Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

07 Oct 2010, 22:52 p.m.

When Did My Mom's Hair Turn More White Than Black?

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2010 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

This afternoon:

Mom (in Kannada): Will you grate the rest of these beetroots for me? My arm hurts.
Me: Sure! [starts in on the beets] These are staining my hands red, huh. Hey! This is Columbo and you're framing me!

By the way, you can eat raw beet (or "beetroot" as the Commonwealth countries call it), but it's not nearly as tasty as roasted. I'm guessing the beet juice at juice bars is from raw beets, and that it's the added celery, spinach, carrot, &c. that makes it so yummy.

I'm in Washington, DC, returning next week. I'm most of the way through Charles Stross's The Family Trade, the first in his Merchant Princes series. Eh. I enjoyed his postmortem but the book feels a bit mechanical, the prose and psychological detail nothing to write home about after reading Pat Barker. Still a page-turner, though.

Tonight I continued printing and addressing Nandini's wedding invitations for Mom's friends. Oh, time to read more Divakaruni to Mom! More later.