Last Sunday, at 2.30am, I fell into a state of grace. I was sure my life had just changed. Exposure to art does that sometimes, though I didn't expect the source of my ecstasy to be a Netflix show. Mona was next to me in bed. She'd fallen asleep in the middle of episode five. I forayed on. I was hooked, glued, riveted, utterly convinced this show had been made explicitly for the sake of my viewing pleasure. I was able to decipher its prophetic undertones. I 'got' why the show was called Russian Doll, I 'got' Nadia, I 'got' why her hair was the colour it was, why she walked with a swag, why she spoke with sass.

Her personality was the opposite of Clarice Lispector's Macabéa, the female protagonist in The Hour of the Star, who is described as being as appetising as cold coffee. "She lacked that elusive quality known as charm," Lispector tells us through her narrator, an author. She continues- 'The girl did not know that she existed, just as a dog doesn't know that it's a dog. Therefore she wasn't aware of her own unhappiness. The only thing she desired was to live. She could not explain, for she didn't probe her situation. Perhaps she felt there was some glory in living. She thought that a person was obliged to be happy. So she was happy. Before being born was she an idea? Before being born was she dead? And after being born was she about to die?"