Month: September 2018

The joy of hearing good news from your friends, or about your friends, is indescribable. Here is a soul you haven’t been connected with from birth, but someone you’ve grown to connect with over time – and someone who something good has happened to.

That’s a very pure joy to celebrate.

For me, it makes me want to sit and listen to details about the piece of good news at length. The hows, and the whys, and the whos, and the wheres. And it makes me so happy to just listen to someone who has received a piece of good news.

It’s lovely.

There are very few people who will understand you like your parents do. This is fact. This is something I learned when my parents understood things even when I did not communicate them clearly, and when I recently broke down while talking to them on the phone.

Yep. I did that.

I really wanted to get off campus for a weekend, and I usually do activities to help me get away from campus and from obligations that come with living on a residential campus – things like debates, and MUNs. Debate weekends help me forget several things and also partake in an activity I thoroughly enjoy.

More specifically, I wanted to get off campus and go to my home city. I don’t think I was homesick, as much as I wanted a lot of familiarity, and I wanted to experience my “summer 2k18” once more.

I looked for a debate in Bangalore. I found one also.

But that didn’t work out. And then I was puzzled about what to do.

I think my parents realized this far quicker than I did, but they basically gave me the blessing to go home. And then I felt guilty. And then a lot of confusion happened, but my father basically comforted me on the phone for a very long time, and told me that it’s okay to want to take a break from time to time.

That hit me hard.

I really needed to hear that from my parents – and I don’t think it’s something we speak about as frequently during the course of the semester. Also, my dad is the hardest working person I know, and to hear him tell me about the importance of taking a break and not burning out was something that brought me immense comfort.

He also talked to me about several other things I didn’t realize I needed to hear from him. And all of this at a time where I was barely communicating clearly.

If you’re ever confused or uncertain about anything, it isn’t overly dependent, or young, or stupid, to call your parents up from time to time. Sometimes we forget that for a while, in our lives, our parents basically took decisions in our best interest – until we became “independent”, that is.

I’m still pretty independent, I think.

But sometimes it’s useful to have their affirmation in decisions I take.

Today I received a massive “care package” from home, filled with some of the snacks I love, prepared by some of the people I love the most. I don’t think much has made me happier this semester.

I’ve been missing home food a lot. The mess food has become a little too repetitive and poor in quality for me to handle, so my desire to either eat South Indian food, or food that I like eating, like Italian, or Mexican, or even just fast food, has gone up by leaps and bounds. More than I ever thought it would.

That “care package” was something I devoured over 2 days. And each time I ate something contained within that brown carton, I remembered some part of my childhood.  A pooja here, a small episode there.

A very vivid memory, for example, is my grandfather making his coconut burfi. It’s one of my favourite preparations of his. Over summer (Western summers), I used to be in India, for the monsoon season. Regular readers of this blog would now be used to my complaints about the rain, but my grandfather kept me entertained every single summer. Apart from the books I would read, and the TV I would watch, and all the holiday homework I would not do, my grandfather found projects to keep me occupied every summer day. Whether this was painting, or pencil sketching, or even stitching a tote bag, my grandfather taught me a lot over the summers.

Very unconsciously, I think another big thing that happened over summers was that my grandfather broke down the “gendered” stereotype of household chores. He was pretty active in the housework – and my grandmother and grandfather both cooked me meals I loved, and both helped set up things in the house. I quite enjoyed it.

They insisted, for example, that I drink milk before sleeping sometimes – because that’s what they were used to. I don’t think I’ll forget that.

Or the unreasonable fear of the dark I used to have in their house. My goodness. I had to literally run through the corridor to make it to their room before the lights went out, because I couldn’t see anything in the pitch dark black of their room.

Anyway, this post was about food. I remember 2 minute Maggi taking way too long to cook in their house, and how I used to sit atop the countertop and watch the heat waves waft over into the patio.

I remember my grandfather preparing coconut barfi on that countertop as well, and it sticking to the plate. I remember being so excited and surprised that a coconut could be grated, but more importantly that there was a machine that would do the activity.

If a singular piece of food can make my mind wander to so many different places, just imagine all the places I wanted to be when I ate all the food in the brown carton sent from home.

Yet I am in Gujarat.

It’s becoming tougher and tougher to attend 5 hours of class these days. My seniors told me this would happen to me in fourth year, but I was optimistic that I’d power through it, and show enthusiasm while attending every single class throughout 5 years of law school. I feel like mathematically that is extremely difficult. It’s 60 different papers – and it is quite likely that there will be subjects that people enjoy and subjects that people do not enjoy. That’s true of me as well, because I’m only human.

Powering through the classes I don’t like has been the biggest challenge – largely because sitting in that class, I find it difficult to pay attention, and I also begin to think about the other things I could be doing in that time.

I don’t like this.

I’ve got only 3 weeks left in the semester before exams, but I think I’m going to try to be more proactive in classes in terms of trying to pay attention. And when I fail, I’m not going to think negatively about everything else I could be doing with my time. I want to value each class the way I did in first year again, and while I know reaching the same levels of enthusiasm is unlikely, the least I can do is attempt to get there.

To do this, I feel like the other thing that can help me is background reading. Maybe classes aren’t engaging enough for me anymore, and maybe I’m genuinely not interested in the subjects that we’re studying. That doesn’t mean I need to stop taking effort to try being interested. Reading has always provided a lot of comfort for me – in terms of taking me to a different headspace, and making me feel emotions that the real world sometimes cannot.

I’m going to try pretty hard for the next three weeks. I’ll tell you how it goes.

It’s been one full year since I embarked on a journey which brought me to an empty campus in Gandhinagar, took me to Delhi numerous times, made me see Chennai, and then ultimately gave me the opportunity to visit the United States of America and eat New York slice pizza.

I’m uncertain how to feel about it. One year passed by really quickly, and when I was working on the problem, I don’t think I realized how much of my time it was actually taking up. Since I’ve been (relatively) free from the start of this semester, it’s provided a lot of time for me to contemplate about how I can spend my time in different ways. It’s also given me time to think about the kind of activities I want to prioritize.

The problem, is, however, that when you lose track of how much time you invested in one project, sometimes it becomes difficult to estimate how much time you have to “work” in a particular day, and how much time you really need to take for yourself. I’ve made that error in judgement numerous times over this semester, and the corrective mechanism has led to me sleeping in class to catch up on some personal time.

But, anyway, coming back to the journey of a lifetime.

The reason I’m uncertain how to feel about it is because I look back on it with so much fondness and happiness, that I sometimes wonder whether there will be another activity in the future that will give me so much joy. I know I can’t look into the long-term future, but I think last year was something I enjoyed so much, that I’m going to strive to find that kind of happiness in everything I do.

That could end up very negatively, I feel – because I’ll end up continuously comparing how happy I am at any given point of time to that very high standard. To avoid that, I think I’m going to be more conscious and more grateful for the small things I do on a regular basis that bring me happiness.

To another year of madness, that the 2019 mooting season will bring me.

 

Sometimes I wonder how people get excited about change and experiencing new things. I mean, I’m like that too. But I wonder how it happens. What excites our brains about new experiences that routine is unable to fulfill? What void in our lives does change actually end up filling? And why is it that some people are excited about it, and some people are scared?

This abstraction comes from the fact that I am doing two internships in an unfamiliar city, and I do not yet have a place to stay in said city. But I will figure it out.

Personally, I think I get excited by new experiences mostly when they involve food and books, and travel. Being able to experience the vibe a new place gives off, or the possibility of having an adventure is something that I cherish.

But I’m also one of these people who likes having these adventures planned out. Which is a little contradictory, but eh. What can I do? That’s just who I am.

The one thing I enjoy a lot is developing small traditions with my closest friends – things we do without fail within the sphere of our friendship, which helps us stay in touch with each other. A lot of my friends are friends I have shared experiences with in the past, like school, or an internship, but are people I have been unable to meet on a regular basis since I moved to University. As a consequence of this, small traditions help me reconnect with them instantly, more than anything else.

A couple of them include discussing new pieces of poetry once a week, meeting up at a sandwich shop and eating sandwiches like it’s nobody’s business, meeting up for coffee late at night, eating pizza – every single time we meet. It’s delightful.

The dude I meet for pizza is someone I find really good company – not only because we share similar outlooks toward things like pop culture, but also because of how much he teaches me each time we meet. Every single time I interact with him, over pizza, I learn so much about how his life has changed since we did that one internship in Bangalore together, and it reminds me that it can take just one common thread to make friends.

The other thing I love about traditions like these is that they ensure that some life experiences repeat themselves frequently. If I wasn’t meeting my friend, I feel like it’s unlikely that I will go out for pizza as often. It’s also unlikely that I will visit that sandwich shop, or the coffee shop. Because these are not experiences I enjoy having alone.

The same thing can be said of Taco Bell, which I have adopted as one of my homes in Bangalore. I go there so frequently when I am in town, but I only visit the joint with a few people I hold very dear to me.

I wouldn’t trade those memories for more memories of eating Taco Bell. And that says a lot.

 

One of the best things to happen this semester is that I’ve rediscovered how much I enjoy cartoons. I found a couple of good ones that Cartoon Network now runs, and I’ve begun to watch them pretty regularly – to take my mind off college-related things, and to take me back to my childhood.

Some of these cartoons serve as wonderful social commentaries. But even those that don’t are so wildly entertaining and so well animated, that you can’t help but enjoy them. You fall in love with the characters, their back stories, and every single thing about them. You become invested in their world.

Cartoons take me back to a simpler time. Where the only things I really had to worry about were: what has my mother packed for lunch today? Will I be trading my lunch for a piece of Kyle’s Nutella sandwich?

That’s one of the reasons I’m enjoying them so much.

The other reason is that I am a child at heart and everything about cartoons is amazing. The plots are rarely sequential, so you can get through them without having watched previous episodes. There are tons of clips on the internet, and you can keep finding other similar cartoons to fall in love with.

I’m currently binging We Bare Bears.

I made a very conscious decision not to type out anything for the last 12 days or so. Sorry for the inactivity, especially if you’re a regular reader who missed the blog updates. But I was going through a rough patch where I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say, or what was going on in my head.

A lot of that came from a workload I found increasingly difficult to balance. And I think recognizing that it can be a struggle, sometimes, is important.

I’m back though – so you’re now going to get 12 blogposts at one go. Your e-mail inbox will be spammed, but I’m going to take you through what the last 12 days have been like for me.

Fun, no?

Someone recently told me that the art of learning how to live a happy life was learning not to crib about things. Not to crib about the cold water you have to bathe in, bot crib about the size of your room. Essentially, learn how not to complain about the privileges that society has given you – because privilege is never earned, but some abstract social construct that is now received.

I find this proposition arguable.

I literally wrote half this blogpost about how I was going to attempt to follow this philosophy for a bit and see where it took me. But I’ve quickly deleted it because I think that complaining and having a vent for feelings is essential.

Cribbing and acting like a baby about things or being over-dramatic can be sometimes extra. And that’s perhaps where I’ll draw the line.

 

Recently been reading around the flak that Nike has received for putting Colin Kapernick in an advertisement.

For the uninitiated:

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/9/7/17831334/nike-colin-kaepernick-ad