Mainly about my feet (and some cricket and books because you people like that sort of thing)
People are nice:
I've been feeling tired and listless and depressed since I came back home. People have been excellent. They have bookshopped and shoeshopped with me, told me amusing stories about people we went to school/college with and about their own narrow escapes from marriage, and snarked at movies with me and called me from distant cities to mock people we know.
Footwear:
I have fallen in love with shiny aubergine-purple shoes with black straps and ridiculously high heels. They are way out of my price range. I have been in shoe shops a lot recently since mum accidentally threw away my brown sandals. The quest for replacement brown flatheeled shoes has been an utter failure, but I have in the process bought myself cherry red stilettos, turquoise wedges, and made Pradipta fall in love with pointy green shoes.
Smart bitches:
Daryaganj trip yesterday.I realise I've occasionally mentioned Daryaganj trips here in the past without explaining what they are. It's a locality in Delhi where every sunday along an entire stretch of the street there are secondhand bookstalls. Disorganised heaps of books on the pavement. It's joyous. so I have picked up heaps of things that will turn my brain to pudding. Including two Barbara Cartlands and twelve Sweet Valley-based books. These I will list for 1bruce1 members:
SVT #76 Yours For A Day
SVH #4 Power Play
SVH #16 Rags To Riches
SVH #17 Love Letters
SVH #18 Head Over Heels
SVH #20 Crash Landing!
SVH #22 Too Much In Love
SVH #25 Nowhere To Run
SVH #28 Alone In The Crowd
SVH #30 Jealous Lies
SVH #31Taking Sides
SVH #68 The Love Bet
I have read all of them in a day. Tomorrow I will tackle the Cartlands, one of which is titled Love, Lords and Lady-birds
Other Books:
The Wind-up bird Chronicle, Stephen King On Writing, Aiken - The Stolen Lake, McKillip - Winter Rose, Nimmo - Midnight for Charlie Bone, Bryson - A Walk in the Woods, Emma Tennant - The Bad Sister, Stoppard - The Real Inspector Hound and After Magritte, Sheri S. Tepper - Grass and Maguire - Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.
Feet again:
When I get out of bed and go to get coffee and the paper, my ankles feel weird and unsteady and achey. Mum says I should rotate them before I get out of bed, but honestly, when you've just woken up the first thought that comes is not "now I must rotate my ankles". So I always forget till I'm in the kitchen and then it's too late.
"Do we have a Wassup Mahesh somewhere too?":
I've been watching IPL matches mainly with mum or with my grandfather (paternal). But hadn't watched sports in a large group of people for a really long time. There have been some great matches recently (watching Kolkata vs the Kings XI with dad last night was great). Today we had dinner with family (who we'd promised to see) while watching Mumbai vs the Rajasthan Royals. Since Delhi's chances of entering the semi-finals were dependent on Mumbai losing a match, much support for Rajasthan was shown. Young cousin explained that when Delhi are playing he supports them, if not, Kolkata for Sourav Ganguly, then Chennai "because we speak Tamil", and so on. Family were actually fun - excruciating male cousin was not present, and my grandfather (maternal) was far more upbeat than he usually is, so we got to actually talk. This rarely happens nowadays.
Namedropping:
Midway through the match we left family for the party of a friend who we had also promised to see (mum had forgotten about the dinner-with-family). We ended up watching the rest of the match with a group of cricket-related people, including Chetan Chauhan and Mohammed Asif (who was the calmest person there, though he was technically far more invested in the outcome than the rest of us). Madness occurred when Rajasthan won on the last ball. Watching sports with lots of other people you barely know is excellent.
Other deplorable facts about being barefoot:
One's feet are exposed to the elements. Mosquitoes appear to form a large part of said elements. Mosquito bites on feet are pretty excruciating.