Yin-nish

I have been home for a while.
My last travel was in October and that was quite a road trip – a trail from Gwalior to Satna through Chanderi, Orchha, Khajuraho, Panna and Rewa. An immersive, intensive experience of northern Madhya Pradesh. Simply fabulous.

Since then, I've just been home, writing up the stories and... simply being home. Domesticity is a never ending job and I find that the concerns of the domestic life are what you might call choranaptyxic in nature – able to grow or shrink in order to fit available (mind)space. They diminish when I have 'bigger' things on my mind, but grow fairly demanding otherwise. I have taken care of a pile of leaves in the corner of the garden, hosed down a termite mound that was predating on the jasmine climber and I have made plans for the beetroot that are a week old and sitting heavily on my conscience. I am ahead of the curve.

Just the time for this quotidian observation from the Lucknow poet Sushma A. Singh.

winter chill
  I press harder
on the rolling pin

A feminine slice of life. 

About the little things. 

A small detail, a small blip in the pattern with an activity that is repeated perhaps every single day.

It is colder. Even if you have mixed the atta with a little tepid water, the dough is hard. Rolling out the rotis calls for a little extra.

Floof love

I think I have a problem. Rather, two. I have an addiction and I have a scarcity of the substance I'm addicted to.

Like everyone on the planet with internet access, I watch cat and dog videos. And panda videos. You know you have to get into the piece you're working on, there is no time for a K drama, but you can fit in a 7-min break featuring a cute labrador, can't you? Of course you can.

Re dog breeds, I'm very much in the middle of the pack. I thought Golden Retriever Labradors were my most favourite type but that was before I was introduced to the Samoyed. An utterly gorgeous double coated creature of cold climes, this ancient breed has a laughing face and a temperament to match.

It started innocuously enough. I watch quite a bit of content from Korea, so YouTube thought nothing, I assume, of pushing originating-in-Korea dog and cat videos at me. It started desultorily enough but I got inveigled into following their daily lives and now there are three that I cannot live without: MilkyBoki, mochamilk and HoyaDanchu.

All three feature Samoyeds paired with other dogs and cats in some combination or the other. Milky of MilkyBoki lives in Korea but the other two are Korean-in-Canada. They are individually and collectively adorable.

This is Milky, all flat out at the park:

 This is darling Wooyoo (Korean for, yes, Milk)

 And the baby of the lot, Danchu (Korean for button)

These are enormously popular channels and, I suspect, hugely lucrative. They celebrate subscriber milestones, they receive marketing merchandise for placement. Wooyoo and Mocha of Mochamilk even have their own book out. These fellows are celebrities of a kind - a phenomenon that I'm old enough to be amazed by. This Internet-worked world is throwing up unimagined scenarios.

Now I've watched them all, more or less. Nothing new till there's another update on just how much fun Danchu had in the snow.