Anecdotes and Realizations

"You seem like the kind of person who writes New Year Resolutions" Seri's so right.  " should I be offended?" " nee ishtam" New Year's is a beautiful concept. I couldn't hate it more when I hear people say " it's just another day, what's the big deal? ". This is the friend that says they don't care about their birthday. How? Nihilism doesn't make you cool. Nothing has inherent meaning does it? We make our lives special by attaching meaning and caring about things.  Anyways, back to New Year's. It's a concept built around hope. Hope that a New Year will bring new things, better things. That somehow magically our lives will improve overnight and our shitty boss will get less shitty, our crappy love life will be saved by a knight in shining armour that our academic comeback will get streamlined. I don't think that's realistic. But New Year's does something more important. It renews faith in life, faith...

This one has been a long time coming. I've hesitated to write this blog for years now. Every time I hear the word 'caste' I get an uneasy feeling. Before, that uneasy feeling used to be fear and embarrassment. Who discusses such things? Today, it's guilt. It's guilt for not expressing my position so far. It's guilt for letting every casteist remark slide. It's guilt for not having the courage to challenge the narrative of our upper-class friends. It's guilt for being quiet. It's guilt for being ashamed.  My first interaction with caste was with my civics textbook. I'd heard the infrequent comment at school. 'Nuvvu Reddy caste aa?' or a 'We are proud Brahmins' was not unheard of. But it felt like everyone knew the history of the caste system. It was something that existed ages ago. In today's society, caste didn't matter. As one of my teacher's put it, today, when you go to eat a meal in a restaurant, do you care what c...

I used to scoff at the "MUN kid" stereotype. Obnoxious, bratty, condescending. "You don't know that also aa?"  I was not that kid. I was the kid who aced the tests, who would write an opinionated essay but whose ears would block out when handed a microphone. The one that said 'phew' after getting off stage. Going from that to winning awards at Model United Nations conferences was a plot twist Abbas-Mustan couldn't have predicted. 2023 was just one new experience after the other and I forgot to sit back for a minute and reflect on how much I'd changed. It was when my first grade teacher Kamakshi Aunty commented on a profile photo of me addressing a gathering saying "I'm so glad you finally overcame your fear of public speaking" that I realised that a change had happened at all.  In kindergarten, I was given an important set of lines in a skit for Independence Day. I came to school lines in hand, stuffed into an uncomfortable Nehru co...

 It was recently Valentine's Day. The day where we commemorate the violent death of a saint by giving each other flowers and chocolates. Maybe when Oprah dies we can burst party-poppers.  Valentine's Day has lost its fervour. Sure, the consumerist "bonanza sales" and "heart-shaped pizzas" made the rounds in our circle but noone truly cared about the day. But I did. I always did. As a child, my favourite movie was always 'Dil to Pagal Hai'. Madhuri Dixit has a scene in which her friend (named Anjali, ironically enough) asks her why she spent so much money on herself for Valentine's Day. Madhuri replied that until she found the one destined for her she would love herself. She then proceeded to hop, skip and jump into the arms of a young Shahrukh Khan.  I never expected love in that sense. I didn't make sense of it either. It was just something that would happen one day I used to think. But coming to a new school changed my idea of it a little b...

 It's been eight months since I last wrote a blog. I've barely written anything this year, apart from schoolwork, helping friends with their write-ups or IP articles. This year has been full of laughter, life, dancing, singing, winning, trying new things, putting myself out there, getting confident, talking to new kinds of people and seeing incredible things. But when I see the year-end reels and the gratitude messages, I find it all a little misleading. This year was painful at times. There were a lot of anxious nights and moments of self-doubt. There were times I wondered what I was doing here and whether there was hope for tomorrow.  Everyone is writing resolutions for 2024. "In 2024, I'll be happy" "In 2024, I'll exercise" "In 2024 I'll find my soulmate" We assume that we have it in our hands to make the next year perfect. Last New Year's Eve I sat crying at 12 AM worrying about my boards and hoping 2023 would be better. 2023 ha...

 I've recently grown more interested in the area of screenplay writing and all the creative processes that go behind movie-making. I picked up a book, 'Save the Cat', at my aunt's house from my cousin's bookshelf. 'Save the Cat' by Blake Snyder is a crash course on screenwriting. It's short, extremely readable and doesn't waste your time. I pulled an all-nighter that night, reading it from 3 to 6 AM. In retrospect, I should probably re-read it. I'm not sure how much of it I've absorbed since I remember another decision I made at 6 AM was to wake my father up and alert him that the sun was rising and it was too beautiful to miss and waste sleeping. Yowza.  But, don't worry. My father hath forgiven me. In fact, he suggested we watch some 'classic' movies he had kept saved for a while. So we sat down to watch an Italian movie - Cinema Paradiso.  Cinema Paradiso is a heartwarming kind of story. It opens with our hero - Salvatore , get...

 I love quoting high philosophers like Nietzche, Camus and Kant on my blog. Today, I continue this trend as I remember the words of Sharpay Evans, the greatest character of the High School Musical trilogy.  "It's out with the old, and in with the new, Goodbye skies of grey, hello skies of blue" The past month has been a whirlwind of change. The boards ending, to a twenty day break, to new schools, to new seasons, to new music, to Akela getting into more fights, it's been a lot. Not to mention, the jackets have been stuffed in the back of the shelf and my dinosaur shorts from Camp are the new staples. But I digress.  What I really want to talk about is Daksha. As the end of our tenure approached, I saw people getting emotional and turning to cliches like 'It's the end of an era' or 'We're reaching the next level of life', but I shrugged it off. What is the big deal? We all knew this was coming. We knew it since we were in first grade. But people...

 Yes, yes, yes, we like to deny it. Most adults in my teenage life have told me at some point of time to put my phone down. Either through an impassioned speech, a disgusted stare or a passive-agressive joke in public about the youth of today. And as much as all of us like to say "That's not us" it is quite true for the most of us.  The phone has evolved from a means of emergency communication that was used once in a while, to STD boxes, to the tiny, indestructible phones christened 'dabba' phones, all the way to the smartphones of today, which ironically seem to kill my braincells.  The phone is not just a way to talk to people, but a small entertainment package. There is no limit to what can be achieved through a phone. Television, sports, social media, youtube, instant messaging, gaming, payments, photography, news and music - all of which used to have their own individual devices have been clubbed into one sleek little device. The phone has something for every...

 The boards have ended and the holidays have begun! Atleast for the moment. I had dreamed of the 21st of March for ages, imagining what freedom from the boards would look like, and to say the very least, it was anti-climactic.  I was like a chicken without a head, purposeless and unaware of my surroundings ( however, I was not decapitated so my simile ends here). This year has been quite a journey for me. I started off feeling very good about myself and with a positivity like no other, due to various factors, I had reached a scary, anxious position of mental health. I hoped that an epiphany would come but they didn't. I wondered why I wasn't feeling as happy as I knew I should be feeling. The boards ended! I also rejoined Instagram. Instagram, the last time around, was a hot mess for me. I always felt like I had to fit into some box and be a certain person. But, Instagram is merely a tool. A tool to make me feel better or worse is up to me. I used to hesitate from sharing my b...