giving way. I'm tired, sad, angry, unhealthy and uninspired today. But I'm hoping to change that. Another morning not so long ago, I wrote the following. And perhaps a time will come when I always wake with that energy. Here's putting a prayer out there...

There are mornings I wake up and the sun is in my eyes, and it blinds me to myself and I think I may really be beautiful. This is not the lament of a bikini model, but the soul song of a teenage girl who has never left me. And it will not be a morning where I will stand at the mirror and curse it for how much it reflects. I will instead reflect upon myself, and imagine my hair falls like mermaid locks. I will envision my skin as a desert of dry perfection, no rain of tears stains this plain. No mirror will show off the scars on my knees and the dents in my thigh; the down on my arms and the awry tattoos taken in haste and paid for with innocence. There will be no compulsive changing of outfits today, as I curse jeans and skinny ankles and dainty feet. Instead on this rare morning I will enjoy feeling ‘wholesome’. Say the world with me: wholesome. Full. A sponge cake with vanilla essence. There are mornings when I wake and I am this good, I am this right, I am a smile in slow motion, a cat after a meal. I am sweet as a macaron, but I am not delicate, no, I have lines and marks and shape and form, and these hips they swivel and the world moves around them. You cannot draw me with a pencil in straight lines. You will have to paint me with a brush loaded with bristles, and every curve, every swerve, makes a woman of me. Say the word again, wholesome. Ripe, lovely, resplendent. My chest is ambitious and my hips are cheeky in their confidence. My thighs pretend to be robust, to match my laugh. I am not salty like a crisp or some brittle breadstick, but sweet like a pudding. I have meringue toes and cherry nipples. There is no frost in this dessert, I am warm apple pie topped with honey and whipped cream. I have not the wispiness of dreams, but the bold, stout, lewdness of reality. Twenty nine years have turned me into a merry Modigliani.

I know men who have a love of this imperfection. Who don't love a woman despite her flaws but for her flaws. Who have embraced the signs of my mortality that insist that I be loved now for I may be lost tomorrow. The words of my past printed on my skin like a Book Of Clues for the attentive lover. The very essence of womanliness appearing in streaks across my thighs, showing they have walked the Earth wild. The creasing of my mouth, saying I have laughed, and eyes explaining how much I have cried. The imperfections will show you a woman who has seen and felt and been so much. Perhaps I am after all finally what I always desired to be - a woman of the world. One who has grown and shrunk and grown again over the years. How my body has echoed my moods.

The sands of time run through my shape and they shout out in an alto, not a soprano voice, “She has been worthwhile!” I will listen to this song of happiness and pretend the whole world thinks like my cocky inner self does today, and tell myself, “Sshhh...You are the most beautiful girl in the world.”

21 Books I’ve Loved That You Might Too

To start with, this is MY list. So replies like, “Why didn’t you include Atlas Shrugged?” or “Time Traveler’s Wife is boring,” are redundant. I say that at the start. That this is a list of books I have read, enjoyed, loved, and often gifted to other people, who have loved them equally. That doesn’t mean to say that everyone will love them, and that’s fine. It is why Chetan Bhagat is big, though most of us can’t see why. If you like some of these, you will probably like most of them. If you’ve read none of them, by all means, use this list! But then I would say that…it’s MY list after all. They’re listed in no particular order. Enjoy!

1.    The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffeneger

What does one say about a book that has been commented on by every single literary person of worth? That it is perfect? That it is possibly the most phenomenal plot ever? That that fact combined with a heart-wrenching love story might make it one of the best books on the planet? It’s funny how many different kinds of people I know who like this book. It’s odd how many boys I know, who keep a copy on their bedside table. My mother gave it to me telling me, “I promise you, it’s not cheesy.” That’s the best I can say too. Henry and Clare’s story is one that will survive trends and critics, for years to come. Because everybody wants a love like that.

2.    Emergency Sex by Cain, Postlewait and Thomson

A book that follows three UN/Red Cross volunteers through ten years of conflict, including Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Bosnia, Liberia and Cambodia, it reads like dynamic fiction but is very, very real. In fact, while reading it, one needs to remind oneself that these are real events, with real consequences, and then the effect on the system is jarring. If you think politics is a boring topic, this will change your mind and make you want to hop on the next flight to the most terrifying, war torn country you can currently find on the globe.

3.    The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie

Written in Rushdie’s usual cheeky style that I found ‘self indulgent’ when I was a teenager, the book is a rock opera of words and wonder. A book which serenades the sixties, rock and roll, Bombay before it was Mumbai, alternate realities and photography, it is both historical and lyrical as well as a love story that stretches beyond one’s wildest imagination. Though I love Shame, for me, this far surpasses it.

4.    Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

Tom Robbins is a genius. There are no two ways about it. A lover made me ‘swear’ I’d read Jitterbug Perfume, and being heady in lust and full of faith, I went straight to a bookstore. The boy is now long gone, but the book remains and it’s a romance that will last me, forever. By far the most ‘conclusive’ of Robbins’ books, this made me believe that God might, after all exist and that Robbins might even be Him. For me to begin telling you even part of the plot would be like inviting you to a Rolling Stones’ concert saying the plan was to  “Go hear some music by a really nice band.”

5.    Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Better known for the book they made into a film, The Virgin Suicides, Eugenides writes one book every ten years (or something close to that snail pace). When you read Middlesex, you’ll understand why. It traces the life of a hermaphrodite, Calliope Stephanides, from 1960 onwards and is unlike anything you have ever experienced, simply because Eugenides is not scared to take the road less travelled, where writing is concerned.

6.    Escape by Manjula Padmanabhan

If you like the weird and wonderful, you will love this. Padmanabhan creates a world for you in which only one woman remains. On her 18^th birthday, her uncles who have protected and hidden her for almost two decades decide to help her escape to a world where women might still exist. A courageous, philosophical and wholly feminist book, Escape is as much an action thriller as it is a serious ode to women.

7.    The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Don’t let the size put you off. Read till the very end, and read every word, because it is worth it. Kingsolver writes about Trotsky, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as if they were her friends, and she has been in their kitchens and bedrooms and studios, as a fly on the wall, a spy in the house of love. A fantastic, fictional biography that makes you feel very much a part of history, and as if history itself had come alive. Possibly the best book I’ve ever read on the Mexican Revolution, and all that followed it.

8.    Maps For Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam

A book of loss, heartache and immeasurable pain, Maps… tells a story we all know too well. It sings the unsung song of every lover who has been parted from their beloved, for reasons as base as caste or religion. Though Aslam’s each sentence requires attention in order to read it, his words are, for the patient reader, a reward for surpassing the riff raff of regular writing.

9.    The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam

Yes he gets two books on my list, and yes, he is the only one who gets that. If you found Maps For Lost Lovers difficult and depressing, you will find The Wasted Vigil twice as much so. But fear not, it has hundreds and thousands of beautiful reasons for you to buy and read it. To start with, the book opens in a house in Afghanistan where every book has been taken off the shelves and nailed to the ceiling, to save the literature from the hands of the Taliban. Such sad yet vivid imagery is the staple of Aslam’s books. Less rounded off and romance-driven than Maps For Lost Lovers, this is a harder book to read, but that is nothing, when compared to how hard it must have been to research and write it. A stark portrait of Afghanistan from the 1970s up until present day, Aslam wrote the book in a house where the windows were all covered in black paper, to allow him to lose himself entirely in his story. When he came out once in the middle, he couldn’t understand why the weather did not match that of the chapter he was then writing.

10. Seven Years In Tibet by Heinrich Harrer

I avoided the book for so long, because I had seen the movie and couldn’t shake the memories. Wanting my thoughts on the book to be fresh, I kept avoiding it. I had nothing to fear. Seven Years In Tibet paints such a vibrant image of the Land of Snows, that in retrospect I see how no movie could have actually represented Harrer’s story accurately enough. Far sadder and more relevant now that the Tibet of his time is a distant and fast fading dream, Harrer’s book, an account of his escape from India to Tibet on foot, and his subsequent time as a resident of Lhasa is anything but boring mountaineering chatter. In an interview once, Harrer spoke of the book and its relevance, saying, “Satellites cannot discover souls and languages and legends of culture.” He writes, “Though the aircraft had finally opened up the world, one last mystery remained: a vast country on the roof of the world, a country of marvels and wonders where monks could part their souls from their bodies to hover in the air, and oracles determined the course of events. That land was surrounded by the highest mountains on Earth, and the ruler of the state was a living god dwelling in a citadel of incomparable beauty built on a red rock. It was a forbidden country, and the capital Lhasa was closely guarded by monks. For romantics, there was even the attraction of the blue poppy that flowered in secret beyond the mountains.”

11. Freedom In Exile by His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama

For me, this acts as a sister book to Seven Years In Tibet. The Dalai Lama tells the story of his being found at the age of two and subsequently raised by the Tibetan government to be the spiritual leader and head of state of Tibet. He takes you with him as he escapes Chairman Mao’s Communist Chinese regime in Tibet, for India, where with Nehru, he set up the Tibetan Government In Exile. A remarkable story where the esteemed author is humble and accessible at all stages, it once again gives one a telling picture of a culture that is now all but lost.

12. Oil by Matthew Yeomans

Subtitled ‘A Concise Guide to the Most Important Product on Earth’, Oil takes you through the history, significance, use and consequences of the product. The best part about the book is that it treats oil not as a commodity, but as a protagonist. What I like most about Yeomans’ work is that it wasn’t intimidating. I bought it to better my knowledge of something that was only becoming more and more significant and found myself deeply engrossed and intrigued. Though I doubt Yeomans aimed for it, he has indeed created, of all the unlikely things to call a book on oil, ‘a page turner’.

13. Illywhacker by Peter Carey

My friend Neha Kaul Mehra bought me the book. I’m a book snob, but then so is she, so I put it on my shelf and waited for a time when I could really get into it, to read it. When I finally did, it completely overwhelmed me. It made me laugh out loud and cry and feel for the characters. It made me want to lap it all up and then slow it down so that it would never end. Peter Carey might be the best, most engrossing ‘story teller’ I have ever read. Do yourself the favour Neha did me, and go out and buy this book.

14. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver is a witch. She gets under your skin and into your veins and haunts your sleep and rocks your stomach. And she does all this while using a vocabulary that requires you to keep dictionary.com open for the entire duration of your reading her book. The only way to rid yourself of the evil part of her spell is to get through the book. It isn’t me who says this. It’s everyone. Few authors can do that, and she does it, book after book. We Need To Talk About Kevin is where she does it best of all. Haunting, precise, animated and dark, it traces, through a series of letters written by Eva to her estranged husband Franklin, the life of their son Kevin. Kevin lives nearby in a juvenile detention centre, for having murdered nine people at his high school. An important book about family and society, its conclusion will chill your blood.

15. The Alchemy of Desire by Tarun Tejpal

I don’t like most Indian authors. There I said it. And I don’t think very many of my friends do either. We’re not trying to be ‘cool’ or international, we’re just baffled by what Indian authors write about. (Kiran Desai I don’t mean you.) There was a time when I thought, ‘If I read one more book where a woman raises her pallu, flips a chapatti, applies kohl/sindoor deftly and has a story dating back to 1947, I will cry.’ Who are these stories being written for? Who on earth is writing them? Before you point out the obvious class difference between the people the stories are about and those who are reading them (i.e. you and I), let me point out this too that most authors writing about ‘far off villages’ in India where women are beaten for having birthmarks/spilling dal/being widows, have most often and obviously done little research about the rural life they so eagerly romanticize and misrepresent. Stories like this insult both rural and urban India, and reinforce tired ideologies in a way that has just become boring to read. Tejpal is refreshingly dissimilar. He writes about sex, journalism and life in Delhi with wit, sieved by reality. It was exactly this raw tone that made my 518-page version seem like a breeze.

16. A Night Without Armor by Jewel Kilcher

I love my Neruda, Rumi and Dylan Thomas, but really, this book surprised me. A collection of poems by Jewel (yes, the folk singer) from when she was in her early twenties, the poems read like scribbles, but reveal a maturity impressive for a 23 year old.  Like this:

Awaken love,

we are a pair

two knives, two flags

two slender stocks of wheat

And the song that sleeps

inside your mouth

is the song which bids

my heart to beat.

17. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

You want to read one book on acid, read this. No wait, read Acid Dreams. Okay no, read this one. I’m a junkie for anything sixties, but this book…sigh…this book makes you want to do drugs. This book follows author and acid pioneer Ken Kesey, beatnik legends Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, The Hell’s Angels and The Grateful Dead amongst other ‘merry pranksters’ as they experiment with LSD in the sixties, often with hilarious results. Written in Wolfe’s perennially youthful style (really how is that man in a polka tie so damn cool?), it paints a clearer image of the madness of that time than almost any other book. Read this, and then read Acid Dreams.

18. Boys Will Be Boys by Sara Suleri Goodyear

One never finds this book anywhere. I bought it on a whim when I was researching Pakistani authors. Now if I see it anywhere, I buy two copies, because this slim book (120 pages) makes such a perfect gift. Suleri-Goodyear manages to write intimately about her family without ever sounding self indulgent or irrelevant. Blissfully irreverent, graceful political, heartwarmingly patriotic, modern and yet nostalgic, this book had me in piles of giggles, and made me yearn for my grandfather to come back, so I could read him the political bits. One critic called her writing ‘elegant’, and really I couldn’t think of a more accurate word to describe it.

19. No One Here Gets Out Alive by Hopkins and Sugarman

Technically, this is a Doors and Jim Morrison biography, but really, it is so, so much more. This book is why I started reading the way I did. Inspired by Morrison’s voracious appetite for literature and life, I in my teenage melodrama cut my hair short, wore my father’s trousers with white workman shirts and spent all my pocket money on books. This is the book that turned me on at 14 to Nietzsche, the beatniks (namely Kerouac), poetry, Buddhism, shamanism, music, Rimbaud, Warhol…in fact, it turned me on to life itself, while also being on of the finest rock biographies on offer. Full of a healthy mix of fact, philosophy and fandom, it has sold over 2 million copies, and continues to be the best Doors book on offer.

20. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Here’s where I admit I’d always thought Atwood was the writer of slightly smutty, old fashioned mystery novels. Can you imagine the horror when I realized what I’d been missing out on? Though a number of her books are a tad too rad for me (I’m sorry I thought Surfacing was so weird), The Blind Assassin deserved every inch of the Booker it was wreathed with. The story of two sisters effortlessly and subtly weaves through decades and drama, without ever feeling forced. And of course, as I had thought before I knew Atwood’s true depth…it actually does contain a pretty good dose of mystery.

21. Peter Pan by J.M.Barrie

And finally, the children’s classic I’ve never outgrown, Peter Pan. But it isn’t a children’s book. This for example, is about as childish as a mermaid isn’t sexual:

If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing.

Finish.

There are obvious books like ‘An Equal Music’ and ‘Memoirs Of A Geisha’, that I haven’t put on my list simply because most book lovers I know have read them. I’ve also tried to keep the list mainly fiction-based, but there are books like the classic ‘May You Be The Mother Of A Hundred Sons’ that deserve a place on anyone’s good book guide. Then there are authors like Orhan Pamuk and Naipaul whom I haven’t touched yet, but eagerly wait to clear my schedule to read. This is a list of 21 books. They aren’t the 21 best books in the world, but I sincerely hope you read at least one, and that it warms your heart the way each one has done mine.

Hear me sing the Wedding Blues...

Yesterday my beautiful friend Shambhavi raised her arms above her own veiled head and threw a rope of flowers around Sidharth’s. Everyone cheered as the bride and groom walked towards the mandap and the sun began to set behind Shambhavi’s farm, turning the sky momentously golden. My palms began to sweat and I turned to my brother and said, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that.”

I am petrified of getting married. It gives me butterflies in a terrible way. As though butterflies have been caged within my stomach, and are fluttering there helplessly. When I say this, the response I get is – “Why are you so anti-marriage?” But I’m not. Note, I said what scares me is “getting married”. It took me years to realize, that the thing that gave me nausea at mandaps, wasn’t the unwillingness to be married. It was the trauma of getting married. The thought of a wedding turns my blood cold. Not any wedding. The great Indian wedding. Over the years, as my friends have begun falling like flies who’ve hit a glass wall, and I’ve had to memorise choreographed numbers on various occasions, I’ve begun to hate the sheer pomposity of the Indian wedding. The often outlandish décor. The colossal waste of cash. The incredible amount of outfits that ‘must not be repeated’. The heartbreaking waste of food. The self-indulgent dances and assembly line DJs. The sad fact that neither the bride and groom, nor their families, ever really look happy. The day I get married, I want to look happy. The culmination of love, for me, is not represented by a combination of designer outfits, a good event planner, how many people turned up and how late the night went on. My symbols of love are flowers, the music I really love and listen to, the friends I really value, and people who can afford me the comfort of me being myself. Ideally, I’d like to be alone with a boy on a mountaintop, our mouths full of kisses, our hearts full of love, and God as our witness. I understand the legal complications and selfish implications of this, and know that perhaps I will have to turn my dream into a big budget film, and make my big day a production with me as a deranged self-indulgent director cum star, and my parents playing producer. My sisters will be ADs and my best friends will all act superbly.

I know I’m being harsh. Everyone loves a good shaadi – lots of booze, lots of gossip, you meet old friends, you sing and dance and laugh and indulge. You have hangovers and tummy aches and funny moments and later, these make for terrific memories. I agree. But I don’t want my wedding to be about your memories. I also know there’s a middle ground. You can get married like my friends Sahira and Dhruv – big, but beautiful beyond belief. Or like Chandni and Jivjeet, who were relaxed, happy, and low key. Or like Sid and Shambhavi, who made yesterday look so easy. My aversion to weddings in general though make even beautiful examples like these scary, despite how wonderful they were to be at. When I imagine myself playing the roles Chandni, Sahira or Sham did with such grace and ease, my immediate thought is to run. Or burst into tears. I had to admit to myself while watching the ceremony yesterday, that possibly the main reason I don’t want to have a big or proper wedding, is that a part of me still isn’t emotionally intact enough. That my closeness to crying every time I watch a jai mala ceremony, help choose a friend’s bridal outfit, or attend a choora, represents something far deeper. I threw out arrows, hoping they’d hit something. My parents? My fear of commitment? My fear of dependence? Nothing struck. So here I am, surrounded by my dislike of weddings, and stuck with my honest hope that I can be the girl who avoids one. Because for that one day, I’d like to do what I want to. It’s not a lot to ask, is it?