Friend,
Here’s a list of things that are on my mind.
1. I went for mass tuition classes for some of my O/L subjects. I don't know how much of it was afterschool-socializing or how much I learned at these vast classes. Our maths tuition class was ruled by a swearing book-throwing chain-smoking pot-bellied teacher who could silence a class of 100 with the raise of an eyebrow and the flick of a cigarette. He didn’t teach us the O/L syllabus like everyone else did. Either it was tuition master intuition or he had managed to game the formulaic exam system but he knew the mathematic staples which recurred every year and kept repeating them until they were imprinted on us. He died of liver cancer a few years after our batch.
But the science class was a different story. Even on a good day, there was a low-grade restlessness that hummed through this class. The teacher was good but wasn't as adept as capturing the class's attention and didn't command the same fear or respect. Often he looked tired and exasperated as though all he wanted to do was to beat the traffic, scrub the day off him and have his dinner in peace. On many days the science class ran amok.
I watched the parliamentary sessions around the 20th Amendment in chunks. If you’re interested in Sri Lankan politics, scroll down and read the turquoise blue box at the end of this article. Watching it in real-time was hard but seeing the political theatre in print has a different feel.
I’ll leave the analysis of the 20th Amendment, its implications and the urgency to consolidate power at the height of a pandemic to those better equipped than me. Some of the recent parliament theatrics (swasthika arm bands, luxury vehicle protests, faux gunshot wounds to symbolize the death of democracy) made me also think of the parliamentary brawl that unfolded in November 2018 after the coup. This was not the first parliamentary brawl. It will not be the last one. But it produced some renaissance-art photography and memes which I revisit to remind myself that this really did happen.
Parliament feels a lot like that tuition class on some days. There are the backbenchers heckling everyone. The kids throwing paper balls. A similar restlessness. Bullies. There's the crowd who don't do their homework and bluster their way when they are called to speak. The sleeper. The class jesters who crack a joke and look around to see if everyone is laughing. The ready-for-a-fight folk, eager for a provocation. The few people in the class who are there to learn are drowned in this crowd.
And then there's always this one person. No one knows what he is doing. Everyone's uncomfortable.
2. I jot down quotes and notes to myself so I keep finding notes from past lives.
This, I found a few days ago.
I can’t remember why I wrote this. What did past Adilah mean by this? Was this the positive affirmation phase which lasted all of 2 days and where I downloaded an affirmations app and tried to read The Secret? Why couldn't the past version of myself also helpfully provide annotations to these pseudo-profound affirmations she jotted on rough paper? I need details, past Adilah.
3. There was a meme that did the rounds this week. I’m not going to link it here – the boundaries around privacy and consent with footage like this is murky – but it was short mobile footage of men in a government-mandated quarantine centre. Everyone is saronged and in comfortable clothing, most are masked, you see beds in the background and there’s a guy… vibing. The meme-maker has superimposed a Vengaboys song but the masked man is dancing to a beat we don’t hear and is surrounded by an appreciative crowd urging him on.
Separated by a glass door is another man and he is also vibing. And both of them are engaged in this partitioned, socially distanced vigorous dance battle that is the result of pent-up energy and everyone around them is laughing and smiling and it was a thin slice of very Sri Lankan resilience and resistance amidst a tough time.
4. My Korean and Japanese part of the food internet sparks so much joy.
There are a group of Korean YouTubers who make this stripped-down videos where the focus is on the food and auditory aspect of cooking (almost cookingASMR?). I forget that a part of cooking is to listen to your ingredients.
You hardly ever see the person behind the channel apart from their hands and carefully selected parts of their surroundings. And the conscious choice to stay invisible feels at odds with the hypervisibility that we have come to expect from life on the internet. It's a welcome deviation from the US/UK food world where like everything else in that part of the world (food, books, media, films), the success of a medium is intertwined with a personality behind it, spawning a breathless following of the person. My beloved Maangchi is an exception and is an example of a Korean videoblogger following the personality model. But it's Maangchi. I'm ok to make an exception for her.
One of my favourites is One Meal a Day. I don't know how much of the captioning is lost in translation but they have this deadpan, droll sense of humour which is very endearing. The recipes are simple and very doable with local Sri Lankan ingredients.
Another is Imamu Room’s Husband Bento Boxes. I don’t know why videos of a Japanese woman living in Canada and making lunch bento boxes for her husband and daughter are oddly comforting but it is and this is a channel I’ve spent a lot of time with in recent weeks.
We don’t hear her voice or see her but her train of thought (how she’s feeling, tidbits about her husband and child, commentary about the dish) and instructions are conveyed to us through captions. Her kitchen is small and the utensils are compact to fit the space. And she uses this limited space and a set repertoire of ingredients well and each lunch combines textures and colour and builds levels of flavour beautifully.
I’m hesitant to call this a labour of love. It is. Cooking and food are love languages but the moment we rush to romanticize it, we diminish the daily labour poured into it. And there is so much of invisible labour behind cooking and everyday food management. I think about Emma’s comic, You Should’ve Asked, which describes so well the mental load that many women bear. Food videos also compress cooking and prep time and what we see is a fraction of the work involved.
I’ve bookmarked a few of the husband bento meals for future lunch experiments in an attempt to wean the household away from rice and curry. I like my rice and curry but I will hold firm that the greatest threat to Sri Lanka's labour productivity is the afternoon slump induced by potent rice and curry lunches due to a skewed rice:veggie:protein ratio. Call me for a thinkpiece, Advocata.
5. Andrew Carnegie and my mother have the same feelings about nose rings.
6. This story is 9 sentences long. Every sentence is embedded with a different kind of grief (CW: suicide).
7. After the news of the initial cluster eruption (since the Sri Lankan state isn’t calling it community spread I’m forming a new pandemic lexicon to fit the situation. Please join me.) I hunkered down, stepping out sparingly. For a few weeks I began going for walks along the main road in the evenings, partly for groceries and partly pre-empting the curfew and the cabin fever that would inevitably set in.
Before the beautification projects and the walking tracks arrived in the suburbs, this is how my family and I would get in our exercise. We would walk down our road and out into the neighbouring town and then circle back home. When I picked up this old habit earlier this year I found that swathes of our hood had morphed right under my nose despite the fact that I pass these areas every day. It’s funny — sometimes you look but you don't really see. Walking allows you to be more mindful of your surroundings in a way that vehicular movement doesn't.
Early last week as I walked past a large store, a family of three came out to the pavement to hail a three-wheeler. Mother, father and small son stood there with a newly purchased carrom board at their feet. I wasn’t the only one preparing for curfew.
This second round of curfews and lockdown feels harder than the last. What a strange, unsettling year. I hope you and yours are well.
Take care.
Yours,
Adilah
Ps: I enjoyed reading and hearing about your reflections on space after the last newsletter. All of your dream spaces sound lovely. Thanks so much for sharing.
Minal shared a Minnette de Silva staircase anecdote. Diva shared an art installation by Shonan Purie Trehan which explores the concept of walling in and walling out — how bodies build the very walls which will keep bodies like theirs out. I’ve added both at the end of the previous essay which is available on the site.
A quick housekeeping note – this newsletter will now be published twice a month. Thank you for reading.
Saw the word “husband” and scanned frantically looking for the details - and found something about lunch boxes🤪 Good stories but cheated again!
I love how reading your posts are so effortless. Beautiful writing as always!