Either/Or

Nothing annoys me more than questions that involve this phrase

If there is anything – or more accurately, anyone – I can’t stand it is the Either/Or people. You know the kind I mean, don’t you? They are the ones who are always peppering their conversation with Either/Or questions and trying to analyse your personality on the basis of the answers you give.

Of these questions, the most annoying is the one that is usually at the top of their list. Are you a beach person or do you prefer mountains? Apparently, if you say ‘beach person’ it means that you are open, fun-loving, sunny by nature and entirely wholesome. If you say you love mountains, then you must be a closed-in loner who revels in isolation and has little time for other people.

No, the psychobabble makes no sense to me either. But what makes even less sense is why we should be expected to choose one destination or the other? Why aren’t we allowed to say that we like both? That each one fulfills a different need in our psyche. That there are times in our lives when beach holidays are just the ticket, and others when the call of the mountains is hard to resist.

Speaking for myself, I can’t bring myself to choose one over the other. Both the beach and the mountains appeal to me at different times of the year and at different times of my life. When the Delhi cold is seeping deep into my bones, I dream of setting off to a sunny beach somewhere, walking barefoot on the warm sand, and letting the sea waves ripple against my ankles. When the summer heat is getting me down, there is nowhere I would rather be than at some hill destination, losing myself in solitary walks among the mists and fogs that give the landscape a certain dream-like quality.

So I don’t see an Either/Or in this equation. And I really don’t understand people who regard this as some sort of binary choice.

The other Either/Or question that gets asked a lot these days is: Do you prefer a Kindle or do you like An Actual Book.

Well, first of all, a Kindle contains An Actual Book – or rather Several Actual Books. So, I don’t understand this bogus distinction. Oh yes, I know all that stuff about the feel and smell of physical books, the actual sensation of turning a page, and so on and so pretentious. But if you are a genuine lover of books, a committed reader, then frankly, it should not matter to you in which form the book is actually delivered to you. Whether it is a hard copy, a paperback, or an ebook, the story remains the same. And a genuine reader’s enjoyment would not be debased in the least just because the means of delivery has changed.

At least, this is the way it works for me. I love dipping into a physical book at home, nestled on my couch, with a cup of steaming coffee close to hand. But when I travel, I find it more convenient to download a few books on my Kindle. Not only does this make for lighter travel, it makes for easier reading on planes and in hotels, where reading lights are often less than optimal.

Do I enjoy either experience more than the other? Not really. All I am interested in is the story. And that doesn’t change whether I am reading it on paper or on a backlit screen.

The other perennial question that comes up all the time is that old chestnut: Do you prefer Delhi or Mumbai? This is usually posed to people who have lived in both cities. And the correct answer depends on where you have spent your childhood. If you have been brought up in Delhi and moved to Mumbai, then you are supposed to declare your undying love for Delhi and your distaste for Mumbai. And vice versa.

Well, that makes zero sense to me. As someone who has, over the years, divided her time between the two cities, I have discovered different virtues in both cities. If Delhi has beautiful parks strewn with historical monuments like Lodi Garden where you can stroll on a winter’s afternoon, then Mumbai has the beautiful expanse of sea at Marine Drive where you can watch a beautiful sunset every day. If Delhi is the ultimate outsider’s city with no one community being in a position to lay claim to it (no, not even Punjabis), then Mumbai is the city of dreams where people from all over the country arrive to find their fortunes. What’s not to love about either?

The only Either/Or question that actually elicits an answer from me is: Are you a Heels person or a Flats fan? On this score, at least, I have no doubts at all. I am a Flats Person all the way. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against heels, or the women who choose to wear them. But the older I get, the more ridiculous I find the notion of spending life balancing on a tapering five-inch stick and teetering around precariously, while my knees and back spasm with pain.

Give me a pair of ballet flats or even some comfy loafers any day. And please, for God’s sake, stop with the Either/Or questions.

Laugh out loud

There are very few authors who can make you do that – so cherish the ones who do succeed

Sitting at my table for one as I waited for my lunch to be served, I slipped in my earphones and resumed listening to Meryl Streep reading that Nora Ephron classic, Heartburn. (Yes, I am happy to report that I have finally got the hang of audio books – but that’s a story for another day.) Before I knew it, my surroundings had slipped away and I was in Nora-world where her husband had fallen in love with an impossibly-tall person while she (Nora, not the girlfriend) was seven months pregnant. But while this may sound like tragedy to most of us (and it most assuredly was) Ephron managed to spin comedy gold out of the disaster that was the collapse of her marriage.

Which is how I found myself laughing out aloud at one of the (many) funny bits. And such was my absorption in the tale being told into my ears that it took me a while to realize that the people in the restaurant were looking at me funny as well. What on earth was a grown woman doing laughing uproariously into her Malaysian prawn curry? Aware that I probably looked certifiable I tried to compose myself. It lasted for about a couple of minutes. And then Meryl hissed into my ear about how her husband would even have sex with a Venetian blind, and I was in giggles yet again.

Finally I decided to just give in to the comic bits that would set me off regularly and laugh along with the narrative. After all, the other people in the restaurant had already written me off as a mad old bat, so what did I have to lose?

Besides how often do you get the privilege of reading (or listening to) a book that is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny? Not very often at all, I am afraid. So, when you finally hit upon one – or in my case, re-read it in a different format – then it makes sense to clamber on for a fun-filled ride, punctuated with giggles and chuckles, never mind if you are in public as you chortle away. You folks can keep your judgement. I am happy in my enjoyment.

As I drove back home, I began thinking of the other authors who have the knack of making us laugh out loud like Nora Ephron had managed to do with me that afternoon. The first name that popped into my head was that old childhood favourite, P.G. Wodehouse. My mind flashed back to all the many summer holidays spent devouring the entire Castle of Blandings oeuvre, giggling over the antics of the Earl of Emsworth and his prize-winning pig called, appropriately enough, the Empress of Blandings, and the ever-efficient Baxter, his private secretary, and the whole host of supporting characters who populate his whimsical plots. Once I had swallowed this whole series whole, I had moved on to the Jeeves and Wooster omnibus, which kept me whooping with laughter yet again as I navigated the world of the doltish Bertie Wooster and his ever-resourceful and masterful manservant Jeeves.

My teenage years were also when I discovered another of my favourite comic writers. I know that most people think of Georgette Heyer as a romantic novelist because she is best known for her ‘Regency Romances’. But what most people who haven’t read her don’t realize is that she is also a dab hand at comedy. Her convoluted plots provide enough space to slot in comic bits and Heyer does a great job at working them in seamlessly. If you want to see Heyer at her comic best, read The Grand Sophy, The Talisman Ring, Cotillion. Or actually, read any of her ‘romances’. Laughing out loud comes with the territory.

Gerald Durrell was another author who kept me in whoops in my growing-up years. There was a time in my life when I used to re-read My Family And Other Animals once every year just so that I could laugh at the antics of the Durrell household as they navigated life on the island of Corfu. Last year, I went back and revisited the Durrells, wondering if they would amuse the adult me just as much. And the short answer is: yes, they could – and they did. 

More recently, it is the books of some female comics which have got me cackling loudly as I read them. Mindy Kaling’s self-deprecatory humour in Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me had me chuckling along half in recognition and half in appreciation. Tina Fey’s Bossypants did the same trick as did Miranda Hart’s Is It Just Me? And Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman should come with a warning that you might embarrass yourself reading it in public – as I did. (Yes, yes, I know, there are plenty of male comics out there who are just as funny. But what can I tell you? The funny bone wants what it wants. And in my case, it wants the female voice.)

I am sure that there are plenty of other hilariously-funny authors out there that I am missing out on. If there are any that make you embarrass yourself in public as you laugh out loud while reading, please share their names with me. And I promise, in short order, to share your embarrassment.

To binge or not to binge

That is the question, as streaming services make it all too easy to devour entire series in the course of an evening

I must admit that I am a little bleary-eyed as I sit down to write this column. And that’s because the second season of Sacred Games dropped on Netflix at midnight and I stayed up late – as you do – to binge-watch. All I managed were three episodes, though, before sleep got the better of me. But I am pretty sure that if the season had been released in the afternoon, I would have swallowed all of it down in one greedy gulp.

But as I resolutely turned the TV off and sloped off to bed, I couldn’t help but wonder if this kind of binge-watching was the best way to see a show. Would it be better, I pondered, if TV series like these dropped one episode at a time and allowed us all a little time to absorb events and plot twists. Watching it in one go, I was a bit overwhelmed by all the turns in the story, and felt, on occasion, that the narrative was getting away from me.

One reason why these thoughts popped up in my head last night was because I had just caught the first episode of the second season of Succession, and had enjoyed it thoroughly. It left me craving for more, given that only one episode drops every week. But that interval also gave me enough breathing space to think about the story so far, to speculate about what could or would come next, and to discuss the episode threadbare with my friends and family.

Much the same thing had been true of Big Little Lies. That show, too, was not available to binge-watch unless you waited for a month and a half for all the episodes to be released. And in retrospect, I think the series benefitted from this kind of drip-drip-drip release. For one thing, most of us saw the episodes at much the same time, so we could have a kind of cooler-talk conversation about it for days on end on social media. We could marvel at the sinister edge Meryl Streep brought to her role as a bereaved mother. We could discuss whether Laura Dern’s unhinged portrayal cut too close to the bone or was just madly over the top. And we could all admire the steely presence of Nicole Kidman who was the perfect counterfoil to Streep.

The week’s gap gave us enough time to think about the show as we waited impatiently for the next episode to drop. That sense of delayed gratification meant that we enjoyed the next installment even more than we would have if we’d been speeding through the episodes late into the night. And the show itself benefitted by having its shelf life increased to the six to eight weeks that people spent watching it – unlike binge-watched shows that can only hold the public imagination for a week or so at best.

I know what you’re thinking. There is no law that says that you have to binge-watch a show just because it is released in its entirety on streaming services. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and insisting that you watch every episode of Made in Heaven the very same evening it appears on your TV screen.

But honestly, how can you possibly resist? Especially when a show is as compelling as Made in Heaven, with the narrative propelling you forward from one episode to another almost as if you had no free will in the matter? I certainly didn’t. I kept promising myself that this would be the absolute last episode I watched that night. But when the cliffhanger presented itself and a little box on my screen started uploading the next episode, I found myself powerless to power off the TV. I ended up going at bed at 4 am, but if you ask me, it was totally worth it.

Perhaps this is the time to confess that I have form in this matter. Even before streaming services made zombies out of all of us, I was a greedy devourer of box-sets. It was 24 that started me off, with its conceit of all the action taking place in real time. As Jack Bauer tried to save the world (okay, America) one torture-session at a time, I watched in horrified fascination until the sun came up in the morning. More recently, the crazy antics of Carrie Mathison in Homeland kept me up all night as well. And it isn’t just action series or spy thrillers – that are geared to keep us on the edge of our seats – that have this effect on me. I was similarly transfixed by the two seasons of The Marvellous Mrs Maisel.

But while shows like Fleabag (both seasons of which I binge-watched shamelessly) are perfect for being consumed in one giant bite, given their linear form, clear narrative arc and economical style of story-telling, others with a more sprawling structure benefit from deferred viewing. And after last night, I think the second season of Sacred Games could fall into that category. This is a show that needs space to breathe, and when we watch it, so do we.

So, from now on, it’s only one episode a night for me. But you go right ahead and binge if you want to. I will see you on the other side.