Category: Blog

I can feel my brain form compartments for things that I do these days. Like a hard-drive, I see folders, sub-folders, and files for every task that I do. It’s very strange, experiencing this, because each time I return to a task after taking a break, I feel like Microsoft Word loading on an old Microsoft XP PC. Slow.

It’s uncanny how this all begun, and I think I’ve started to make these observations a lot more since I got free time, of sorts, but it’s trickled down to every part of my day. Conversations with people seem to be stored away and re-opened for reference each time I indulge in one. This compartmentalization has become so ingrained to things I do that my reading has taken on new forms: I have a book on my bed, on my table, in my bag, and in my laptop bag.

I think it’s pretty cool, being able to do this. I feel more dedicated and committed to the work that I’m doing as I do it, because I’m less distracted by the other things or the mountain of other work that’s staring at me, simply because I’ve stored it in some other part of the brain.

I wonder if there’s a word for this. Or if there’s Science behind how/why this happens. It’s very intriguing, but it’s helping me stay relaxed. I’m enjoying myself a lot more too. I’m also listening to a lot more music, which is definitely contributing to the way I carry myself these days.

There’s an Oxford Handbook about music therapy I have to read. Will source it from somewhere. More about this when I figure out what it’s all about.

Tomorrow’s a Friday, where I’m ordinarily supposed to have 4 classes, but I have 5, and then a working Saturday. Joy.

 

When hunger strikes,

Your mind forgets all else,

And your stomach rumbles.

When hunger strikes,

You dream of your favourite food:

Ah, the taste of tomato rasam,

Rice,

And Aloo Bhujia.

When hunger strikes,

You remember each time you’ve eaten your favourite food,

Every meal for which you’ve sat in front of the television,

With a cork-mat,

Because your mother over-heated the rasam,

And almost forced a burnt tongue,

By heating the rice,

Despite your warnings.

When hunger strikes,

You miss home,

Because home is where rasam is,

And these khakhra-eaters, and fafda-mongerers,

Make coconut float instead of tomato in their rasam –

Committing crimes against humanity.

I have a tinge of regret regarding my relationship with my peers from school. We were barely a batch of 40, but quite divided based on our sections – mostly because our sections were our boards – the ISC and the A Levels. So, in some ways, it was easier to relate your pains and struggles with your classmates, than with anyone else.

I always thoguht I’d manage, somehow, to be in touch with people I saw on a daily basis and shared a classroom with for 8 hours, 5 days a week. And that, chilling, just like the old times, wouldn’t be any different. A lot about this view started to fade away toward the latter half of the 12th Grade, but my fears were concretized only after my first semester.

I moral police, I’ll admit that. After a certain point, as a friend concerned for your well-being, I will inform you what I believe is the thing you should be doing, and may, perhaps, do, admonish you if you do not follow what I believe is in your best interest. I get that I overstep the line sometimes, and I’m pretty sure I did quite a bit with my friends in high school. I was and am a staunch believer in rules. It’s part of the reason I took up the Law. Therefore, when I was elected School Captain, I think it’s fair to say, I took the role of enforcing rules, and discipline fairly seriously.

At some point, I surmise this might have been the undoing of my relationship with some of my friends. But, I think what became abundantly clear as we moved to college was that we’re very different people.

Of course, hanging out will never be a problem, and yes, we can catch a meal, and chill for a good couple of hours. But our interests are extremely varying, and our environment in school had conditioned us to make us feel we had the same, overlapping spheres of interest. College allows you to follow your true passions, and I feel it’s where you become who you’re destined to be. It helps you find yourself. And it also means, because of a lack of shared space, and shared experiences, you lose layers of connection with people you’ve known before.

This struck me the hardest, and it’s what has sparked off this post, when I wished one of my friends – a pal I spent the entirety of 8th – 12th with ‘Happy Birthday’, yesterday. And I saw he was online, but he didn’t reply. And that’s strange for me, when you’ve spent 5 years together.

I have memories with him from my only road-trip so far in Pondicherry, and I’ve had a whale of a time with him in his house, with my other friends. We’ve watched numerous movies together, gone to school and collapsed in Physics class together. It’s been an all-round amazing journey.

But what sucks, is that, today, out of a batch of 40, I’m in touch with 6 people. 6.

That’s partially my fault. I gave up on preserving a lot of relationships after my first year, and I can see that today. I tried quite hard in first sem to keep in touch, because I missed home, and these guys were all in close proximity to Bangalore. But few responded.

And these few are the ones I’m in touch with today.

If any of my school friends are reading this, I’m always around for you. Know that. We survived an experience together. We overcame similar challenges together. We graduated together. And that’s something even months of radio silence cannot take away.

See you on the flip!

It’s rather easy,

In a world where social media dominates interaction,

To find people with whom conversation never ends,

To find people with whom you feel inspired,

You’re never bored,

And life’s every instant is an adventure,

Because of some new idea introduced into your discussions,

Things that surprise you,

That make you happy,

That keep you alive.

But what I find tough,

And what we miss out on,

Is searching for people to reach out, with

A hand,

To hold, on nights of sorrow,

A shoulder,

To lean on when life’s stability disappears,

A person,

To share our silences,

And understand every word that’s left unsaid,

Because silence sometimes heals wounds that

Words merely pierce,

And jokes merely shatter,

And time merely intensifies.

 

 

 

Today I passed out and missed all my classes. I slept at 2.10AM last night, after some debate practice, and then woke up this afternoon at 1.30PM – in a daze, with the fan switched off, and confused about where my last 12 hours or so went. I imagine this is what a black-out or a hangover feels like. My drug, or addiction, in this case, was work. 😛

Post-Udaipur, I ran around and did a lot of stuff in the afternoon we returned to campus, which meant I was exhausted – having barely slept on the trip. I can’t describe to you how sound my sleep was.

The panic that followed waking up was torturous. I’ve bunked several classes this semester already – for Committee Work & Moot Work, so my attendance is borderline regret. Adding another day to the column was a frightful experience. Legitimately cannot afford more meaningless bunks this semester.

I laughed it off though. My mom laughed on the phone because she could imagine me asleep and unresponsive I presume. I gave her hell through my study holidays, because I slept late & never woke up on-time to start my studying for the next day. Once you’re a night owl, it’s a little difficult to change your body orientation.

The easy solution is not to be a night-owl or an early riser. Be an efficient worker and manage 8 hours of solid sleep every night.

But what’s the fun in that?

I’ve been listening to a lot of Ed Sheeran’s new album, and I can’t get over how fantastic it is. I love the transition between songs, and it’s got a very 2008/09 vibe to it – that period was when I really, really got into music, so I find it very nice & relatable, in a strange way.

What else about today?

Oh yes.

I found work! After about a month of being relatively free-ish, I’ve managed to find myself a string of work and a bunch of deadlines again. The wind seems to be more breezy, the sun seems brighter and I feel each breath passing through my body. I also imagine this is what love is like. What has college done to me? Love is work is love now.

Ahh! Save me.

I’ll be in Mumbai this weekend. If anyone is interested/free to meet up, please reach out.

P.S.: Reach out if you know cheap pizza joints also.

 

 

I overthink decisions.

It’s one of the reasons I struggle to deal with rejection and find it tough to come to terms with approval,

Because acceptance to me is not merely a word, but an emotion,

That carries so much associated value.

Acceptance to me is,

That fat chubby kid being allowed to play striker even though his left foot is the weakest,

And the ball is not his

And that same fat chubby kid not being yelled at,

As he runs away from the ball because you put him in goal and,

He is scared of breaking his glasses.

To me, it’s a sign to,

The Tejas from 10 years ago who lied to his parents and often to friends that

He does not need to lie about himself and his considerations any more.

At its core, acceptance

Is the definition of not caring one bit about judgment

And not being swayed by peer pressure,

Because at its very heart

Acceptance is self-validation of who you are.

 

I overthink decisions,

So going out for me is not as easy as it is for others,

Yes is not an instant reaction to a planned escapade or the spontaneity of plans that are made,

But a calculated decision and a cost-benefit analysis of everything that could possibly take places and a slow,

Slow,

Factoring in of each and every ounce of utility I will experience

And the decision is based on which way the scales tilt

 

I overthink decisions,

The scales often tilt away from the convenient option, and my brain responds with a

No,

A No that is rarely understood,

A No that prompts backlash and rejection, and several layers of rejection because

I’m unable to explain how and what my brain has computed and why,

So it is often that I find myself,

Having to accept rejection and feel guilty,

But not feel so guilty,

Because since I’ve been a child,

Self-validation is all that’s ever mattered to me.

When people spoke about disappointment,

They told me of the pity glances they received, and the motivational words they heard around them.

They spoke to me, about how they were stuck,

Between a rock and a hard place, but managed,

To come out unscathed.

 

When people told me about their biggest failures,

They always told me about their biggest regrets.

The missed opportunity, the lack of effort.

They told me about how people rallied around them in support,

And eventually picked them up from the dark hell that had surrounded them.

 

Each time I spoke to people about failure,

They told me a story of success, the exact opposite of what I had asked to hear.

 

No one told me about the sleepless nights that followed failure, or

The unending repetition, repetition, repetition of a singular instance in your brain,

Playing out like a broken tape recorder

 

No one told me that your emotions would swallow you whole, and

You would be hugged by the ugly, heavy arms of expectation,

Which would, slowly,

Slowly but surely,

Consume you.

 

No one told me about the physical brutality of failure,

That it would suck the hope out of you and push you into a corner so extreme,

That you shrunk far into your own thoughts and emotions.

 

And no one told me about the frightening claw of appearing normal,

An act that deserved every Emmy, Tony, and Oscar there is, because

We are conditioned not to let people see our weaknesses

 

No one told me that failure was like love,

That I’d think of it far more than it thought of me,

But some time into thinking about it,

I’d feel a renewed sense of hope,

A spark of ambition,

And like a dying flame,

Be used to light another candle.

 

 

I’m a huge fan of tradition. It’s easy to confuse the meaning of tradition with superstition, custom, beliefs, and even religion, but for me, tradition connotes something entirely different. I think tradition is possibly more Western in it’s approach, which is possibly one of the reasons I bought into tradition really easily as an NRI kid.

Nowadays I don’t care too much about it. I love customs, celebrations and traditions all the same. But back then, and in my brain still, there exists a strange sort of compartmentalization.

A lot of traditions for me were self-evolved. In that, we practiced them at home every year, and they became habitual. The printing of new name labels for each book at the start of every academic session, the buying of new brown paper. Picking up new stationery – those specific Staedler pencils I love, and a new water bottle: one of 10, or 11 I’d own in the span of one year.

This continued. As did picking up new shoes, because my feet grew abnormally large for a 5th Grade kid.

All of these things I stick to even today. I still end up hunting around in my room in Bangalore for one piece of unused stationery to bring back to college every semester. It gives me a weird thrill.

My affection for tradition is exemplified perhaps by my stubbornness when it comes to writing with ink pens. In Dubai, we had this rule: You could only move to writing with a pen in Grade 5 if your handwriting was deemed to be neat enough. It was a rite of passage, for the Class Teacher to call out your name and announce to the entire class that you’d earned yourself the privilege. Carrying over in pencil to Grade 6 was something unheard of.

I had found my goal in Grade 5. All I wanted was that stamp of approval. The second part of this rule was that once you were told you could write with a pen, you went across the school to Lulu (this amazing Hypermarket) and bought an Inoxcrom Ink Pen after-school hours.

I must’ve spent hours admiring Inoxcrom pens, readying myself for when my name was called out. At some point I think I knew Inoxcrom’s sales catalogue and model numbers and prices across 5-6 stores in the UAE. The same was true of Schneider pens, the traditional second purchase.

So when my name was called out, I was naturally thrilled, and a 10 Dirhams dish-out began a love story I can only hope lasts the rest of my life. It’s a love story where the only dillemma has been: blue or black.

I cannot, will not, write with any other sort of pen in my academic notebooks. This is absurd because I’m a left-hander, so as such I write about 10% slower than most people. Therefore, I should be using techniques to speed me up, not pens that significantly slow you down.

Yet, I persist.

And my ink pens are peculiar. In school, I used a particular purple sheep pen that became my identity. I couldn’t write with anything else. So much so that I bought a replica pen on a second visit to that store, to replace in case I broke the nib or something. That pen served me till the end of my board exams.

In college, I write with Hero pens. One that’s been handed to me by my grandmother, which is really old, and another replica pen I found in a shop close to my house. I fill ink in them every morning and carry them to class – a small feeling of satisfaction, that I carry a little bit of my child-self to class every single day.

Today I messed up filling ink in my pen, resulting in an ink-spill for the ages. My right hand turned blue, and smelt of dye for an hour or so.

I’ve been involved in ink-fights, filled ink-cartridges with syringes, lost cartridges, and extended the life of cartridges by filling water in with the ink. I collected the ball-bearings of cartridges, and cartridges themselves, and traded these into the dustbin for absolutely nothing.

And I absolutely love it.

Gift me an ink pen, and we’re friends for life. Make fun of my ink pens, and you’re dead to me.

It’s a kick I can’t quite explain.

It’s tradition.

 

 

Our last conversation ended with a full stop,

A full stop,

And two blue ticks,

Status: Offline.

It’s been a week since that day, and ever since,

The one thing that’s been on my mind,

Is whether you still need me as much as I need you?

 

I think back to when I was being ragged and you were adjusting to your surroundings,

And the only thing that kept us sane was knowing that the other was alive,

Alive and ready on the end of a horrible internet connection,

To listen, laugh, and make us smile.

 

Over time, however, we seem to have drifted,

Though this never shows when we actually meet.

It’s been a week, and all I can think of,

Is whether you’re thinking of telling me about

A new song,

A new movie,

A thought,

An emotion.

 

Or whether this is what it’s come to,

Just two blue ticks,

And poof. You disappear.

 

This may sound overly clingy,

I swear,

That’s not what it’s meant to be,

But I’m tired of initiating conversation,

So I’ll just wait,

Wait a while,

And maybe someday soon you’ll see those two blue ticks,

And think of the time where

Status: Typing

Was our status

All the time