( Pigeon tales )

I've been reading about the decline in house sparrows though, and have been thinking of putting up a nestbox, apart from the water and food I anyway put out. It will be firmly outside though! Here is a bonus photo of the garden, looking much better after the transplants have taken hold:

 The wicker baskets have eggplant and onions (and a lot of grass I haven't weeded), while the big pots at the back all have various squashes and cucurbits. The leftmost and rightmost plants in the back row are lemon and pomegranate. In the foreground are all the ornamentals, and some hopeful basil sprouts. I'm hoping to come back to a jungle of vines and hopefully some incipient vegetables. 

What I read

I finished the long fanfic—it's a Howl's Moving Castle (the movie) and Stargate crossover, and technically, I don't know either of the source canons. I've read the DWJ book, which is a favourite, and watched a Stargate movie (?) at some point in my teenagehood, so have a vague idea of the premise, but for the rest I just relied on general fannish osmosis. It was mostly good; better at the start than at the end, I thought, as the need to get the characters together slightly derailed the rather interesting premise of the plot. If I were to read with my editor's hat on, I'd suggest a second draft, to strengthen the plot and scatter the relationship arc a little more throughout the book, rather than essentially having a sandwich structure of 90% plot-100% slash-80% plot wrapping up because the main point of the story is already over. Having said that, with fanfic the point IS often getting the characters together, so this isn't exactly a complaint. And the writing was quite good and the world building was lovely and I absolutely adored the Calcifer analogue. 

On the go 

Another Golden Age mystery (as an aside, I am finding US mysteries of the same era mildly irritating. There's nothing *wrong* per se, but something just seems slightly off. Maybe it's the improbability [to me] of having country house settings and gilded rich characters.  Maybe it's the sense that US police wouldn't have the same hangups about offending the wealthy/influential characters in the same way. I think the problem I have is that  class markers in them seem to be more or less the same as the UK ones in ways that don't quite ring true to me. I don't have an issue with the presence of rich Americans; they're practically a stereotype; but when your American rich gentleman sleuth seems to be a Wimsey clone, down to rare-object collection and fine wines, I'm dubious. Or when your policeman is dithering about whether to question a wealthy businessman and he isn't thinking of the suspect's political influence with the senator, but of his family background, I again have to stop and think about which country the book is set in. And when everyone is playing golf and dining in clubs and going for country house holidays, I just want to put the book down and find a Wodehouse or Christie.)

...none of that had anything to do with the book I'm actually reading. I just chose it because the title made it absolutely clear that if wasn't set in the US. It's The Hampstead Mystery by Arthur J. Rees and John Rea Watson. It turns out the first was Australian and I can't find anything about the second.  But the book is enjoyable enough. An anonymous letter to Scotland Yard leads to the discovery that a judge has been murdered in his house while everyone thought he was on holiday in Scotland. There is a shady ex-con butler, various enigmatic femmes fatales (the judge is a bit of a player) and rival investigations by Scotland Yard and a private detective called in by the dubiously bereaved relatives.

In terms of characterization, well, the only fully realized character is the junior police detective, who is constantly worried about the senior detective stealing the limelight. The senior detective is vain and predictably does everything he can to aggrandize himself. The private detective has no personality, and the other characters are all one-note variations: flirtatious Frenchwoman, shifty butler, seedy fence, angry daughter, etc.       

I'm  enjoying it because, while it has some of the longwindedness, repetition and seemingly endless twists and turns that bored me in the other books I've been reading from that time, the structure makes it far from tedious. Essentially, we follow the investigations turn by twist in real time. Each twist exposes a little more of the truth, but the skill of the writing lies in telling more  to the reader than any of the characters actually know—when Scotland Yard discovers something, we are told their deductions; in the next chapter, when the private detective Crewe deduces something else, we follow along; but we know that the Scotland Yard's inference will be important later and neither will be able to discover the truth alone. This pleasant consciousness of being half a step ahead of either detective but still baffled is what prevents it from being tedious, and pulls the reader into the story.

Up next

More by the same author(s). A quick search led to me this very thorough account of the traces left of the author's life, which mentions:

• Dorothy L. Sayers in the introduction to Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928) mentions "Mr. A. J. Rees's sound and well-planned stories".
  Also: "Messrs Rees and Watson write of police affairs with the accuracy born of inside knowledge, but commendably avoid the dullness which is apt to result from a too-faithful description of correct official procedure."
  
• • The Lone Hand claims that The Merry Marauders was favourably reviewed by London papers.
• The Times, Athenaeum, Pall Mall Gazette, and other journals praise the humor of the book and the easy style of the author.'

Recommendations enough for me!

So, I came across this article the other day, titled 'Capturing the Colorful Style of Punjab, India'. I was intrigued. Punjabis are stereotypically flamboyant, and often have a distinct panache. These days, there's a lot of interesting fusion with hiphop and street style in Punjabi music and fashion, as well a longstanding tradition of protest and dissent that comes out in surprising ways. So I was expecting the article to talk about something like what these guys are selling or what this group is doing in London.

Instead, it's just lazy. First, there are the photos themselves. If someone made a list of how to depict 'exotic India', every photo here would fit on it, no questions asked. 

• The majority of them feature turbans or saris. I also wear saris fairly regularly; I also have friends who wear turbans. But that doesn't mean that that's what most people wear. Not even in temples. Not even in Amritsar. 
• Women in the photos generally have covered heads—which makes sense because they are taken in and around a gurdwara, where everyone is supposed to cover their head. But this isn't mentioned anywhere. And where are photos of sheepish-looking unturbaned men using their handkerchiefs to cover their heads? Oh right. every man wears a turban in this version of Punjab.
• What transport do these demure women and valiantly mustachioed and turbaned men use? Rickshaws. Two-wheelers. Trains. This for a state that's mocked mercilessly in the rest of India for its fascination with cars, the bigger and showier the better. Chandigarh (the capital) has the most number of cars per head in India. 

Then there are the clueless stereotypes. And not even clueless stereotypes about Punjab, which would at least indicate some engagement with the place.  

• 'People wear bright colours.' Like in every other place in India?
• 'Mustaches are popular.' Again, that's just as true in Kerala.
• 'Women wear headscarves in temples, but are more modern outside' FFS. Isn't there a clothing difference in UK/US churches vs. on the street? Or in ANY formal setting vs. while getting groceries/attending college/catching a train?  
• 'Men often wear button-down shirts in the street' ....am I really supposed to take this seriously?
• Oh, there IS a clueless stereotype about Punjabs: 'The turban is a symbol of pride. it's like a crown.' Joy

Like I said, it's lazy. You could have written more or less this exact same article using a few lithographs from the 1930s. It's uninteresting and uninterested in actually seeing what's there. I'm not interested in furthering some narrative of progress based on arbitrary standards like the number of cars or prevalence of Western clothing in any given Indian town. But I'm even less interested in—in fact, I'm bored to tears by— yet another instance where the shorthand for India is colour, fabric, turbans, faceless women, unusual transport, temples. And in the process you ALSO flatten out regional variation, dissent, protest, subcultures, and everything that makes a place unique within India. Why bother going to Punjab at all if this is what you have to show for it?   

But there is a small silver lining. At least there were no cows.
 

 I finally made it. It's not actually that complicated, and it's the perfect drink for this part of the summer when the dry heat feels like living in a dehydrater. It's sweet-tart and has all cooling* ingredients—raw mangoes, black salt, zeera and water. Only the sugar is warming.* Recipe behind the cut. 



( Read more... )

* Cooling/warming foods -- this is a concept from ayurveda/umami/other sorts of traditional sciences. Basically, every food has a cooling or warming property, which has nothing to do with whether it is actually hot or cold itself. It's the affect the food has on the body when eaten or spread etc. For example, sugar and ginger are warming -- they heat you up on the inside after you eat them. So do milk, turmeric, cinnamon and ripe mangoes. But yoghurt is cooling, as are cucumbers, melons, lemons, and spices like cumin and black salt. There must be lists of this stuff somewhere, but generally one learns it by osmosis ('don't eat mangoes in the middle of the day! don't you know they'll make your insides boil?')** and, eventually, starts being able to guess/infer the properties of foods that are new to you.
**this one will never be forgotten, because my sister literally was covered in boils after sneaking away to eat mangoes in the middle of a scorching summer afternoon

Vanishing Indian dog breeds 

Eight kg of mud make beautiful music

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be A Tiger

In life, I feel like I've been revving my wheels, thinking of things I want to do, but not actually doing anything. Maybe making a list will help...

In the garden, we moved the plants back out onto the terrace but I want to repot a lot of them.

• the gongura and peas need a deep pot, maybe the big blue one. it had five toris but only one seems to be surviving 
• the hibiscus and harshringar saplings have to be put in three separate large pots -- old tomato ones can be repurposed for this
• three giant aloe veras are vying for domination in a single pot, maybe i should give them all away...
• the basil is continuing to take over the roof. at this point i just want to kill it off and plant new ones, in small, carefiully confined containers.
• it rained last night. but no earthworms. I guess we'll have to wait till the monsoon...

In non-garden, non-work related things, the blog idea needs actual doing.  I also have just discovered that the Ngaio Marsh books are available to buy here, even though they are in omnibus editions that you have to buy online. Now i'm dreaming of getting them all quietly over the course of the year...

 

 

ETA: Since, again, it doesn't seem to be showing the video, please visit YouTube for the amazing song by Shubha Mudgal.

 


ETA: Since the icon doesn't show up here, and I can't seem to fix it, please go to https://sites.google.com/site/tv9protest/ and download it directly from there!