Category: Blog

The title of this post is a clear allusion to Billy Joel’s favourite Billy Joel song: Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.

I took an auto-rickshaw to go visit a friend’s house late last evening, and the auto driver was in a jovial, conversational mood. Naturally, therefore, he began voicing his grievances. I wasn’t too interested in spending time on my phone (something I usually do in auto rides), so I lent him my ears – to listen, to respond, to chime into the conversation when our grievances matched.

He started off by telling me how he missed speaking Kannada with his customers, an issue that I’ve heard several auto drivers talk about. He brought in a unique perspective though, and wondered why native Kannada speakers weren’t encouraging individuals to learn the language. When I suggested that this was perhaps conversation that took place privately that he was unaware about, his grouse was that it ought to be a conversation that took place publicly – that recognized that the language was in decline and was being used in a limited way in the biggest urban city in the State. Encouragement, he claimed, was more effective when it was publicly called for – when there was a public account of how the Government and prominent private personalities speaking up about the issue, and clamouring for their voice to be heard in their own language. Something he told me was that there was this old video of Robin Utthappa and KL Rahul (both cricket players who play(ed) for Karnataka, and grew up in Bangalore) speaking in Kannada that did the rounds frequently on WhatsApp groups he was a part of – just to recognize that they knew the language. He wondered whether there were similar videos of Dravid speaking in Kannada in interviews, or at school functions, or even with other national personalities speaking the language.

We then moved to discussing my profession: the Law. One thing he wondered was why I needed to go to Law school to practice the Law, and what knowledge I gained by spending 5 years in another State other than my own. I have a very eloquent answer for this I couldn’t quite translate to Kannada, but I didn’t have an answer for the first part: which pointed to a more systematic question about why University education mattered, and why we ought to pay money for it. He answered it for me himself: the exposure it provided.

That concluded a rather eventful, enjoyable conversation – not because there wasn’t more to talk about, but because I reached my destination.

A drink with jam and bread was definitely the first time I heard the phrase.

I’ve never had a strong affinity or preference for tea or coffee. As I grew older, I’ve found comfort in the chocolate milkshakes and hot cocoa I can make in the hostel when I’m in the mood for warm drinks. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy exploring tea or coffee: I adore that activity – finding new things always excites me, but, if I’m asked at an evening gathering what drink I’d prefer, I would struggle to come up with an answer. This puts me in awkward situations at several group gatherings, where I refrain from asking for anything around tea-time, and at awkward circumstances after breakfasts at relatives’ houses, when I choose not to drink things. I overcame this obstacle by feigning a preference that mirrored the preference of my host, something that would bring the most joy to the group without causing any inconvenience for whoever was hosting me on a particular day.

None of that brought me personal relief though. I was as confused as ever, not because I enjoy both drinks equally, but because they are met with equal reactions of indifference. I like them both because when served warm on a cold day they can bring a lot of comfort. Things are made particularly tricky because my roots and the way my identity almost mandates a self-identified preference for coffee, but my upbringing and my formative years were spent in a country that’s known for its tea variant.

Ordinarily, it would be this stage of the essay that led to a resolution of this conflict: some indication that I have some sort of a clear preference.

Unfortunately, I do not. Not as of yet. I think it’s very mood-dependent. I’m very, okay, with both drinks. However, my indifference has definitely been replaced with a, satisfication, if you will. I now enjoy drinking tea, and drinking coffee. I like them both. Equally. At par with each other. I have no preference, not as yet, but I enjoy the taste of both drinks on the tongue. Which I think is a step forward.

I think all of it stems from how I spent the break, and how I ended up learning to make tea for my parents. Good tea. I accompanied my mother when she drank coffee, but I accompanied them both in the evening as they drank their teas, and I learned how the flavour pores into the water and then into the milk. How the beans and leaves ooze out complexity only our tongues can understand and our noses can process.

It’s one of the things I will miss about being at home with both my parents. Especially given that we consumed a copious amount of biscuits while we were at it.

Happy New Year, everyone! I’m pleased to tell you that the daily blog is going to continue this year as well. If last year’s goal was to ensure that I’m writing on a daily basis and posting something or the other on this forum, this year’s goal is a little more specific. I’d really like to be writing topical blog posts on the daily. Its these kind of posts which give me the most joy, and I really don’t like blogging if I’m lazily posting media I find interesting on the blog. I have the newsletter for that.

One of my friends told me a story about music today. I’ve been getting back into the academic study of music off-late, and we were discussing an experience she had at University, as well as an uncanny relationship between mathematics and music. That tale, naturally, took me down a rabbit-hole on the internet – reading about the various ways in which mathematical modeling is useful in music analysis. This is news to me, but also doesn’t surprise me too much. With the existence of digital audio workstations and electronic music programming being available, and digital electronics generally becoming involved in music production – it’s essential that mathematics is used in some way: for certainty and precision in tone, for example, or in pitch. The extent of that integration, though, is something that I didn’t think through entirely. There’s so much material about it out there, and is, by far, the best way I could have hoped to start my 2020. 

However, she caveated the tale by apologizing for oversharing. That got me thinking about several things, the first of which was, Why? The second of which was more along the lines of whether I ought to apologize for oversharing on this blog. However, if you’re reading the blog, I safely presume you are, at the very least, interested in my commentary on mundane things in my life, and thus, are reading the blog – which led me to dismiss the notion of being apologetic. Then I thought about it some more. What is oversharing? Who defines what crosses the limit of sharing information about oneself? Why must there be a limit to what we share? And what role does self-censorship play in all of this?

I don’t have answers to any of these questions, and I shut down all of these thoughts by choosing, quite actively not to think about it as much for the rest of the day – atleast not till I began writing this post. And I do, now, have some thoughts about oversharing. 

For me, I think living in a hostel at a residential University has taken away the confined boundaries within which I imagined sharing of information and conversation ought to take place. The concept of giving away “too much information” disappeared out the window when in the second semester we grew close enough and comfortable enough to discuss unhappy sightings in the boys hostel washroom over lunch or dinner at our meal tables. Oversharing to me is the art of narrating a perfect story, with emotion, detail that isn’t essential to the barebones of the structure of a tale, but make it unique enough that I can relate and feel all the things you felt when you tell me about the story. It’s the art of meandering conversation – as all conversations are, and of endless conversation, as only some conversations can be. So, oversharing, in all its glory, especially with me – is welcome. Especially given how much I enjoy conversation that carries on through without goodbyes or endings.

Some chatboxes will remain permanently open, for messages keep shuffling in and out. It’s those chatboxes in which oversharing takes place in all its glory, and those chatboxes I cherish most. 

Especially when I’m running out of material to blog about but the year has only begun.

It’s tough to tell you about my year because I’m still processing everything that transpired. However, for me to adequately be able to move forward with all the things I’ve gained in the last one year, it is perhaps time to write about things.

In summary, it would be inappropriate for me to label this year as anything but a year of learning.

At the start of the year, I faced the biggest challenge I had faced in my life till that point – being forcibly separated from my parents thanks to a lack of valid travel documentation (and not knowing about it till the very last minute). I make it sound a lot worse than it actually was, but the feelings aren’t exaggerated. I traveled to Mangalore 3 nights in a row on a bus to get my passport application processed, and learned about my own identity in the process – and how much documentation mattered. Little did I know then that I would learn this in a more selfless manner toward the end of the year, but at that point, all I wanted to do was to be with both my parents.

Over the next two months, I learned about the value of letting people into my life a little more. I’m an extremely private individual, which is at odds with the fact that I maintain a public blog on the internet which chronicles my day-to-day. The truth of things is that I share this blog and these thoughts on social media that don’t traditionally feature a large portion of my friends. I find it difficult to communicate my exact emotions at any given point of time, and I am inadequate at directly expressing emotions which society has deemed to have negative connotations: anger is one of them, sadness and disappointment are others. I invited a friend of mine to Dubai with me, and then invited friends over to my house in Bangalore. This was the first time I was hosting people from University and that allowed me to share a big part of my identity and my story with them, a feeling not like one I’ve known before. I was grateful for that at the time.

I also learned about the value of my writing, and how much it motivated my parents. My mother began to write this year, which ended up with us publishing an anthology of our poetry and presenting it to our biggest fan, my father on a birthday celebration we hosted for him.

I also learned about the importance of learning to be a background person. I’m usually very front-and-center in the things that I do, and I really hate missing out on experiences I’m meant to be a part of. This year I couldn’t travel to a moot court competition I was on a team for, but I learned the art of supporting from distance – of learning to be useful in the best way I could be, and of being a true team sport. I’ve been an okay team player so far, but I think my teammate skills rose in value this year.

Ultimately, through the summer months, I learned about independence of a new kind. I lived and traveled across Europe, cooking food and working daily. Not only did I get to experience the joy of eating food cooked by your own hand, but the art of solo travel. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I got to work someplace I wanted to work right from my first year at University, and it made my dreams come true.

Then September happened. In the first week of September, amidst all the things that gave me the most joy for the last four years at University, I committed an egregious error in interpersonal relations and spaces. I made a mistake I have been working on fully understanding and adequately confronting. My remorse isn’t something I would want to express over text. It’s safe to say that none of it should have happened, and nobody should have had to go through what some individuals went through as a result. As with mistakes, this had consequences. These consequences have given me the opportunity to spend time reflecting on everything in my life. I sought out therapy and assistance from professionals to help me process things, spoke to a very limited group of individuals who offered more perspective on what transpired, and began to think. Long and hard. I think the most disappointing thing for me was that I knew that this shouldn’t have taken place – so when I found out it had, it devastated me.

September also saw one of the biggest disappointments in my professional life: missing out on an opportunity to sit for the final interview rounds of a scholarship I genuinely felt I had a shot at.

Over the winter, all I’ve learned is the value of family, and time – and strangely, family-time. My parents and I discussed everything that transpired, and they left me to my own devices as I worked on self-improvement. I learned how much clarity time gives, and how much more perspective it offers. With family time, I had the opportunity to spend two months with my parents, both of them together – something I haven’t done since I was 11 years old. This decade has been trying, challenging, and unique, but ending it as a family is giving me so much joy today.

Today, the events of September are what drive me each morning. The days aren’t the same: some are tougher, some are easier, but September has become a personal turning point. I’m not used to making mistakes. Slipping up – in any capacity, has not been a feeling of familiarity in my life. I’ve been used to being responsible and dependable.

September changed that for me, because I was irresponsible, and what occurred has done damage to several of my friendships: some irreparable, I know. I wish I didn’t have to learn what I learned through what occurred, because I wish none of it had ever happened. That’s easy to say post-facto. But today, that drives me, because I’ve understood how disappointed I can be in myself, in terms of extent, and how tough it is to overcome that disappointment (I’m still getting there). I understood what I stand for and who I want to be as a person a lot better now, more than I ever have before.

It’s likely that there are things that I won’t recover, but this year has taught me that living in the past is an issue. Not just in terms of the negatives, but also in terms of the positives. It’s easy to inflate the things that have gone well in the past, and it’s equally easy to create expectations on the basis of past happenings. None of that, however, has an impact on the present, nor on the future. What I’ve learned is that it’s important to have memories, and important to remember things that take place in the past, only to move yourself forward. It’s far more important to live in the present, in the day-to-day, and look ahead to the future. It’s all I’ve got.

This is what I’m taking away this year: that I’ve been good, not great. That I’ve been terrible, but not irreparable. That I am, and I know that I can be better than what the first week of September was. And that I know I will be.

There are only two things left to say, things I’ve said before. I’m unconditionally apologetic, and I’m incredibly grateful.

I can’t believe I’m very close to actually posting 365 daily things on the blog this year. I’ve run out of juice in terms of stories to tell, and that makes me feel like Haroun’s father from Haroun and the Sea of Stories. If you haven’t read the book, it’s a book I wholeheartedly recommend you to try reading. The journey is worth it.

One of the things I’m going to miss about being at home with my parents is the freedom they’ve given me to be “at home”. I’ve actually just spent the last two months relaxing in a way I don’t think I ever had in the last four years, and I’m incredibly grateful to them for not populating this trip with scores of adventures outside. Living close to a mall and a supermarket, while being in a community with lots of walking space has meant that excursions, where felt like/needed took place with a lot of ease, and not too much thinking. It’s odd, but I think that after my first semester at University, this is going to be the semester in which I miss home to some extent. It’s given me everything I needed, even the things I thought I would not need.

Today’s been a day of organization and reflection. We’re pretty much into the final week of 2019, and all I want to be doing is setting up for the things I have planned ahead, or actually working on the things I had planned. I read a piece yesterday that was about actionables and how much productivity got curbed or sidelined by overplanning, and I think I’ve definitely been a victim of that system – rather, I’ve been gamed into thinking (sometimes with active consent) that planning things out will definitely yield better results. With creative things especially, I think I’d prefer spending time actually doing these things – for that’s where I get the most joy. Some things are best changed sooner than later. This feels like one of them.

https://genius.com/Sujata-bhatt-search-for-my-tongue-annotated