25. twenty-five

a long list and two cool announcements

I can’t believe that it’s been 5 years since I started this newsletter and that finally, we are at the 25th instalment of this little project of love. It took me a while to get here but I am so glad that I did. And thank you – all of you – who subscribed to my very public feelings journal for some strange reason. I am glad you like it here.

First of all, GIVEAWAY!

As a little thank you for reading my newsletter, I will giveaway 4 postcards (two by

Vedi

and two by Hiela) to the first four people to comment on or reply (via email) to this issue with a single word. Each postcard will come with a custom poem by me and I will mail them to you anywhere in the world!

PS: Catch a sneak peek of the postcards at the end of this newsletter!

I thought of writing about my 25th year (it was a very interesting one), 25 learnings from the last 5 years and the story of 2020, the year I started this newsletter. But the first would be too depressing, the second would be too preachy and the third is something you can read in the very first installment of this newsletter.

Instead, let me tell you about 25 things that I have fallen in love with since I started writing this newsletter in 2020. I promise I will keep it short.

25. Alexa: yes, the round little blob from the big, bad Amazon. She tells me the weather and plays my music when I write and calls me Sunj. I don’t know what I would do without her. Use my headphones, I guess?

24. Incense sticks: from Phool, not just any incense brand. I always spend a lot of money and set aside a significant amount of my luggage allowance on my trips back to Hamburg from Kolkata for them. I think I would lose my mind without Nagchampa.

23. Thalia.de: It’s a bookstore.

22. Lao Gan Ma Chilli Oil: If you don’t have it in your fridge, I beg you to please just go buy it.

21. Sparkling water: where is my German passport, Bruder?

20. Tony’s dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt: If I am ever unhappy, please just find the green Tony’s and send it to me.

19. dm’s photo printing service: The reason why the wall above my chest of drawers is a physical mood board.

18. My stand fan: Girls, European summers are a whole different deal than Indian summers. Buy yourself a ventilator.

17. Little packs of tissues: a bit of a habit I picked up from the German I live with. It’s handy, I recommend.

16. Oatly: who knew I was lactose intolerant until I tasted the highly processed milk they sell at the German supermarkets?

15. Berries: All kinds of them. But mostly strawberries. And raspberries. And blueberries. Not blackberries. I don’t know about gooseberries.

14. Mangoes: I grew up in sunny, sweaty Kolkata. Mangoes grew in my grandparents’ backyard and everything we ate in the summer had mangoes in it. Green mangoes with salt as a snack at a railway station. Cured, tangy green mangoes set out to dry in my Dimma’s house which we stole and snacked on during the summer holiday. Hot daal with unripe mangoes and nigella seeds poured over steaming white rice. Ripe mangoes that we inhaled by poking a hole a the bottom and sucking the sweet meat out, sitting on the terrace of my childhood home, overlooking a quiet lake.

I eat them on my morning oatmeal now, frozen from a bag. They still taste phenomenal.

13. Rice: You can never convince me that quinoa, couscous, or bulgur is an alternative for good, steamed rice. My Bengali soul will sell Alex for rice, so please. Don’t even try.

INTERRUPTING THE FLOW TO TELL YOU ABOUT OUR WORKSHOP!

Get Writing! with Vedi and me is an online writing workshop where we explore the basics of writing and work on some interesting prompts together. Half of the proceeds from this event will be donated to Khartoum Aid Kitchen in Sudan. 🇸🇩

⏰: August 24 | 12.30 -14.30 (CEST), 4-6 PM (IST)

📍: Online (via Google Meet)

💶: Pay as you can with a minimum of €5 or INR 300

Register by filling out this form. Now back to regular programming!

12. Walks: In India, walking was never a thing people did for pleasure. It was a means to always get somewhere. In recent years, with the advent of the Ubers and the Olas of the world, walking was never a part of my daily life.

But hey, people change. I would choose walking over most things now. I am grateful for the privilege of living in a very walkable city and that I am healthy enough to take myself on long, often entertaining walks with good music for company.

11. Summer: Right? A tropical girlie saying that they like summer? What has Germany done to me? 🫠

10. Winter in December: No matter what part of the world I am, I love string lights, plum cakes, Christmas decorations, the holiday feeling and the strange joyfulness that permeates the air. Maybe I have always felt a weird sentimental connection to December because I was born on the very last day of November. November was never mine but December is when I started living.

9. Cooking on a weekend afternoon: I cook through the week to survive. I whack things in a pan and expect to make something edible. On the weekend, I cook something I have been craving all week – Mom’s prawn curry, Srilankan egg curry, chilli chicken, and dal tadka. These are mostly foods I remember vaguely from my life in India which I carefully aim to recreate on quiet weekend afternoons and savour for a few meals after that.

8. Solitude: Sitting under my blanket and reading. Cooking on my own in the kitchen. Painting by the window. Listen to a new album. Going for a long walk. I really just like being alone sometimes.

7. Losing myself in a really good novel: such that I forget the time and the sun sets between the pages of what I am reading and I don’t realise where my phone is or that I haven’t eaten a single meal. It rarely happens but when it does, girl do I love it.

6. Waking up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee: Helps to have a partner who wakes up before you, makes the coffee and wakes you up. But generally, just good coffee made at home by our espresso machine topped off with a bit of foamy oat milk.

5. Buying good art: Not expensive, not fancy. Just really good art, made by really talented local artists (who are often our friends). We are running out of walls at this moment. And that’s a really good thing.

We love supporting people who make art because I am not very good at it. Maybe that’s why we started watermelon art fair? Who can tell?!

4. Protests: There’s nothing more freeing than screaming your lungs out at a protest, surrounded by people who care about the same things as you. I don’t think I knew what that meant until last November. I had never had the guts to go out and be at a protest before. But yesterday, on our way back from the camp (where we rushed at short notice because our friends were violently arrested by the police), Alex said that he was proud of me for not thinking twice before I came out to a place where I could be in significant danger. I guess, that’s true.

But like Mohammed El Kurd said, we will never know the danger and the fear that someone feels when they are sitting at a dinner table and the lights above them start shaking moments before it all goes black.

What we do is not bravery, it’s our duty. Going out to the streets is what we have to do. And I will do it until I can’t anymore.

3. Finding new friends over shared values: I have lost so many friends in the last 10 months and in all honesty, I do not regret even one of those losses. People we lose aren’t meant to stay. But boy, have I made new friends.

It’s a different feeling when you make friends you don’t have to hide yourself from. Here’s to all the friends I can be completely myself around – silliness, strong opinions and passionate conversations included.

2. Working out: I always saw myself as the fat girl who will never be worth anything no matter how hard I try. Our society feeds these insecurities. It tells girls like me, who aren’t thin and conventionally pretty, that we have to change something about us drastically to be acceptable in our community. Well, fuck that.

I have tried the diets. I have tried workouts that sucked my soul. And 30 years into this life I realised that all I needed to change was how I think. So, I work out to be fit, to lift heavier, to push for longer, to be stronger. I found workouts that work for me, I found a way of eating that makes me happy and if after all that, I look better, then that’s great, right?

1. Myself: I spent most of my twenties looking for a way to be myself. It’s not easy finding your true self when everything around you is changing at a breakneck pace. I don’t know if it’s the magic of turning thirty or if it is simply the maturity that comes with being a minority in a foreign country, I found who I am and who I want to be. And that’s priceless.

These last five years have been the most tumultuous, fascinating, creative, exciting, and frustrating years of my life. Often, this newsletter has been the space for me to tell my stories, share my experiences and air out my feelings. And while many of you reach out to tell me how much this newsletter means to you, I want to tell you that I write this because of you. Thank you for being here. You are heard.

Until next time, because there will always be a next time,

Sanj 🫨

PS: Here are the postcards you can get if you leave a comment on this newsletter (on Substack) or if you email me with a word in reply to this newsletter! I am so excited to see the prompts you all come up with. 🥳