Reflections of a restless eccentric

My parents are diametric opposites in several aspects. And I, having inherited traits from both of them, by nature and nurture, at times find two contradicting points of view in my head both of which I can understand and relate to. I switch between the two frequently, and reassure myself that it gives me a balanced perspective on life. (There are times when this drives me crazy, but I'll leave that story for another day.) In this article, I'll share with you their individual perspectives on finances, and how that has shaped my own financial thinking. My father is a man of numbers. When I was in first grade, he called me over to the computer that he'd newly bought, and opened up Excel. He took a piece of paper, and wrote down a formula while I stared at it cluelessly. If there is one thing you should remember for your entire life, it is this. This is the power of compounding. He proceeded to enter the formula in Excel and demonstrated to me how an initial paltry sum could g...

 I've had so many electrical issues in the past year that I've decided to give it its own series. These stories will be told from a strange mix of viewpoints--debugging and ranting. Take from it whatever you like. :) On Monday evening, I unlocked the door to my home with a feeling of trepidation. We'd gone away for the weekend, and I was going to be home alone this week. Added to that, given the history of snafus we've had, I didn't know what I'd be greeted by when I came home. My mind had conjured up all kinds of disasters, and I was bracing myself for the worst. But as I opened the door and stepped in, nothing seemed to be amiss. I wandered around all three rooms cautiously, looking for things gone awry. The light and fan in the bedroom were both on, and God knows how long they had been on. (For those uninitiated to my electrical woes- No, we had not left them on by mistake. This is an extremely sporadic and irreproducible bug in my house. Or maybe it's a ...

Today hasn't been the best of days. I have been very stressed out and anxious of late, and at that, on multiple fronts. For one, I have constantly been fretting over my family's well-being. Every time I hear of someone I knew being sick, I feel like the pandemic keeps inching closer to me, and that soon I will have to confront the harsh reality of a close family member falling sick, or worse, dying. On the other hand, with the lockdown, chores have once again become a time sieve in my life, and I am left with tiredness and the small interrupted remnants of an entire day. I worry about all the academic deadlines I have, and wonder how I will manage. If I will manage. The number of people I talk to has also gone down a lot, and some of the friends I usually call have either gotten exceedingly busy or extremely tired of listening to my woes ; and that has added to my feeling of being unmoored. As if all this wasn't enough in itself, the fault in our electrical stars decided to...

 As a toddler, I spent most of my time sitting in my mother's clinic. I neither had daycare nor doting grandparents who babysat me, and as a result, my mom juggled between her full time job and me. One of the first people I met in her practice was this woman with late stage esophageal cancer. I use the term 'met' rather loosely, because I never actually saw her. The first thing my Mom taught me before bringing me into the clinic was that I should never express revulsion at a human being's pain and suffering, no matter how horrible it looked or smelled. She said that if at any time I reacted or made a face, I wouldn't be allowed in to her clinic anymore. I complied. But somehow, she didn't trust me to see this cancer patient with half her food tract eaten away and not react. So anytime this patient made in appearance, I would be shooed inside. After she left, I would ask my Mom in curiosity: What was wrong with her? Would she get well again? Did she have family? ...

 In the recent couple of months, I have found it exceedingly hard to write. My city and country have been ravaged by the pandemic, and I have been struggling to remain positive. My work desk faces one of the busiest junctions in Bangalore, and for the past couple of weeks the ambulances have been wailing non-stop. I hear them even in my nightmares, and I so badly wish they would stop. I stopped reading the news, I stopped looking at the bleak statistics, but somehow I cannot shut out the ambulance sounds. I shudder at the thought of all the people who are sick, and are not even able to receive timely medical intervention. I am pained by the thought of so many people losing their near and dear ones. I worry so much about my own first circle. I try to go down for a walk everyday, because it is a very fine thread that my sanity is hanging by, and that thread is this walk. Today too, I promptly stepped out with my husband around 6. We got into the lift and were instantly lost in our ph...

This has been lying in my drafts for a month now, and I decided to spruce it up and send it out into the world. Disclaimer: As I have said many times in the past, I am aware that I am quite privileged and that my problems are very first world ones. Yet, I choose to write about this for two reasons: Writing is my first and best coping mechanism, and it helps me deal with the several frustrations of adulthood that make me feel powerless. Second, it is a true and holistic picture of my life. To much of the outside world, my descriptors are superficial labels- student, wife, daughter. But to my Reader, I will be nothing but honest. I want you to know my eternal struggle to do justice to all of these roles, to see the constant juggling that sometimes leaves me drained. I want you to know that whatever you are going through, you're not alone. Close to midnight on a Sunday, you find me here, typing this out feverishly. What happened, you ask? I'm dying to tell you. Well, it started ou...

I have always placed a great deal of importance on my career, and as a result have many times ended up prioritizing it over several things in the personal hemisphere. But of late, these decisions that come so naturally to me have started looking like difficult choices. I often wonder if I'm doing the right thing. Right by whom? Right for what? are questions that I pore over morosely. I write this in the hope that it will bring me some clarity, and help others dealing with similar questions. My father has had many skirmishes with illness lately, and they have resulted in numerous visits to the hospital. When this first started, my Dad was very shaken, and so was I. My parents, knowing my schedule, did not ask me to accompany them. I felt that they could use the moral support though, and hence, my husband and I went to the hospital despite my parents' insistence to the contrary. My dad was very happy to see us, and later confessed that he'd felt sad that there was no one to ...