Newsletters have become hip. In my head I read this first sentence and I can’t help but replace hip with butt. But they’ve become really rad, isn’t it? Newsletters I mean. Every content creator is trying to amass audience. If audience comes, everything follows. I started one, because I felt I wasn’t writing enough. And you’ve been baited to subscribe to this newsletter, so that I could write more. Huehuehuehue. 😈
Let’s break valentine’s day’s clichés by some music, memories, a short story, a poem, other newsletters and podcast suggestions. What do you say?
Clementine 🍊
I was in the final year of college when I discovered clementine music player. It was still a time when we mostly used to listen to downloaded songs. Clementine was fresh because it had an internet radio feature with 100s of channels to choose from. My favourite instantly became Radio Tunes ( formerly sky.fm ), because it had a lot of genres to choose from. Listening to it after hostel dinner became a regular affair. I started listening to a lot of indie pop and rock, not really knowing what that genre entailed.
The reason I’m telling about Clementine is because popular music streaming services can sometimes feel monotonous in their recommendations. That’s why people are always looking out for fresh songs. Maybe you do too. Here are a couple of tools / softwares that I recently stumbled upon and am loving using them to discover new music:
Sukhnidh and Anmol’s bop.fm. Choose a year and they’ll direct you to a random retro pop or rock and roll song launched in that year.
Hypem, created as a dorm room project 16 years ago. Let their about page tell you what the platform is all about:
Hype Machine indexes hundreds of music sites and collects their latest posts for easy streaming and discovery. We're here to help you find the best new music first.
Tracks being favorited the most by the Hype Machine community start to chart on our Popular page. We also keep tabs on the most-posted artists of the week and popular music videos, so you don't miss out on any good stuff.
If you’d end up using Hypem, and if you are a mac user, you’d benefit from Plug, which is like a mac app for Hypem.
Memories
I thought Valentine’s day should be made gross. For the heck of it. I wrote some gross but funny memories in my new essay — The 💩 Incidents.
Poem
Coffee Conversations
by Rachna Sethi
Published in Indian Literature Journal Sept-Oct 2020 Edition, Sahitya Akademi
Conversations
are brewing over
espresso, latte,
and mocha.
College friends’
loud talk and laughs
over cold coffees
douse the tension of upcoming exams.
Young corporates huddle
over cappuccinos
desperately completing a PPT
as appraisal hangs on precipice.
Kurti-clad girl
meets a prospective groom
from shaadi.com
as unsure about him as to what to order.
Salt and pepper divorced man
is back to dating with Tinder,
tentativeness hangs like
melting ice cream over frappe.
Am the unwilling eavesdropper
to caffeinated interludes,
of a lot happening
over coffee.
Short Story
No Tomorrow by Shinjini Kumar.
Shinjini has recently started her own startup called Salt, aimed at empowering women to have better financial practical knowledge and actable avenues to earn and invest money. Previously she was Consumer Business Manager with Citibank India, and had headed Paytm’s Payment Bank product before that.
I got to know about her writing endeavours when I read her short story called Family Values in Sahitya Akademi’s bi monthly journal Indian Literature.
Three Literary and Art Newsletter Suggestions
Riya Roy’s The Nook Seeker
Rohini’s The Alipore Post
Bhubaneswar Poetry Club’s Poetry Newsletter ( scroll down to subscribe )
Podcast
Books and Beyond by Bound India
Please Share? :)
If you liked the contents of this newsletter, please
with your friends. This is my only mode of getting more readers :)
If you liked this particular issue, please share this issue:
If you are new here, please subscribe? :)