#56// food and women in thirties

butter, tambola and other things

It has been a while since I wrote to you my dearest reader. Sharing seven things that have kept me occupied.

1. Read (and eat?) butter!

I love butter. Butter on toast is my ultimate comfort food. I cannot resist inhaling garlic fried in butter. One of my most memorable meals was warm banana bread slathered with thick butter, eaten on my kitchen island at three in the morning. But most recently I have been preoccupied with this novel Butter by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton. Like most novels about food, Butter is also about women, desire, agency, societal expectations on the feminine, and culinary pleasures. It follows an interview between a thirty something journalist and a food blogger imprisoned for murder. It is to be noted that this interview could take place only because the journalist wrote in to ask the recipe of beef stew. The novel is based on the real life case of a woman ‘The Konkatsu killer’ who seduced men with her food and killed them. The book is very good. It makes you very hungry. It made me want to eat butter and rice.

2. Talking about men, The Husbands by Holly Gramazio has a unique premise. An unmarried woman keeps getting new husbands (apparently her attic does that) and she really doesn’t know what to do. Imagine a new man in your house every now and then! It is fun, clever, sometimes tiring, makes you laugh, sometimes makes you yawn, just like husbands in real life.

3. Newsletter spotlight

I love Café Anne, a newsletter with a focus on New York city by the very talented writer and master storyteller Anne Kadet. Her letters often make you think every city is simply bustling with the loveliest ordinary things that make life more wonderful. I love NYC in a special way through books, TV, Instagram (especially those autumn posts) and excellent writings as what Kadet churns out with every edition. It almost makes up for the fact that I haven’t lived there. (Do I want to? /thinking face/). Here’s a recent interview on Café Anne with someone who describes himself as being in the top 0.1% on the rich scale as the answer to Kadet’s first question. I wondered if I would find the conversation with David Roberts snobbish or give off ‘the poor are rich’ proclamations (very similar to what Kadet’s hairdresser remarked before her interview) but I really enjoyed it, even laughed at a few places. You would love this newsletter even if even if you have never been to NYC.

4. Heartwarming stories about women

Sharmajee ki Beti (Hindi, 2024), directed by Tahira Kashyap Khurrana is about women—a housewife from Patiala for whom nobody has time for, not even for a game of tambola, a career oriented teacher struggling with domestic chores and motherhood, and a cricket player in a relationship with a selfish boyfriend. There is also a coming of age plotline with two teenage friends. I loved the multitudes in the film. While the career-oriented Jyothi is supported by her husband, her teenage daughter questions if she is worthy of being a mom. The friendly housewife is often at the receiving end of sly comments, but she emerges with a smile.

Sharmajee ki Beti

5. A dinner companion

I am not a fan of watching TV while eating food (It takes away the experience of savouring your dishes) but I also watch a fair share of TV especially with sad meals that can only be made enjoyable with a good show. Kumari Srimathi (Telugu, 2023) was a heartwarming drama series starring an unmarried woman (Nithya Menen) in her thirties working in the hospitality industry. Srimathi lives with her mother, grandmother and sister in a struggling household. Her mother is worried about her daughter’s unmarried state and complains as she cooks snacks for her home business every morning. Srimathi on the other hand is determined to win back her rightful share of the ancestral property from their cunning uncle. When Srimathi decides to open a local bar to raise money for her case, hell breaks loose both in her household and in the village. A woman running a bar? A bar to lead the mensfolk astray?

I loved this series for not being a damsel in distress, in spite of the last episode being underwhelming. Most of all I loved the mother-daughter locking horns with one another and how their love becomes explicitly evident as the series progressed.

Kumari Srimathi

5. The book lamps for night reading are always a hit with you guys. A super duper hit with me too; I cannot remember life before them. These will 100% make your night reading more indulgent. Sharing the deets again here. You can find them on Amazon US. A similar one here (Amazon In).

6. It is Sally Rooney day.

Intermezzo is out in the world. I convinced myself that even though I love Rooney books, I might not be as invested in following the life of two white men with girl issues. But today, scrolling through the pictures on social media, I cannot help hoping I was actually standing in a line outside a bookstore and getting my hands on a spanking new copy. I think the thought speaks for itself that I will read the book eventually. If you are as ignorant as me about what the word intermezzo means, don’t feel shy to google. I did too.

PS: Some even describe Intermezzo as her best novel yet and honestly I REALLY need to know if it’ll top Normal People. Have you started reading it?

7. Link time!

   Who knew about the big Lego spill?

What are you upto? Write to me.

That’s all for today. Love you my autumn hearts,

Resh x