Health, reading and Mumbai: Explore these interesting activities this week

Thomas Joseph

Leons Thomas Joseph's reel on Instagram about identifying Bombay Catholic aunties without knowing who they are had us in splits with the raw, thick accent. Joseph, who is a lawyer and digital content creator, repeats and enunciates the punctuation "men" in a thousand ways and in a shrill voice until you become adept at identifying one in the market next time. His reel on Catholic moms just before Christmas is everybody's mom during Diwali or Eid, but the accent and the vocabulary of the community makes it a rich experience to scroll down the account. He gives you enough of a taste of the community to equip you to catch all the inside jokes and references the next time you are at the Bandra Gymkhana.
@leonsify, Instagram

Roadmap to being a woman

Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes is best known for her seminal book, Women who run with the wolves: Myths and stories of the wild woman archetype, but the cantadora (Spanish for ‘Keeper of stories') has so many more. A Jungian psychoanalyst by training, Estes believes in dispensing tales as medication, measuring how much to tell of which story, at what time, to heal what ailment. Audible is a veritable Aladdin's cave of her books, and the treasure within this treasure is that they are narrated by her in a low, soothing tone, using an artillery of the right words and with the intonation of a master storyteller. She passes down stories from her Spanish-Mexican heritage about ageing as a woman, being in touch with one's instinct and intuition, as well as stories of the unmothered and abandoned child in Warming the Stone Child and other stories. They helped conciliate this writer with house work during the pandemic. The underlying theme is that we hold within us everything we need, and dreams and stories are our intuition guiding us. Every person in a dream or a story is a part of our personality.
Available on Audible

Reimagining Indian cities

A grid of his Instagram profile

Have you envisioned how Mumbai would look in 2077 or after an apocalypse? Saicharan Shetty, a digital artist who is also part of Spinning Top Media (a new-age social media agency), has a series called Cyberpunk 2077 on Instagram. He posts reels of how Indian cities would look in a dystopian, apocalyptic future, and has reimagined Mumbai, Bengaluru, Varanasi, Delhi and Kolkata. Mumbai is marked by popular landmarks such as Wankhede Stadium, local trains and autos, Gateway of India, and the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. We find this reimagination eerie and terrifying, but also mesmerising. Shetty uses midjourney, an AI programme used to make art and Photoshop. Besides this series, we also liked his rendition of Upsidedown Mumbai from the famous TV series Stranger Things and the dreamy illustrations of Marine Drive.
@skycharan, Instagram

Know your body

"Will the real vulva please stand up?" Dr Tanaya Narendra asks right at the beginning of her just released book, Dr Cuterus: Everything Nobody Tells You About Your Body (Penguin Random House, Rs 299). The trained doctor, embryologist, scientist and sexual health educator-influencer says that women have been suffering from a massive identity crisis, when it comes to their genitals - "most of us, almost all of us, in fact, have called the vulva the vagina our whole lives," she writes. She isn't wrong. It's why this book is that much more important. Dr Cuterus is not about sex, neither is it an instructional manual on pleasure. With this book, Narendra introduces ourselves to our own body, the little parts that make us whole. Not to mention, the dos and don'ts of sexual health hygiene. "Did you know that Lizol (your pocha-waala Lizol) was marketed as Lisol to women to get rid of their ‘odours'?" She explains why douching - washing the inside of the vagina - involves health risks, and what's the easy-peasy solution to keeping clean. The penis and testicles are also very much part of her lessons. With chapters dedicated to birth control and abortion, this book is an empowering guide (and essential reading) for every woman exploring her body.
Available at all bookstores

A bonnet full of hair

Curly hair needs a silky-finished bonnet to keep the curls intact while sleeping, and once this curly girl learnt this, she began looking for one. The market for curly hair products and accessories is still niche, thus we went looking online. We didn't realise how this could go wrong. The first one, bought online for Rs 750 was too tight, inducing a headache. For the next one, we sought recommendations. Following those of a famous curly hair blogger, we bought the one costing R850. This time it was too loose,and slipped off our head within five minutes of lying down.

Disappointed, we called off the search and forgot the pursuit until an Instagram advertisement popped up with one from Curl Cure. It had an adjustable band and cost only Rs 549. We bought the maroon one (purple is the other option available), but didn't raise our hopes. It arrived a couple of days later and did not induce headaches. We later learnt that Curl Care is run by a 21-year-old Thane girl Simran Sainani, who also has an offline salon and retail store, all specialising in curly hair. We booked a consult to learn how to style our curls and were content. We also bought the shampoo, conditioner and leave-in cream of Sainani's own formulation, and will review it soon.
curlcure.com

Curated by Jane Borges, Yusra Husain, Nidhi Lodaya and Heena Khandelwal