shelf care #2
Recommendations on reading and consuming, i.e. lots of links
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A private note from a paid subscriber gave me pause (in a good way!). They said that I managed to do so much, but wondered how. I don’t know how to answer this concern—which I really appreciate—simply because I don’t think I really do all that much. In fact, I don’t write as much as I used to, having shelved a lot of ambitions that I’ve had for myself, including writing at least one book. I had one query from an agent when I was in a really depressed place a couple of years back and I just didn’t have it in me to follow through even though it’s what I’ve wanted to do since I was 5.
Lately, existence has been about changing dreams and goals, especially since the beginning of 2020. If you find that I’m always writing about this, always talking about the time I had to come back home after a lovely little time elsewhere, it’s because I’m still processing grief about the person I used to be, who doesn’t exist anymore. And it’s been tormenting, to say the least, to think about my idealistic life and my dream existence that seem so far away, when I am so paralysed in the present. Every day I think about the four years that have passed me by and in thinking about it, another day passes me by. But I promise I’ve gotten better at navigating the everyday, at realising that I have nothing more to lose—I just have to show up for myself, even if I fall and fail.
So mostly I just will myself to write, draw, and learn something every day. I remind myself that I have evolved throughout my journey. And, I guess, that it’s natural for aspirations and ambitions to evolve alongside this process. Maybe I don’t have the necessary determination to make it as a successful writer, but sometimes it feels SO good to quit things and take them up another day. Or not at all. It’s okay to shelve things. And it’s equally okay to want them back. Writing is a privilege, even if it is laborious. So is building a life that you want. It takes a lot of courage to start over, again and again.
It’s a good thing then that I started this section of my newsletter, shelf care, because it really is a way of taking break from all the writing and thinking without actually neglecting my newsletter, which I have done before. Of course, nothing of significance is achieved alone—so a huge thank you to all the newsletters before me who started a links roundup as regular practice.
Anyway here’s what I’ve been consuming for the last month.
Books
Dipping in and out of Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbridger and there are some recipes that already stand out - the Wicked Stepmother Black Bread featuring rye and caraway, and Trashy Ginger Beer Chicken that sounds genius. Almost done with Living Rooms by Sam Johnson-Schlee, which I mentioned in my last shelf care newsletter. Thinking if I should re-start fiction with The Immortal King Rao, and by writing this line I’ve convinced myself so. Lately, losing my capacity for reading books and have only managed to be lying on the floor from time to time with my eyes shut.
Words wide web
Loved Kate Ng’s essay on Chinese New Year, preserving family recipes, and how putting down roots in a new place often involves cooking dishes from another. The truth in this tweet! Every tweet of Sylvia Plath’s food diary. Usually very wary of essays in The Cut, but a good one on the possibilities and value of middle age, which is comforting as I approach middle age myself. An unnerving read on the rise and fall of the trad wife via Alena Kate Pettitt who helped lead the online movement and has now quit it. It’s mildly amusing to see TikTok tradwives dismissing themselves as political when both being a wife and in a marriage is political by nature. Toni Morrison’s long, generous, and honest rejection letters. For those interested in weather, this alarming article about Indians experiencing temperatures close to the limits of human survivability, and it’s only March! I am sweating buckets as I write this. A wonderful essay on photographer and activist Corky Lee who captured portraits of a community that came into focus in “beautiful, fleeting fragments”. I would LOVE to read the whole interview of Jhumpa Lahiri but I don’t have a subscription. A moving essay on how DNA tests are uncovering the prevalences of incest.
Other newsletters
Brendon Holder on soft signals, soft and hard labour. Lucinda Bennett on the desire for less nourishing foods. Christina Chaey on insidious diet culture, an essay that is so personal because I too got diagnosed with prediabetes a year or so back and it took everything in me to reverse it, prompting unfamiliar anxiety surrounding food. Dr Sarah Duignan on the impossibility of lunch. On performative hydration by Caitlin Dewey. Can’t wait to make this flourless chocolate cake by Nicola Lamb when I move out of Chennai and into somewhere that has an oven! Jon Randell Smith who has resolutely been writing on Gaza. Claire Michaud on travelling with grief. Isabela Vera on ancestors, identity, and reckoning with family relationships
Cooking and eating
Balinese curry and rice, flatbread and brown butter hummus (topped with raisins and rose petals), and chocolate cake with Susanna, while wearing saris!! I really look forward to corn season! Made corn salad, corn sundal, and blackened corn which I added to pasta with some kale and cherry tomatoes. A luxurious triple chocolate cake from Tukaway, which is sadly going to board up this week. Some dumplings that I stashed in the freezer came to my rescue one night. Lots of ice cream now that summer has begun. Before-season mangoes that were surprisingly juicy and sweet. Pickled tiny raw mangoes for this year and the next. A handful of squelchy dates split open, smothered with peanut butter, and sprinkled with a crunchy seed mix on top. Braised tofu and broccoli on rice. A pineapple and sundried tomato pizza that was lacking in salt. Oats for breakfast. The return of labneh in my life. Rustic kale and garlic dal with bhujia on the side. As always, I’ll detail this and more in an ‘eating notes’ newsletter soon.
Writing
Finished the piece on 70s food and may I say how wonderful it has shaped up to be? A piece on flatbreads that I’m working on for this newsletter. Some pitches that I’m resurrecting from the dead 🤞🏽 and journalling that has fallen to the wayside. Recapping what I published last month:
On the making of a nation through food while decimating another
A few nice things that I ate in February, including three huge tables of cheese
Dissecting sugar and solitariness in Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings
A long rumination on cookbook literature that I own
Listening to
Yazmin Lacey’s ‘Bad Company’ and ‘Pieces’. I’m such a sucker for soulful, sensuous jazz and have always wanted to learn it. Someday, someday! A lot of 2000s Bollywood music that I grew up with, which is great to dance to when you have something on the stove and can’t move from there.
Would love to know what you’ve been reading, browsing, thinking, and listening to!
💌 SATURDAY, 6 APRIL 💌
For paid subscribers, I’m reviving an old essay on rice. Things are bound to get personal here! If you haven’t subscribed yet and enjoy my work, please consider it? I’d be really grateful. I don’t have any other projects lined up currently, and paid subscriptions really help. Thank you for being here!
Ahh, I loved Living Rooms! He connects family history with reflections on commodities and labor so beautifully. And thank you for the mention here, too!