Month: November 2019

We dropped off my grandparents at the airport this morning, and since then, my mum and I have been chilling. This evening, I took her for a walk around our new community. There’s a basketball court here, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to play a few games, or just shoot some hoops with people when I’m in town.

There’s nothing else of note from the day, to be frank. Just that, reading is back to its regular course, which I’m extremely grateful for.

[Context: https://www.simonoxfphys.com/blog/2019/11/4/im-not-okay ]

Dear Simon,

I’ve read through this piece you published multiple times since you published it. Each time I read it, I resolved further to write out a response. I drafted this a couple of times before posting it, but kept deleting my thoughts because I wasn’t sure what the right words were. I’m not checking this from this point forward, so I’m literally communicating to you everything in my head right now.

I discovered you in Grade 11, when I was making a decision about whether to apply to the University of Oxford, or the University of Cambridge to study Law. I watched your Day in the Life video, and then discovered Oxvlog. Ultimately I chose to apply to Oxford for other reasons, but comparing Jake Wright’s videos to yours gave me a lot of insight about life at these Universities. I’m very grateful for that series. I then continued to watch your videos from that point onward, and when you did your PhD series, I loved it – as someone aspiring toward that path, I was so in awe of did so much. I love it now as well and I watch some of your videos when I need a pick-me-up. Most of your science education and Kerbal space program videos have been enjoyable because I am a science geek studying Law, but basically, I’m a fan.

Which is why reading your letter of sorts really pained me. Its difficult to imagine and contemplate the true extent of the kind of struggle you’re experiencing. I can only empathise with how difficult it must have been for you to take the decision to write about it publicly, but I’m so grateful that you did that. For me, it does two things. As a fan of yours, it makes me more aware of the kind of stuff going on in your head – which is something we’ve always looked forward to in your vlogs. More crucially though, it shed perspective on mental health and the conversation around that – and the manner in which it needs to take place. There has been an uptick in the ease with which society is able to have conversations about mental health issues, but society holds a lamp to individuals who have following, and the fact that you’ve initiated that conversation and that process for yourself, I’m sure, will change the way several people who have followed your work and your life on the internet, look at mental health.

I do hope all the effort you put on your mental health bears fruit, insofar as it helps you feel better. That’s all I wanted to say, to be frank. I’m not very sure why I wrote this full blogpost, but I guess I just wanted to say, take care.

If you need something, you should know that there are several people you can turn to who want to help you out. You know whom to turn to, but should you decide to utilize the internet or any social media to ask for help – there are several people your videos and material have helped. I’m one of them. And I’d be glad to return the favour.

Lastly, pixelgirl is amazing.

I know I shall await work output when work output comes, but I look forward to hearing that you’re doing better one day.

Everything is temporary, so this too, shall pass. I’m glad you’re seeking help.

Regards,

A fan.

The highlight of today has been a trip to Ibn Battuta. To an outsider, a natural question that may arise is: how can you visit a person? To a person living in Dubai, the only question that arises is: which pavilion did you visit?

This is not a joke, but a fact. It’s a humorous fact, which I’m hoping everyone can appreciate with the below context.

Ibn Battuta was a wild Moroccan explorer, who went on all sorts of crazy pilgrimages. Dubai is a wild city, which builds all sorts of crazy things. This is a perfect match. Thus, in homage to Ibn Battuta, the city built a mall – a gigantic mall, which is the world’s largest themed shopping mall. The mall has a Court/Pavilion based on places Ibn Battuta visited. This is not to say that these pavilions exclusively feature shops from that region, but rather that the architectural style and design is based on that region in its entirety. There’s an Andalusia Court, China Court, Egypt Court, India Court, Persia Court, and Tunisia Court.

It’s actually insane.

The reason today’s trip was a highlight was because, of course, my grandparents were there. And we ate McDonalds. Eating McD with them made me so aware of how childlike the two of them are. Both of them enjoyed the burger, of course, but my grandmother was super curious about the items on the menu and the kind of quality control McD and other multinational food chains maintained across their branches. My grandfather destroyed his burger – literally eating the top bun, then the burger patty, and then the bottom bun, but he was happy eating it, which made me happy – and I laughed at how uniquely he consumed the thing. Then we ate doughnuts, which also amused them both (look, its so soft!), and I bought my grandmother a McSwirl cone. That cone is the cheapest thrill in the world (aside from free objects), so her happiness knew no bounds.

Naturally the questions were aplenty: how often do you go to McD, how much do you usually spend there, and such.

But spending close to an hour eating at McD with them was fully worth those questions. I also got to drink two glasses of Coca-Cola because nobody else wanted it, so it’s been a pretty great day.

In the evening my grandfather and I went for a walk to the grocery store. This is a new neighbourhood for me, so he’s helping me get acquainted with the place and showing me around a little, which I appreciate. It was only when I got to the store that I realized he also wanted to visit so he could pick up some chocolates without my grandmother noticing.

We are both nefarious individuals, my grandfather and I.

They’re off tomorrow morning, and the house is going to be quieter when they leave. I’m going to cherish this McDonalds memory forever, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to take them to a McDonalds when I visit Bangalore next. What I’m going to miss is poking fun at my grandmother and giving her a hard time in good jest, and those walks with my grandfather. I’m always wiser in his company.

I have arrived in the motherland.

And the grandmotherland, given that my maternal grandparents are presently here as well.

Given that I had an early morning flight, I pretty much slept through midday till lunch. Post lunch I showed my grandparents the Bill Gates docuseries I watched, which made sense to me since my grandfather loves technology.

Then I lazed around and played computer games.

My holidays have well and truly begun.

Today was my last day in Bangalore. I know this makes no sense at all, but I celebrated it by going to Salem. You heard me correctly. My aunt and uncle drove me down to Salem, in Tamil Nadu, and drove me back. We visited a temple there and returned. The trip itself was an absolute delight, and I’m so grateful that they gave up their Sunday plans for this.

The first time I heard of Salem was when a boy from the city relocated to my school. I hadn’t even heard of a place like it, and I recall thinking that it sounded foreign (Middle-Eastern, almost), while also sounding like Salami, which made me chuckle. But then I met the boy, and we became really close – in part because of our mutual love for fountain ink pens, and in part because we just got along, conversation-wise. We were on the same bus route for a while, which undoubtedly made our friendship easier. What was crazy was running into him on a BMTC bus a couple of years ago.

But speaking to him and hearing about Salem and its schools, and the district generally, I couldn’t help but think that Malgudi, from RK Narayan’s works, was modeled along its lines. While I didn’t really explore Salem today, I did think about Swami and his friends a lot on the car journey to and fro, and that’s given me enough to be cheery about.

What I’m also really cheery about at the moment is the amount of time that I spent with my Chikamma and Uncle. They hadn’t seen me for six months, and I know they were concerned at times about my welfare this semester, so to be able to spend some time with them and talk to them about everything was pretty great. The car ride reminded both my Chikamma and I of our trips to Amoeba and Pizza Hut, and we stopped for some amazing food both on the way to Salem and on our return journey – which made everything worth it.

Of course, since I’m going home tomorrow, I need to groom myself. So I had a haircut and shaved my beard, and I now look 10 years younger and ready for my parents’ pampering. In a few hours I will be at the airport again. I really do hope there’s a fast-food joint open inside the international section of the Bengaluru Airport. Its very frustrating that the KFC is only open on the domestic side. Everything on the international side is so unnecessarily expensive.

[Update: nothing was open]

 

I dislike having to prove that I am capable of using the English language. Nonetheless, this morning I completed a proficiency test. I’m not too worried about the results, but scoring low marks will hit my confidence for sure. I know it’ll make me question some of the grammar choices I make on this blog. And some of the rules I’ve implemented. Especially the rule pertaining to no editing. Maybe it’s time to become a stickler for English language rules, punctuation and everything. Or maybe it’s time to flip conventions on their heads. I can never tell which mood I’ll wake up in, which made writing today’s exam particularly difficult (I was in the mood to turn convention on its head, so I had to remind myself about punctuating appropriately).

I chilled with Panda in the afternoon, and ended up watching videos about music and talking about the new music we discovered in the last 4 years. Which was really fun.

Then I went to a college batchmate’s house. This was my first trip there, despite the fact that we’ve spent 4 years living within 10 minutes of each other even on our semester breaks. That was enjoyable, not in the least because we were able to spend time in each others’ company away from campus. We’ve done that for the past 3 winters now, so this is technically the first winter break we’re spending away from each other in a while. It’s weird, but it’s something I think we’re both grateful for. We were getting too close, I must admit.

I’ve had a very happy day.

My maternal grandmother’s sister and her husband spent the night with us. This morning, we woke up and went to eat masala dosas at a place near our house. While the dosas were excellent, I don’t think I appreciated them as much as what we did once we got back home. We had an hour to kill before they had to leave, so we sat and chatted. While chatting could have taken several forms, a sense of nostalgia ended up becoming the theme of that gathering. Everyone in my family is an excellent storyteller. I’ve been regaled by their tales when I was a child. Larger-than-life characters who make some difficult choices, all of whom have lovely family backgrounds and loving parents – most stories used to allow me to idolize the protagonist, without much plot progression occurring before I dozed off to sleep. Today’s stories though, were all real. I’m not too well-connected with my mega-family (the extended ones), and as a result, there are so many people I just don’t know much about, other than their names or faces (it’s never both). I heard so many stories about them today. The ones that hit the closest to home were about my great grandparents. All four of them. I’ve only met two of them (from my maternal grandmothers’ side), and only recently began prodding my maternal grandfather to tell me stories about his parents – so to hear about them today was very special.

Truth be told, I enjoy these stories because they allow me to live in the past for a few minutes, and experience scenarios I will never get to experience today.

The other truth of this is that I end up missing several people as a result. Today, I missed my chikamma. This is a useful place to explain to you how I “tag” people in my family. I don’t have a system for it. People in my grandparents’ generation are technically my “Ajjis/Tatas”, but some of them are called “Uncle/Aunty”. My mom’s sister is the only person among her generation I call “Chikamma”. Everyone else is called by name. I don’t know why. I think it’s because they were all young when I was growing up. I feel like they only asked that I don’t append this Chikamma business to their names. Except, their spouses are all called “Uncle”/”Aunty” where appropriate. It’s highly confusing, and a system only I understand.

But anyway, this chikamma I missed, A – is someone I’ve always called by name. When I was young and visited Bangalore for my summer breaks, my care was entrusted to a full community. It wasn’t just my welfare and well-being. It was also my entertainment. My grandparents would have gone crazy otherwise. My mom’s cousins were pretty young – all in their mid-late 20’s, I think – and working hours in Bangalore were pretty chill at the time, a proper 9-to-6 type of thing. As a result, A used to come to my grandparents’ place pretty frequently to play with me and keep me entertained. I have a whole host of memories with her. They’re vivid and vague at the same time, but they’re all happy and fuzzy. I can recall being in her care and feeling warm in her presence.  One of my vivid memories is playing with her phone, and goofing around in the lounge area of our Basaveshwaranagar house. My other memory is visiting her and her husband at Electronic City. I usually had trouble with new entrants into the family (I hadn’t grasped at the concept in its entirety), but Uncle made some fab food, took me around this amazing Infosys campus (where they both worked), and gave me a PSP game on loan (which I never returned). In their home, I felt affection, and love.

Today, all of those feelings flooded back to me.

The weird thing is that I spent more time with her when I was in Dubai and visited Bangalore just for the summer breaks, than when we relocated to Bangalore. That’s largely owing to the fact that we lived in Whitefield, but also because, well, we all grew up and got busy with our own lives. Technology should have helped us keep in touch, and I know it has – to the extent that I can pretty much pick up exactly where I left off with most of my relatives, but I was overcome with guilt at the fact that I couldn’t go to her place and tell her how much I missed her and how grateful I was for all the time she spent with me when I was a little baby.

So I wrote her a long, senti message. Just to say thanks. To overcome my guilt though, I know I’m going to work on keeping in touch with my family more. I have some really cool “aunts” and “uncles”, all of whose company and affection I have enjoyed as a child. I need to make sure I’m their favourite nephew, especially given the options they now have. (so many tiny humans)

And then the evening came, where I visited my own second/third cousin, who had recently given birth. I’ve spent a lot of time at their house, and I’ve written about “Akka” and all my memories here. Her daughter is now ten days old. She’s the youngest human being I have had interaction with, and first time I’ve been referred to as “Tejas Mama” (Mama is what Uncles are called). I saw the little one in the care of her Ajji and Tata, and well, it reminded me why I’m so grateful for their warmth and love.

Family is wired so differently to the rest of society. I’m lucky and grateful to be born into one which is unconditionally loving, and unconditionally supportive. Seeing that little girl and hearing all these stories reminded me of that power, and my fortune, and I’m so excited to welcome her into the world. She’ll end up dealing with whatever is in her destiny, but we share a family, so she’ll always have that unconditional love and support to fall back on.