Tight Security and Tweeting Salaciously

So as it turns out, there is no one better to comment about an Indian being detained at Newark airport, than an American.

Our newscasters were too buy calling what is only a routine security measure “a deep, deep shame,”an “utter humiliation” and a “Sharukh bites a quivering lip and holds back tears while big, mean man takes his liddle-widdle teddy bear.” Yes security personnel at Newark, you should be deeply ashamed of the your need to make sure that individuals who enter and leave the airport are going through the regular security channels, not to mention your penchant for liddle-widdle teddy bears. A cryin’ shame indeed.

Highlight: “It’s like a perpetual motion picture machine,” says Stewart gleefully. “He’s the dude-from-Twilight of Calcutta” declares Aasif Mandvi)

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Can we leave Shashi Throor alone please?

His comments about using the “Cattle Class with the Holy Cows” was nothing but a witty, light-hearted remark in an off hand twitter conversation. Get over it. If you’re not smart enough to understand it, ask someone, if you still don’t get it. Shut the hell up.

The people who are making a big deal about the comment are also the same folks talking about what a useless, sad medium of communication is. (“Tweet is a very lonely man”) If tweet is such a lonely man (or such a sad, useless means of communication) why do you then give a hoot about what’s being said on it?

The guy uses twitter. Big fuckin’ whoop. That makes him more technologically advanced than…I’m going to venture an…EVERYBODY in the Parliament.

As Amit Verma pointed out, in a country that’s plagued by the lack of communication and accountability with and from our politicians, here is a man constantly communicating with over 1.5 lakh people, having conversations and making people aware of what goes on in the life of a MP.

Moreover, at the end of the day, this guy is my representative. Just like a boss who needs status reports on what his employees are doing, we the public deserve to know what Shashi Tharoor the MP is up to. His tweeting has bought a new level of transparency to our government, one that others will soon be expected to follow. I’m betting half of congress is pissing their pants at the thought of having to let people know how much work they’re doing (and most importantly, NOT doing) on a daily basis.

Especially in the past 15-20 years or so, we have been lamenting the brain drain phenomenon. Our smartest, brightest and best going off to serve other countries, leaving all us dumb folks behind. Well, Tharoor, with his international experience and education  has come back to serve his land. And instead of being grateful, we’re trying to bog him down with trivialities. No wonder our smartest, brightest and best run from politics with their tail tucked between their legs.

Shobha De, who is one of the very few commentators of our time, who has the equal ability to say a lot of things in two words, and nothing in 400, wrote about the issue, but disappointed severely. Amit Verma in this case, did not.

HAIR–The Vagina Monologues

(I was asked to perform the above monologue for a workshop recently for which I wrote a character study in the “stream of consciousness” style. Therefore it’s a first draft, no editing went into it.  )

It is just a gorgeous day outside and much like any other New Yorker who let’s the weather dictate his/her mood, I’m feeling great. I bought this fabulous pair of sunglasses that  make me feel fabulous. I slept in late today and I’ve taken Monday i.e. tomorrow off.  I’m so excited about staying home on a weekday even though I know that something will come up and I will end up working, albeit from home. Luckily I carried my work computer home so it’s not like I’ll be grasping at straws in case someone calls with a crisis.  I like work and I’ve very rarely been involved in office politics. In the 6 years since I started the company, I’ve never been friends with anyone of my employees. No after work drinks, it mixes up the personal and professional, a mess I’m happy to be far away from. I don’t even care what they think of me personally, as long as they produce good work, I’m perfectly all right with the way things are.

The subway ride here was rough, the L train is crowded nearly everyday, even on weekneds. Especially when the weather is nice, everyone wants to step out and over crowd the subways. I have to admit that I think these damn strollers are a fucking nuisance. They pack their children in these re-inforced, high-tech, futuristic prams as if the air will hurt their children. Leave them at home if you’re so concerned Goddammit. New York City is no place to be bringing up children. I had always thought I would move to Westchester or maybe Philadelphia when I have children.

Growing up, it was constantly drilled into our heads how lucky we were. Rosary two times a day was an almost too graphic description of Jesus’s journey to the tip of the hill with his cross. I tell people I’m a recovering Catholic. The last time I went to church was during the “Sex and the City” tour. You know those tours, that will take you to all the places that a T.V show was shot at? It was the St. Francis church from the episode when Samantha tries to seduce a priest. After mom died there was no need to keep up the charade of being holy. Dad didn’t care enough and when I went away to college, I even gave up Sunday mass.

It was dad that pushed me into marrying Steve. I was doing my undergrad at MIT, in Classical language and literature when I met Steve the math major. We kissed in the library stacks at about 3:30 in the morning while we were supposed to be studying for a test on Dante’s “Inferno.” How deliciously ironic. Dad said it would be a good idea. Where would I go after I graduated? The apt. we had called home for years was a rental and we had no relatives who would die and pleasantly surprise us with a very generous will. He said being married would help me save on rent.  It seemed like such a good reason to get married, to save on rent. Steve’s father did not spare any expense at the wedding. There was a string of foreign dignitaries, whose names I forgot in seconds of being introduced to them. We spent the entire night giggling like school children, imitating the accent of the Chinese ambassador to Brazil. Our marriage fell apart becasue of several reasons, some so absurd that even in the horrible pain and humiliation that divorce brought with it, I had to laugh.

After the divorce I had a a string of romances, mostly with ex-boyfriends, and one ex-girlfriend. I am single now, and damn happy for it. If I did get into anything with anyone, it would be highly inconvenient.

Caroline called this morning. The last time she had called, 8 yars ago, she said “Veronica, I’m moving dad to a home. He’ll like it there.” Just as I predicted. I was on the phone with a publishing house from Japan. They were desperately trying to position their new line of pornographic manga comics in the American market. He was saying how Japan maybe the birthplace of some strange sexual fetishes, it did not come close to the voracious American appetite for sex. America was puritanical, you see. I agreed with him, told him we didn’t have any plans in place to promote pornographic print in particular, placed him on hold and picked up Caroline’s call.  She wanted to see me at L’Express all the way downtown. She said it was urgent. She was married to the toast of the New York art scene, a short, fat balding man who squinted at everything as if he was looking at it for the first time. I ‘ve never seen his work, but I’m quiet sure his creativity is confined to the canvas. I’ve had more enlightening conversations with a doorknob. Now their marriage was falling apart. I made reservations, a table on the sidewalk and pre-ordered a bottle of 1991 Shiraz that I knew she liked.

I slipped into a yellow sun dress and my white pumps. I almost forgot my phone, and had to run back in to get it. The Japanese publisher had hung up or got cut off when I was on the phone with Caroline, he might just call back.

I feel like the sun came out specifically for me today. I’m going to have a great tan if I stay out till at least 2:30 in the afternoon. I know it’s not the way I’m supposed to be thinking, walking towards the story of the destruction of my sister’s marriage.  I’m not defending my callousness. It’s going to be a strange meal.

“Mumbai in Motion” redux

Nahin jaayega, aage waale se poocho.

The hanky was white, with a design on the edges that was so faded by repeated washings that I could not tell what it was anymore. When she would open it, the black seeds would lie there, insignificant as if unaware of their own power. Half an hour before the shoot would begin she would give me two seeds and I would put my head down in her lap. She would put me to sleep. I was in two public service ads. One of them was for smoking–Dhumrapaan nako kara.  The other was for water preservation.  In that one I am being given a bath by my on-screen father and a voice over who is then berated by a stern voiceover for leaving the tap on, letting the bucket overflow. That day, for some reason, the seeds did not take effect. We had to do the shot 22 times. The tap was on the entire time.

I was 12 years old and the Indian production lady at the casting for “Mumbai in Motion” took me to the head of the line. “He has experience,” she told the fat, white man behind the desk. She said to me, “Uncle ko hasao.” I grabbed my mother’s dupatta, stretched it out between my legs and danced like Salman Khan singing “Jawani Phir naa aaye.”

I was doing my homework on the floor by the main door when Lali ma came running down the lane, zig zagging clumsily between the open gutter and precariously sharp tiles. “Afzal America Jaayega! Award milega picchur ko!” she screamed.

Our bedrooms at the hotel were bigger than 4 houses in our lane put together. I ate pancakes with rich, golden syrup till I felt like vomiting. There was no tap near the western toilet, I sat on the pot for nearly two hours before the production lady came to find me and teach me how to use toilet paper.

I slept with the award under my bed every night. Newspaper-walas came to me and asked me how I felt to be home. They asked me if I was sad.  I told them I was very sad. They made me make sad faces and pose in the classroom. I complained about the heat and mosquitoes to them. I could not get used to it, you see, now that I had been to America for four days. My face was in the newspaper for weeks. When my grandfather died, my mother used her inheritance to buy a flat in Gowandi. The news-walas wrote two pages on it. They said that it was bought with the money I had made from the film. I went to a new school in a rickshaw every morning and sometimes they followed me in cars, taking pictures of me. I did an ad for Parle with Amitabh Bacchan. In India, people knew three names Amitabh Bacchan, Sachin Tendulkar and Afzal Sajjad.

Even after the news-walas stopped, the production lady came to see me at home sometimes. When  she saw my running nose and gaunt face asked me to stop. She said she would stop sending me money from the trust-fund that the fat, white man had set up for me.

Arre, but I am an actor. Bina aphim ke acting hota hai kya? Bhenchod log.

Haan boss, kidhar jaane ka hai?

Plugging into my hate.

The only reason I didn’t buy Glade candles regularly in the past is because I couldn’t afford them and the Duane Reade or Rite Aid brand fulfilled most of my candle-related needs. However, when there was a special occasion I would walk to the store and treat myself a “Clean Linen” scented Glade candle. Then I’d light it and wait for the entire house to fill with it’s glorious fragrance. I would then imagine that I had clean underwear for the next day, and that I did not have to  spend $10 and 3 hours at the laundromat trying to fold my underwear as soon as it comes out of the dryer so that people don’t see it.

Then one day I saw this on T.V:

They got the point across in the first 15 seconds.

Lady: Are you baking a fucking pie?
Lady in black dress: No it’s this wonderful candle.
Done. Why the fuck do we need to see 15 seconds more of these women chattering?  Worse still, is the maniacal cackling after the hostess is called out on her lie. I’ve heard more graceful sounding hyenas, also, it’s very mean. You are not baking a pie. It’s a lie. It’s a lie-pie. Gut-bustingly hilarious.

Maybe it was because she lied about it being French and her brilliant friend picked up on it and said Glaa-day instead of Glade?
I get it!

Also, out of curiosity, why is this woman dressed in this black dress and a pearl choker and pearl cuff and lighting candles all around the house, while her friends look like they just walked out from work at the DMV? She was obviously trying too hard, which will explain what happened.

Bad Glade. Bad!

But we forgive you, if only because of your apple-cinnamon scented candle.

But then, a week later, this abomination made it’s way to the airwaves.

And before I could change the channel, Christmas was around the corner. To celebrate, Glade harassed the networks with this piece of crap.

Is it just me or does this woman have a chronic lying problem? No wonder she has a different set of friends in every commercial. And every single time, they laugh at her, instead of telling her that they know she’s lying or that she should get some help.
Moreover her teeth are unreal, white and rectangular like large chicklets. Everytime I see her, I want to kick her in her large shiny veneers and watch them crumble like they do on Tom and Jerry.  (I’m a sad angry person with a lot of bottled up bitterness, sue me)
“They’re really good, and they’re really glade” She says sheepishly into the camera at then end of the commercial. But you said it was this was a boutique-y fragrance you got to plug into your karma…oh wait, that lying problem.

This is why a Glade candle is $3.99 while a good old Rite Aid candle is $1.99? This is what my two extra dollars goes towards? This woman with horse teeth lying to all her friends? Fuck that.

On the eighth day, God went to brunch at Indigo Cafe

And God said, let there be mushrooms, and there was mushroom cappuccino with truffle oil,  He said, “Let there be fish”, and there was baby rawas , He said “Let there be lamb” and there was lamb shank and last of all, He said “Ay Ganpat, chal daaru la” and there was pitcher of white wine sangria.

This very conveniently edited version of the opening of the world’s best selling book came to mind as I walked out of  the doors of Indigo Cafe this afternoon. Brunching with Dad on Sundays is a welcome ritual. Though, gastronomically, I’ve not been in the best shape since I moved back, jumping too eagerly into spicy plates of Sev Puri and glasses of water with grimy finger prints from bus boys with rags on their shoulders- which have led to having to excuse myself in social situations because I’ve had to attend to important “calls.”

So we chose Indigo Cafe, over the Blue Water Indo-Chinese buffet. Tucked into a lane Off Link Road in Andheri-Oshiwara, Indigo was located at the end of very bumpy lane, not the kind of place you would expect for a place like it to be. The valet found a place for our car to park, and even though we had no reservations, the waiters smiled and found a place for our asses to park in very little time. The decor style of Indigo Cafe is deceptively simple; divided into two sections by glass panes. We sat in what could be construed as the “outdoor” section, even though it was air conditioned and sunlight was streaming in through the opaque ceilings. The selection is diverse and American, like a New York bistro that I’m quiet sure would be packed on a Sunday afternoon, much like Indigo Cafe was.

And to add a disclaimer here- I have been a waitress before. I know what an absolute shit job it can be, but it can also be a lot of fun, when you actively make yourself a part of the experience for the diner. I’ve connected with people who I’ve served and met some very interesting ones.

At the prices we pay for dining out these days, food alone does not a a good restaurant make. The attitude in India towards wait staff is quite sad, where they can be perceived simply as people who carry the food back and forth the kitchen, as opposed to representatives of the restaurant or brand. They are the ones who are directly in contact with the point of sale and I think our service industry at large needs to wake up to that.

Having said that, Cafe Indigo was definitely more than a cut above the rest. Our server was polite, friendly, laughed at dad’s jokes like he genuinely enjoyed them and pretty much had us sold on anything that he said. One glass of  Sangria, at his suggestion, turned into a pitcher.  The wine was sweet though I was marginally disappointed to see only apples and pears in what is supposed to be an assorted fruit drink. (And even this, I thought I must mention, because the rest of the experience had me spouting superlatives, the good kind, so that I don’t seem biased.) Dad’s Baby Rawas that was on the 1 year anniversary menu, was delectable and Azra’s lamb shank meat fell off the bone and melted in your mouth before you had a chance to start chewing. My mushroom cappucino was what God had in mind when he first bestowed upon the earth, the holy gift of edible fungi.

We got talked into Molten Lava dessert. (Disclaimer time once again: I hate Molten anything. It’s just a bunch of chocolate cake, with chocolate sauce, and chocolate sprinkled on it, topped with chocolate shavings and a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. It’s pedestrian and unimaginative not to mention a whole lot of calories for two of the most common flavors in the dessert world.) Of course, Cafe Indigo, proved my fears unfounded. Chocolate whipped into a frenzy carefully placed in layers in a tiny square with a snowy dusting of powered sugar and the mandatory scoop of vanilla ice cream blew my mind. It was light, unique and sinful, a perfect ending to a perfect meal.

Two entrees, one soup, one side, a pitcher of Sangria and a dessert put us back by Rs.3000. Not the cheapest brunch excursion, but one worth every single rupee.

As we walked out to get into the car that the valet promptly retrieved for us, I know we will be back soon. What a treat this was!

And so on the 8th day, He called up a bunch of friends, and God went to brunch at Indigo Cafe. And that is the word of the Lord.

Sadly, I did not find a website to link to, but if you ever find yourself in the Andheri-Oshiwara area I would suggest getting your reservations in place and definitely making the time for a heavenly experience.

How do you say “Brilliant” in Icelandic?

Nick introduced me to Sigur Ros when we were just getting to know each other. Moments of the first few months we spent together, are punctuated by their music and so I think I’m particularly partial to them. During those days, as we sat  at Heddon watching the sky reflected in the placid water of the lake, Sigur Ros would play in our heads and I desperately hoped that time would stand still forever. Having introduced others to their music, I have known no one to have an insignificant reaction to Sigur Ros. And you will never forget that moment when the first strains of their music float into your consciousness.

An Icelandic band, Sigur Ros is comprised of jón þor (jónsi) birgisson (vocals, guitars), kjartan (kjarri) sveinsson (keyboards), orri páll dýrason (drums) and georg (goggi) holm (bass) and were formed in 1994.  At best their music defies description (and therefore I will attempt the next two paragraphs!). Sweeping, ephemeral, ethereal, unworldly and untouched much like the landscapes of their homeland, their music has progressed from ambient and conceptual to raw, dark and powerful all the while never losing the feeling of utter bliss that fans have so come to expect from their music over the course of their four albums.

I personally think that Sigur Ros’s music evokes some fantastic imagery and dreamscapes, a marriage of sound and sight and story that’s only been achieved effectively by a few others such as Japan based Mono and the US based Explosions in the Sky. The music grabs your hand, breaks out into an even smooth run and try as you might to keep up with your feet, you feel them lift off the ground and you have no choice but to give in to the soft, firm grip, flowing with it.

I’m not one of those people who seems to have head phones growing out of her ears. Even while running, the sound of the treadmills groaning and screeching seems to me more rhythmic and comforting than actual music.  So, to me, the impact of  Sigur Ros is over whelming, emotional, visceral and inspiring.

And as if it’s not enough that their music is mind bending, they go and make this video for “Svefn-g-englar” from their second album “Agætis byrjun.” (The people in the video are all members of Perlan theatre group, an Icelandic group of downs syndrome actors)

I don’t make bold claims enough I am told, but I have no qualms about the fact that once you’ve heard Sigur Ros, life will never be the same again.

So welcome to the rest of your life.

It’s funny coz it’s true

Niharika has long since earned the reputation for being the purveyor of crappy forwards via text message.  The kind that you think are being written by a guy in a red shirt, yellow pants and one long coke nail, who stands by the side of taxis checking himself out in the rear view mirror occasionally pulling out his fine tooth pocket comb in order to calm the fly aways in his coconut oil soaked hair.  (see image). She has not let long distance text message costs deter her from sending me gems like the one I received last night (that woke me up at 3:00 a.m I would like to add.)

“Democratic difference between India and the US. In the US you can kiss in public but you can’t shit in public. In the India you can shit in public but you can’t kiss in public.”

Most of Niharika's forwards seem to have been punched into a cell phone by the grimy fingers of a guy who looks like this

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards- Read it or repent!

Kirsten handed me a copy of Kim Edwards’ The Memory Keeper’s Daughter a week ago. She said it was a book I had to read, and I think she’s also been trying to pan off her books on people she know will respect and care for them, since she moved into her new apt. in a bid to create space for the multiple new ones she’s going to get now that she’s got her fancy editorial assistant job.

Set in Kentucky the The Memory Keeper’s daughter starts with a snowy night in 1964 where a split second decision charts an unconventional path for it’s characters and affects the next two decades of the people that it is touched by. Kim Edwards who previously published The Secrets of a fire king a collection of short stories, publishes her first full length novel with this book.

There is no doubt that Edwards is a brilliant writer, her imagery is startlingly precise and the narrative flows in an almost dreamlike way. Her words hold a soft focus lens on the plot, blurry in the right places though the too even pace could make it slow in places to an impatient reader like myself. Having said that I still was not able to put it down, choosing to burn the midnight oil in order to see the story lie down to rest. Most importantly The Memory keeper’s Daughter is a treatise on the fact that our lives are only a series of decisions, ones that could take us down drastically disparate pathways to painful and unanswerable “what ifs.” It is a story of the basest instincts of man, all the way from monstrous selfishness to unprecedented kindness, there will be some point in the story for every reader where they will see a character make a choice that they would if they were in a similar situation.

Kim Edwards writing style is very similar to Jhumpa Lahiri (The interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake). They both have a muted, elegant way of writing that could only come from a woman’s pen. And since I am a rabid JL fan, I am happy to read any works similar to hers. If I were Roger and Ebert, I’d be “two thumbs up”-ing ‘The Memory Keeper’s daughter” to everyone I know.

Put on your hazmat suit, gather your children and head to the bomb shelter–It’s the twitocalypse

Yesterday, while hanging out with Sunny bhaiya, my cousin who takes the mantle of “Geek” with too much pride, our conversation steered as usual to our children, or as they’re known to the general public, the i-phones.

At the cost of wandering off on a tangent after the first sentence of the post, I love talking to Sunny Bhaiya. He’s the kind of techie, know-it-all that you know is just biding his time before he discovers the next big thing in technology that will have the folks at Wired dribbling over their word processors and the reporters at Esquire penning cover stories about what it takes to be a man in cyberspace (or something along those lines, Esquire always figures out how to transpose the highly coveted epithet of “man” in various fields and various people).

Right, back to the point.

So, even though we had seen each other a few days ago, and done it that day as well, we began comparing iphone applications. It’s amazing how it brings people together, this mutual connect over the kind drivel that we chose to install on the platform that now defines us. (Did ‘Shazam‘ just blow your mind? Or wait….did it just blow your mind).

“What do you use for twitter?”

“Twitterrific”

“Didn’t twitterriffic collapse because of the twitocalypse virus?I use tweetdeck.”

As soon as the worlds left his mouth we both sat there in brief silence, coloring up.

History is testament to the fact that the bastardization of the English language is an ongoing process. We “grooved”  our way through the 60’s and now we’re googling and facebooking the hell out of everyone and everything while texting and occasionally sexting.So why is am I so twitterified, twindignant even about the twopularity of twitter?

I’ve always been a purist, a serious language snob or as people have often called me, “that asshole who won’t shut up about her grammar shit.” I worship Grammar girl and have been known to carry a copy of  Elements of Style with me for months on end (and been known as the aforementioned asshole who won’t stop whipping out that stupid book, to prove her lameass point.) It’s one of my few guilty turn-offs. (Totally brilliant perspective on the topic by Christian Lander of “Stuff White People Like” fame.  I’m not white by any standards, but I am still a grammar snob.)

What bothers me about the twidespread twitfluence of Twitter (I’ll stop now, I swear, but it’s so Goddamn easy!) is the fact that it’s the name of a company, a money making mechanism, a corporation that in today’s economic climate would take very little to fall flat on it’s face, and then the words would be obsolete. It’s different to “grooving” to anything. (The word came into being when the phonographic needle fit neatly into the groove of a record.) We grooved after something solid, that hung around for a couple of decades before being made obsolete by the cassette tape, I’m not a 100% sure what the life span of Twitter is going to be, but I am willing to bet it won’t last more than a couple of years. Something else will come along in the next few months that will make grab our teesny-weensy attention span and it will be like Twitter did not exist at all.

Just the frivolity of it all kills me. And the fact that we are so ready and eager to take on anything that captures our imagination for all of 140 seconds is embarrassing to the English language, well, any language for that matter. (Eg. Mumbaiya Hindi (Hindi specific to the Bombay area of India), the well loved dialect of Hindi with it’s “Kya mangta hai” (What do you want?) and “Apun ko leke jaane ka hai”(I want to take this away) make my blood curdle into a thick, thick yogurt. I’m miffed that we don’t give language the respect it deserves; that it’s the one thing that defines our world, and is yet treated with such callousness. In today’s age of 24 hour news coverage and everyone suddenly becoming an “internet media/marketing” expert/maven/guru, we have embraced pretty much anything, willingly inculcating it into our everyday language, popularizing it and obscenely flaunting it on any channel of communication we can.

Twitter?

I flip you the bird.

Update: Not related to the main theme of the post, but really?

“It was, like, all dark and stormy…”

The title of Katie Roiphe’s recent WSJ article was spot on. I’m a sucker for good copy writing, and it was enough to make me want to keep reading. (Remember kids, a good headline and snappy introduction is all it takes!)

Her premise is interesting, that young adults are now attracted to literature that is darker and grimmer than a few years ago.Or what I imagine will be a less generic summation, that darker, grimmer literature is now making it’s way to the bestseller lists in a way that was never before. (As Michael Whitlow, WSJ community member so astutely pointed out, dark YA fiction is a genre that has been around for ages, he mentions S.E Hinton’s The Outsiders from 1967.)

Having recently graduated from the Young Adults market demographic, I agree with Ms. Rophie’s observation. (Or maybe this is desperately wishful thinking that that young girls are over reading Gossip Girl/A-list/Clique/Bitchy, “rich girls running around with Palm Pre’s and Prada messenger bags” books. And I quote–”Was there any bliss quite like the first five minutes in a hot tub? Well, yes, actually. Ben. Sex with Ben had been that kind of bliss. . . . Would sex with Scott offer that kind of bliss?” This is a 17 year-old internal monologue in one of the above named books. A barf bag on table 4 please!)

As far back as 1999 when Harry Potter hit the book shelves, the mainstream YA fiction market has been in a state of transition. As we grew up with him, the books did get grimmer, more realistic, and with the Prisoner of Azkaban, the first time in the series that it truely got dark. Harry was up again Sirius Black, (who was then thought to be) a raging mad man, but a man all the same. He was not a shapeless, nameless, super-devil creature like “He who must not be named.” He was a wizard, like Harry and his friends, people who we were able to identify with. And Sirius Black used to be his parent’s friend, his God father. Suddenly, the enemy was so real. Even what was supposed to protect Hogwarts from Sirius, the dementors were very scary. Who would Harry turn to?

2005’s Twilight series was poorly written with a banal story, one dimensional characters and cliches galore, but was the summation of the age of Gossip girl and Harry Potter. It had the required amount of lustful looks and “brushing lips while she ran her fingers in his hair,” along with the darkness of the eternally angst producing dilemma of right and wrong, good and bad.

And in conventional knowledge there is supposed to be a “type” of teenager who reads dark literature. The emo kid with the very long bangs,  and pants that seem to be weighed down by the chains tacked onto them has long since become all of us. As darker literature sees the light of best seller lists more frequently these days Ms. Roiphe also mentioned a few upcoming books to watch out for.

1. Wintergirls-Laurie Halse Anderson

2. Thirteen reasons why-Jay Asher

Hey I’ll walk with you to the closest book store if you wait for me while I finish putting on my black eye liner!