Dear friend,
I just didn’t feel like sending out a self-promotional email newsletter in the last few months, and I still don’t. Many’s the time I plotted a screed containing my feelings about the state of Kashmir, the degradation of parliament, the constitution of India, and about my home country, the Indian media, in an earnest and emotional way. But I am not the person to listen to on this matter; and at any rate for many of you reading this the time for listening is gone. So let us keep doing what we do, and meet in the streets.
However, my work updates have been piling up, and ironically for the end of the age of listening, I am part of a new podcast out today. This would never have happened if Deepanjana Pal and I hadn’t met for breakfast one day and decided to record a “pilot episode” of a conversation about books, just for fun. My friend, the musician Adriel George, was further responsible for letting us record this in his bedroom studio in Bandra, and editing and mixing a pilot that we put up for fun on Soundcloud. Next, my enemy Raghu said, I’m going to send this to the famous podcaster Mae Thomas. And then Mae, whose show Maed In India is a cornerstone of the indie music scene in India, said she really liked it and wanted to make a full show with us.
So we did. That was two years ago.
After a completely non-traumatic journey that mostly involved eating a lot of fries at the bar behind my house, the podcast is now out to listen to for free on a number of streaming platforms. Here it is.
It’s called The Lit Pickers and is entirely the baby of Maed in India. Thank you Mae, Shaun, Sharanya and Jaanam for wanting it to become a reality. I hope you, the reader, will enjoy it. Deepanjana and I will cherish any feedback you may have.
Another thing I started last year was work on a new media company called All Things Small. You can read a little about it here. We’re embarking on some journalism projects that will go live this year, so if you have a good idea for a story, send me a smoke signal, or HMU if you see me in public over the next couple of weeks.
Over the last few months, my books column at Mumbai Mirror has addressed the work of authors including Meena Kandasamy, Nikhila Henry, Fatima Bhutto, Niraja Gopal Jayal and more. They are available to read here.
A visit to Delhi has left my breathing apparatus clogged with the usual by-products of the cold, so I will not be providing an audio version of this newsletter.
I’ll write again next month.
Supriya