Category: Blog

Sometimes I wonder about my brain,

And why, you make ask?

For that I have a simple response:

My heart feels conflict, angst, sadness,

And happiness, love, and joy,

But my brain?

My brain has to process all this emotion,

Within a few seconds,

And create responses in my system, that I don’t quite understand,

But which lead to more feelings,

More feelings,

More feelings.

 

I wonder whether my brain feels tired, at times,

What, with how emotional I am as a person, and

How easy it is to make me cry, and make me laugh.

I wonder if my brain ever feels exhausted,

That it’s had enough of these feelings,

That it’s time for them to be bottled up.

 

I think about this not because I am tired,

Rather because I think about closing off my tap of feelings,

Not showing them at all,

Slowly teach myself how to un-feel, and un-know,

And slip fast into a quiet life of merely being.

 

Being.

Being unaffected by disappointment,

Being unfazed by last-minute challenges,

Being over-enthusiastic about simple joys,

Just,

Being.

Feeling,

But not showing.

And never,

Never, asking for any help.

 

Ironically, however,

It is not my heart,

But my brain that makes me realize,

That showing these feelings is what makes me who I am,

The disappointment, the anguish,

The pain, the heartbreak,

The enthusiasm about small things.

Allows me to live, without conceding, within four grey-walled buildings.

 

Because hiding my feelings would mean losing to these surroundings,

And accepting a cruel fate

That no one here notices if you’re not talking the same,

Or thinking the same,

Or that you’ve started to go to class a little late

 

That you are not a part of anybody’s world,

And that you have to rely on yourself.

Because things have not been okay in the past few weeks,

But you’ll shrug it off nonetheless.

And never really deal with it,

But just crush it all inside.

 

And that crushes me.

 

Brain, are you tired of thinking about feelings?

Explain to me if you are.

Let’s talk about these difficult things,

And fight this feeling war.

 

 

 

I dislike not knowing things,

And believe mystery is the worst thing on the planet,

Because a lack of information to me,

Is stupendous and horrid, I can’t stand it.

There’s a part of me that always wants to be correct,

But I’m wrong often,

I’ll admit that.

So I sit here in my room,

Multiple tabs open on my browser,

A fear of not knowing means that I’m stuck,

Constantly clicking on links, and turning pages, and feeling a little prouder,

And often that means I don’t spend time with my friends, who are perhaps my best teachers,

Because there’s a ticking time-bomb in my brain, telling me about

That Wikipedia link that waits to be clicked on,

The Guardian tab that’s been open for a week,

The YouTube video I’ve missed out on,

And the entertainment, I turn to, for comic relief.

That’s a problem for me,

Because often I find,

That in a quest to learn about things out there,

I miss on small moments, and small things that happen in the moment.

My brain appears to care too much about information,

But has started to forget about details, people’s interests, people’s lives.

I don’t know how to correct this,

So I decided to write a poem,

In some abstract hope that maybe,

My brain would see this,

And hopefully that would show him.

 

 

Right now, I’m listening to my favourite music from 2012. It’s very distinct for me, because around the end of 8th Grade was when the whole electronic music craze hit me and my friends.

Till then we listened to a lot of rock, pop and a bunch of mainstream stuff that popped up on the radio. That changed when we all fell in love with electronic music. Every single one of the initial songs we heard had something funky about it, that got us swaying. Just made people happy – which was great.

And having been in a new school for barely over a year, it became something we instantly connected about. All of us went home and sat on YouTube hunting for that new track to share with everyone.  It was fabulous.

Over the years, the sort of music I listen to has changed, but I enjoy discovering new music, so I put Spotify on discover and shuffle, and let it do the trick. That way I’m constantly in tune with different genres. The thing about music, personally, for me, is that it makes you feel emotion. The beauty of different genres is the different response it creates in your brain.

The only downfall to this is that I’m not listening to the same music over and over again. Which means that I rarely get to relive the emotion I felt the first time I heard a bit of music.

Listening to this 9th Grade mix has done just that.

Within a couple of seconds, I was back in my room from a day at school, sitting on my beanbag, with my laptop and my headphones, on YouTube, and Facebook, with an XtremePapers tab open to do some quick revision.

That flashback led me to reopen a couple of old chats with my classmates, a lot of whom I barely speak to these days. I was transported to a place where I typed out horribly, with pathetic punctuation, and extra exclamation marks. In an instant, I was taken back to these baby 9th Grade considerations: whether I’m playing my social circle right or not versus whether my parents think I’m studying hard enough.

And I had a lot of advice to give myself. I felt like I could have chilled out a bit more in 9th, because I started studying and reading a lot after 10th Grade came around. With boards in three consecutive years, and having to give multiple entrance exams, my life just became about the next set of tests, eventually.

Which was a little sad for a 9th Grader.

I regret nothing from how I used time back then, but maybe spending more time on creative pursuits would have been fun.

This train of thought lasted the whole of 15 minutes, after which I started to think about how chill the 9th Grade was, in comparison to what life became after that.It felt great.

9th Grade was beautiful.

My creative juices,

They seem to have stopped.

I appear to have contracted a case of

The dreaded writer’s block.

It leads to a rather sad admission,

That I didn’t do anything interesting today,

That my day passed by with a certain normalcy,

And all my thoughts were quite mundane.

I don’t appear to have anything fancy to admit,

Nor a story that’s quirky enough to share.

However, the one thing I attest to,

Is that tomorrow I shall have several stories,

Maybe even a pair.

So I’ll leave you with this,

A poem I seem to have written,

And bid you adieu,

Because with the curse of 47, I appear to be bitten.

So today’s blog is something a little unconventional for me. Instead of recounting random thoughts I’ve had over the course of 24 hours, I’m going to put forth an argument I’ve been thinking of for a very long time. Sadly, the theme, as with the rest of my life, is law school. For context purposes, this is all you have to know: I study at a Law School in India, and at one point of time was about to study at a law school in a foreign land. I’ve previously recounted, on this very blog, about what made me stay back in this country (in case you’re wondering: ) Without further ado, therefore, let’s get into the meat of things.

I’m quite disoriented by several things at the moment, and am slowly getting used to a relatively quieter period in my life. This has meant 8 hours of sleep for the last 3 days, and a lot of clarity in the amount I’m paying attention to what’s happening in classes.

A lot of what I dreamed about before I came to law school is learning the law. A bigger part, however, rested in the fact that I wished to understand why people follow the law the way they do, and what gives law the power it has. What makes men wilt before order, and strive for some insane, flawed conception of justice. What makes people submit to Governmental authorities, and repose faith in them to uphold ideals that people believe to be fair. It’s a huge part of why I wanted to go the UK, and not anywhere else.

I felt that studying there would give me some sense of purpose with respect to the ideologies and philosophies governing the principles of Law. And through that, a bigger ambition, was to develop a sense of identity for myself – in terms of principles I stand for in the Law, and principles I vehemently disagree with, even though they’re a part of the aw. While 18 years of living on planet Earth and undergoing different experiences has taught me a lot of that, it’s always been garbed by morality, or religion, and at times where I’ve pushed my parents a little harder, because, that’s just the way it is.

And those have all been answers I’ve never been satisfied with. I didn’t accept that 1+1 = 2, or that different languages could have different letters, till someone sat and explained some rationale behind it to me. They didn’t have to just explain to me, I needed to be convinced by it, else I saw no application in it whatsoever.

The system of teaching the Law abroad, from what I’ve heard, revolves around helping people find their identities with respect to the Law. Several individuals graduate out of Law school – take Neil Gorsuch, for example, identifying with a particular belief system or set of values they relate to.

I looked forward to that, and figured that somewhere along the way, someone would prod me to think long and hard about the sort of system I believe in.

It’s rather early for me to comment (I’m only coming to the end of second year), but, Law School hasn’t done that as yet. It’s only taught me about what the law is. No explanation of the why. No debates on contentious issues. Nothing to split us.

And today in class, when I was scrolling through a report about Gorsuch’s ideology, I eventually landed on a page about the late Antonin Scalia. Which led me to a bit about the role philosophy plays in American Court decisions. There’s a LOT of literature out there about this.

What struck me at that point, was that we don’t care about the philosophies of Judges as much in our country. I mean, everyone knows how to criticize decisions and positions of Law without reading about them. But not many delve into the consistent position of a particular Judge on a particular position.

This also occurred to me in Consti-I, while learning about Articles 12 and 13. Justice Bhagwati repeatedly referred to his own decisions, which at that time, I found hilarious. Not many people cared though.

Which begs the question: Does Indian jurisprudence, conceptually exist?

I haven’t read a lot around this, but what I’m disillusioned by is the fact that people can comment about a change in the position of the Law – in terms of how Articles of the Constitution are interpreted, but not many people comment about what prompts an attitudinal shift in the Court’s view.

For example: Do we know how many Judges in the Indian Supreme Court are utilitarianists?

Now, you may wonder why any of this is relevant at all.

The answer, for me, is simple. If, apart from the Law, the only other thing that helps us understand it, is different interpretations of the Law, it’s necessary for us to know why such an interpretation exists, and not only who has offered such an interpretation.

Because that will help us form our own opinions.

Because right now, I have the same opinion as all of my Professors. If, Professor X criticizes a decision, I validly accept what he is saying. Why? Because that’s what he expects in my answer sheet.

Is this asking for spoon-feeding? No, I do not believe so.

I believe this is asking for some guidance. Rather than telling me X is X because Y authority said X is X, please explain why X is suited, or not suited to Indian society.

I’d be mighty pleased then.

As always, what am I going to do about it?

For now, just read. Because that’s the only other source I have.

Valentine’s Day is a day of happiness, and for me, it’s come to signify a lot more than being a day about couples and other such related things.

I think all of this started a while back. My earliest memories are of my dad getting flowers for my mother. When dad moved, first to Bangalore, and then to Dubai, I never thought the tradition would continue. But technology and the ability to order flowers from anywhere means that on the 14th of February, dad was always present in spirit, with flowers and a note.

I’ve stopped overthinking things off-late, but my brain remembers a lot of small details.

One of these early Valentine’s Day memories is from when I was around 6 or 7. The Bear Factory had recently opened up in Dubai. I was allergic to fur as a young child – it used to aggravate, or cause a wheezing attack, so most fur toys were off-limits. Till this one Valentine’s Day, where my dad bought my mother a really big pink bear with a I ❤ you t-shirt.

To ensure I wasn’t left out, he bought me a stuffed dog. I named it Poochie. I don’t know why, or but the name stuck. For a few years, Poochie took on a life of his own. My paternal grandmother knit clothes for him, and I slept with him every single night. I even took him on my travels to India once.

Poochie symbolized Valentine’s Day for me, and retains a spot on my bed at home. Will not let go of that gift, thanks dad.

Coming to why I do not believe that Valentine’s Day is purely a day for couples.

It’s pretty simple. My relationship status all of my life has been: Single.

And therefore, instead of crudely criticizing or getting annoyed at displays of affection on Valentine’s Day, or voicing displeasure and sadness at being single, I treat myself to small things. Chocolates, maybe.

This is something I started only after I moved to college, but it was a thought I had in school.

I’m also a romantic at heart, so seeing displays of affection makes me happy, rather than jealous or sad. Would do displays of affection multiple times, even if it brought out no reciprocity. 🙂 It’s a good feeling to make other people happy.

The other great thing is that very few people are angry on Valentine’s Day. Which is beautiful in general. Because that means fewer people screaming about things irrationally, or fighting about petty things. It’s a lovely day to reconnect with old friends, or rekindle old flames. And there’s nothing weird about wishing your friends a Happy Valentine’s Day. Shows that you care about them a lot more.

Also, observation from today: All male professors I interacted with were wearing pink shirts.

Lastly, before I leave. I think everyone’s got something to love and be thankful for. Today’s just a good day for that. Reminds people about the good out there in the world – something we need a lot more of, considering recent events.

 

Well I missed five days. I didn’t realize till my mother told me, which is somewhat of an indication of what my last five days have been. They’ve been ridiculously fast-paced, even though I haven’t had much to do. That sentence is pretty much an accurate description of what college life is like at times. It just happens.

Post the minor bump in the road that was my moot, I’ve been talking to a lot of people and figuring out a lot of things about myself. It’s been a rough few days, but it’s been days filled with realization.

What hit me the hardest is something I thought I should share with you. I figured out that compared to first year, when I mooted in second year, I became more closed off. I stopped talking to as many people, stopped telling people what I was doing – out of some irrational belief that it would come off as being repetitive and monotonous. That’s led to me being in a bit of a rut. People in college are busy, and at one point, I wasn’t sure if I started sounding really melancholic and very selfish – making everything about my moot. I’ve also started doubting who I can talk to on campus about these things.

I’ve questioned a lot of things over the last few days, and people who’ve brought me the most clarity have been my parents.

Which is something I’m very grateful for, but the realization that I got out of all this was that over the last six months, my work-life balance took a huge hit. I feel like I became so consumed in this cycle of work-work-work, that I didn’t care about trying to a live a life outside of my work, or getting to know people and the events in their life as much.

Strange enough, my friend in America is going through something similar. I chatted with him this morning at 5AM, and in a very strange way I felt like we were back in school again. But that conversation was pretty revealing, in that we both figured out that we don’t trust easy. Which means it’s easy for us to get sucked into things that prevent you from having to develop trust with a lot of people.

That’s something I need to break out of, because it’s a habit for me.

Ironically, it’s something I have to work toward.

 

My mother’s sister and her husband inspire me in several ways. This post is just a massive thank you to them.

My earliest memories of India are deeply rooted in spending time with my aunt and uncle in Bangalore. I was the NRI kid who came down for a month or so, and when I did, there were certain things that were bound to, and had to happen.

The first was that everyone would notice I had grown. Sometimes I had become slightly chubbier and more round, sometimes I had tanned. This one time I had gotten a new set of teeth. Observations about a species educated in a foreign land tended to take up a lot of time. Apart from that came the fact that I was paraded around as ‘My Mother’s Son’, a title I’m proud to hold, but one that meant meeting too many people I didn’t remember. Which led to more people observing me and wondering if I was the same as a kid from Bangalore.

Will he like chakkali? Can he eat our curd?

Yes, and no.

I love chakkali. I could not eat curd that was made at home. Mainly because of cream, which disgusted me as a child.

The first people to break away from this trend of spoiling and catering to my needs were my uncle and aunt. Note, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t pampered by them (I still am). It just meant that they were the first people I was totally comfortable with. I feel a large part of that has to do with the fact that I was 1 year old at their wedding, parading around in my multicoloured wardrobe.

The other thing that happened, every single time I came to Bangalore, was trip to Amoeba followed by Pizza Hut. This HAD to happen, and I looked forward to weekends very often, just to go bowl and eat my pizza. I sucked at bowling, big time, and needed gutters to help me. But I grew through Bowling and Pizza – eventually to the number 6 ball and a medium pizza with garlic bread (on my final trip here as an NRI).

This trip was a lot of fun because it was mostly just the 3 of us, chilling. I could talk about whatever with them – that still holds true today, without any fear of judgement, and they always found a way to keep me entertained, be it boxing with me or buying me storybooks my mother had an aversion to(thanks for Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire [Gangarams]).

It was beautiful. A large part of that relationship stayed the same when we moved back to India, because they saw me grow in front of them.

See, my blogposts will tell you how cool my parents are. My aunt and uncle? Well, you decide.

I went to my first IPL game with my uncle and we had a blast. My aunt came for a fundraiser concert we organized when I was in school. They both also ensured that while I was being disciplined at home – in terms of, ‘work hard, it’ll pay off’, I learnt to give myself a break when I deserved one.

My uncle, to this day, is the one person I admire because of his breadth of knowledge on a variety of topics. The NBA? Cricket? Politics? Books? Movies? He’s got you covered. He is one of the few people in front of whom I feel like my opinions need to be water-tight. Faff can get me past a lot of people. My uncle? Never.

My aunt is who I go to when I’m having a rough time, and I didn’t realize this until today. Since my dad was abroad, a lot of times, my aunt has come and stayed over with my mum & I, if Amma was unwell, or if something was up. We’ve gone over to their house too, just to stay over, if Amma needed a break. She’s also super, super creative, and if there’s one person in our family who whole-heartedly appreciates my horrible jokes, it’s my aunt. She’d be the only one genuinely laughing if I did stand-up comedy. Even my mother would laugh out of pity.

I saw this correlation in my brain when my aunt sent me French language jokes today. I didn’t understand why – she hates forwards as much as I do, and we have pretty much the same opinion toward most things (though I don’t get how she doesn’t like chocolate). It was when I replied, and she said ‘Mission Accomplished! I knew this would bring a smile to your face :)’, that it hit me. I’ve been having a rough few days, and to think that she wanted me to laugh it off was pretty awesome.

My aunt and my uncle were this crazy alternative support mechanism I had, because along with my parents, these guys bridged an age gap by being cool and relatable, but also mature and strict at times. Physics was legitimately the lowest point of school life, and while both parents were super supportive, lots of analysis and self-actualization about Law came about in one conversation with you both. Swalpa senti I’m getting but I remember things vividly.

So, thank you guys. I need more words to explain everything, but thank you. Thank you for housing me for a month during internships, for packing my dabba daily when I worked, for telling me I need a girlfriend in life, for explaining to me that decisions are easy when you compartmentalize your wants.

For taking me to the doctor when I fell sick in Bangalore, for making tomato saaru with floating tomato pieces, and, for being the ONLY people to understand that a 2nd Grader DOES NOT need to do Holiday Homework.

I’ve been lucky to have you around. Thank you. 🙂

 

 

This entire dashed thing is just something I’m doing to convince myself I’m writing daily.

If you’ve followed the blog, you might have read this post of mine called Seniors, where post Freshers’, I fanboyed about some of the individuals I looked upto and admire at college.

And the thing was that last year, I associated them with their achievements.

Today, I shared a cab ride with one of my seniors, and we were talking profound talks about mooting, the mooting system, law school, law school life, and well, it dawned on me that there’s some misconception about the associative value to a person within the confines of college.

It’s strange. It’s not that people here don’t care to understand who people are, or what sort of characters they are, but that the first thing that pops into people’s heads about other people is their achievements. It’s a horrid practice, and I think that it’s rather sad that that’s what we’ve come to. I also believe that this culture is reflective of this annoying competitive edge we develop/have as Indians.

Just think about the number of competitions you’ve done. We, as Indians, live our lives like we have this massive weight of ‘beating someone’ upon us. It’s not like we aim for self-improvement, or just self-satisfaction (insofar as our goals are concerned), but that we aim to do better than someone else. It’s crazy how innate this is to who we are.

For example, board exams, and then, entrance exams. Its all about getting a mark ahead. This extends to the way we approach University applications abroad as well. We don’t try telling people about our multifaceted personalities and the several things we’ve tried, and failed at, but rather, present this all-conquering, all-successful, yet narrow image of who we are.

And I’m being critical of the system not on the merit of what we’ve achieved, but on the basis of where it’s taken us. I mean, competition, and healthy competition is great. I’m an advocate for people helping others becoming better versions of themselves – that’s a great thing, in that it helps people figure out what they like and enjoy doing. But it’s pretty pathetic when it’s the only thing we care about, and well, when we develop an attitude of doing anything to gain a yard over others.

It may sound like I’m digressing greatly, or ranting. But its true. In college, people don’t know you because you’re nice to speak to, or fun to chill with, but they associate you with what you achieve. And its utterly disgraceful, but that is precisely how it works.

Let’s look at what my friends do. People run magazines and NGO’s. And if someone needed a reference, that’s what I would introduce them as. I wouldn’t talk about their desire to do positive social service, or their flair and mere passion for writing and reading.

That was a pretty profound realization for me. It also hit me that it meant that we somewhat ignored people’s knowledge and work and gave larger credit to the 5% of luck involved in every achievement ever.

So I’m going to stop doing that, I think. Actively going to introduce and talk about people in light of what I’ve taken away from conversations with them. Instead of a moot win, I’ll tell people about someone’s knowledge on a particular topic.

It’s a small change, but hey. Might as well attack the system in some way I can.

Time to go back to reading.

 

24 hours can see you go through a whirlwind of emotions, and it’s beautiful to see how much life you can pack into one day of existence.

Today for instance, I gave oral preparatory rounds to a friend of mine, and then spent a good 30-40 minutes relaxing with my friends. Its one of the first times I’ve taken an extended break like that in the past 3 months, but it was the most fulfilling thing I did today.

India’s such a diverse country, and I’ve always spoken about my desire to travel and explore as much of it as I can. It’s the reason I went to Delhi in November, and part of the reason I’m desperate to go to Mumbai in May. I just want to see as much of the country as I possibly can, and try to connect with as many people as I can.

This desire stems out of how spoiled I was when we moved to India from the UAE. Back in the 6th Grade, I couldn’t deal with a lot of things around me. I didn’t know how to respond to the existence of mosquitoes, ants, and black spots on bananas  – in essence, I was used to a very protected, artificial lifestyle, and India thrust me into reality. And it stung.

I hated it for a while, and studying at an International school didn’t help to correct my attitude. Within the confines of school, I was surrounded by like-minded, recently repatriated individuals, and finding ourselves in our motherlands, we did the exact opposite of what common-sense would have told us to. We developed accents and tried with all our might to protect our sense of ‘foreignness’.

That took me a while to shake off. I never really read about India or it’s history. I didn’t bother reading any news apart from Sports pages, and if someone told me about politics (this continued till 10th Grade), I got annoyed and left the conversation.

I think this possibly worked as a defence-mechanism. Some way to show that I wasn’t Indian. The trips back to Dubai didn’t really help me either – I always connected more with Dubai than with Bangalore.

All of this changed as I prepared for CLAT. I realized how little I knew about where I was studying when  I pushed myself to attend coaching classes. I did a lot of firsts in the 11th Grade – traveled by a local BMTC, yelled at an auto driver, fought and bargained with a couple of people in my mother-tongue, and it felt fantastic.

The more GK questions I failed at, the more I realized that my ignorance had hurt me. And that realization really hurt. It sucked to know that I stayed in a place for nearly 6 years and didn’t care enough to understand what the place really was. Which is why what I’ve been doing since then, is mere over-correction.

How all of this relates back to me chilling with my friends, you ask?

Well, I answer.

Even if you don’t ask.

My sense of identity has been pretty weird. I’ve always asserted my inner-Kannadiganess, in my mannerisms and tastes/preferences, but I still can’t read Kannada and appreciate Kannada literature (hoping to change that in the next 2 years). If people ask me where I’m from, I’m torn between Bangalore and Dubai, and often explain my life’s backstory – losing people’s interest in the interim.

So while I read a lot about India, my sense of identity really got cemented when I came to college. I made a decision to study in India when I had an easy-route out to a good University in the UK, and the minute I did that, I decided that I’d immerse myself in everything the country had to offer me, and possibly loot more out of the country, in terms of experiences.

I missed Bangalore a lot in the first semester. And I missed Kannada more. Kannada, the way I spoke it at home – with my tattered bits of English and a lot of slang words. The ‘clean’ Kannada, without any swear words, or pieces of Shivajinagar. The Kannada that was incomplete.

All that missing disappeared the minute I found this guy from Jayanagar and this other one from Basaveshwarnagar. Two people, a Punjabi and a Gujarati, whose flair in the language far exceeds any capabilities I will ever have, and whose Kannadiga-ness I have never doubted. Two people who stayed in locations I knew moderately well, but still made fun of me for being an outcast from Whitefield.

So today when we sat together to chill, I felt like I was at home.

And college is beautiful because you feel like you’ve known everyone forever.

Which just got me sentimental, and I thanked my stars that I decided to stay back in India. Someone else in the UK would have made me feel at home by talking to me in Kannada, but it wouldn’t compare to these guys yelling at me for not knowing the words to ‘Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate’.