Reflections of a restless eccentric

I'm excited, Dear Reader. Today, I'm doing something that is a first for this blog-- have a guest author write here. The author has chosen to remain anonymous for personal reasons, and I shall do my best to introduce her to you while retaining her anonymity. She is a fellow bookworm, an enormous movie buff and an absolute wizard with words. She is also a wonderful friend of mine, someone who I look up to a great deal and someone whose brain I enjoy picking whenever I get the chance. Without further ado, I present to you a thought provoking and well-written article, one that I encourage you to read and share, and also ponder upon. This article touches upon several aspects in an anecdotal fashion: societal notions of beauty, workplace patriarchy, boundaries of acceptable workplace conversation and several other nuances. This was also the article that inspired my earlier post  On warped notions of beauty  as well as my take on Lutalica . Disclaimer: All credits and rights for...

As you grow through life, you learn to develop an armor. You learn to shield your vulnerabilities, and hide your weaknesses. You fear trusting people. Life's experiences have taught you well: that when you are vulnerable, people exploit that knowledge and use it as ammunition against you. And that hurts doubly, both because you trusted them, and because it is a weak spot. But there are a few people in your life, who see you when you are weak, and nurture you back to strength. Who see your vulnerabilities, and treat you with respect and kindness as they've always done. It never occurs to them to wound you with your weaknesses, or to break your trust. These are the best kind of people, and today, I cherish and celebrate one such person in my life--my husband. Empathy: My husband has never been one to sneer at my mistakes. He never laughs at me, or says 'I told you so'. He always empathizes, and tells me that it could have happened to anyone. This is something I am inc...

I have previously written a  drabble  where I speculated that my hippocampus was not properly functioning because I had such a poor sense of direction and navigation. I've also written another post, where amongst other incidents, I talk about how I lost my way from the restroom to my cabin at work:  Misadventures in a Concrete Jungle . Today, I will elaborate on my struggles a bit more, hopefully in an interesting way. Read on! :) Have you ever walked out of a store/restaurant onto the road and had no sense of which way you came or any orientation whatsoever? I have, and sometimes I have walked off in the opposite direction for a few hundred metres before realising it. I have even taken a bus with the right route number, but going in the opposite direction. Have you asked someone for directions and then been insanely lost in the gibberish sequence of lefts and rights that they have belted out? I have every single time, and I no longer ask for directions. Have you had ...

Disclaimer: All credits for the word remain with John Koenig of Obscure Sorrows. This is merely a personal retelling. I don't know about you Reader, but for me, one of the most exciting things about life is how grand it is in terms of the possibilities it offers. All the books you could read, all the places you could visit, all the things you could be and do. As a child I looked at all this and marvelled. How beautiful life is! There were a multitude of things that fascinated me, and I would dream of so many paths I could take in life, all the people I could be. I would wonder what it is like to be a writer. To be a musician. To be a scientist. To be a mathematician. To be a neurologist. I had a thirst for knowledge, for books, for places, for life itself. Slowly, I started making choices. They would seem tiny at the moment, but they started crafting my path on the map. Every choice I made, that path got more defined. And I never looked back or second guessed myself, beca...

I live in this wonderful city that was once famous for gardens, and is now notorious for traffic. My workplace and home are located in opposite ends of the city, and my commute sometimes leads me into depths of despair. Why is everything so tough here? Even running an errand takes an hour at the very least. I listen to other people talking about small towns, where you can travel from one end to the other in under fifteen minutes, and I feel that is a luxury I can never afford. Everything is so painful and cloistered. The city reminds me of an overloaded lorry, struggling to carry its weight, spilling sand everywhere. I remember the times from my childhood, where Bangalore too, was one of those pleasant cities. Traffic was unheard of, and people used to complain of unnecessary traffic signals. Trees lined every road I could think of, and I never hated journeys. Slowly I grew up, and the city did too. Hotels and malls sprang up, and tech parks engulfed the city in concrete embraces. I...

Marriage is not just about grand gestures-- exotic travels, celebrations of birthdays and anniversaries, gifts that take your breath away and going on adventures together. Although these are special moments that are very enjoyable, the majority of married life comprises of the mundane, the everyday. The minutiae of life. Living for the glorious moments and detesting the daily is like hating your week and living for the weekend-- neither signify a healthy life. But in these minutiae arise differences. For how could they not? When you live with someone, you are living with a multitude of their quirks- some adorable, some normal and some downright annoying. And as different people who've lived different lives and had different experiences, we're bound to have different ideas, thoughts and opinions. How does one deal with this? How does one enjoy not just the glory of marriage but also the mundane? How does one reduce acrimony and instead live harmoniously? This article is to sh...

Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and we were both bemoaning our long and arduous daily commutes. And then I said to her : But you have an office cab, whereas I'm thrown to the wolf that is public transport . She cringed audibly, and I regretted my words instantly. I'd always been so careful about not comparing, and yet, in an unguarded moment, I did exactly that. I decided to write about it, in the hope that I can create more awareness on this. Have you had this experience where you recount your woes to someone and then they go: Oh that, that's nothing. Wait till you get to this point in life! (mostly this is being married, having a kid, having a second kid, but it could be just about anything) Don't you just hate people who do this? While I was single, I used to tell people about the difficulties I faced, and they would go: Wait till you get married . I used to feel instantly invalidated, and I'd think :How unfair! Just because I'm unmarried or do not h...

I'd like you to read this post, Dear Reader. In it, the author recounts how one tiny sparrow taught her about hope and faith. My paraphrasing might come off as trite, but the emotion in the writing is definitely not. It moved me deeply, and I suggest you read it as well. Today, I'd like to share an incident from my life that had a similar impact on me. Back in January, there was a week when life seemed very chaotic. I also happened to be staying alone at that point, and it wreaked additional havoc on me, causing me to get into a depressive spiral. I would cry almost everyday, and fret over many things. I was not in a good place personally. On one such evening, I came back from work. There was something I'd ordered online, and the tracking status on the website showed that it had been delivered to me, but it clearly hadn't been. Mildly annoyed, I called customer care. On the other end was a person immune to my distress, who calmly told me that there was nothing the...

It is said that there is no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. I couldn't agree more. Traveling expedites the process of discovering a person. Life has a way of gradually doing this anyway: as you spend more time with someone, you learn something more about them. But travel accelerates it. When you travel with someone, everything is raw--unfettered by social charades. There are bound to be circumstances which are less than ideal: being hungry or exhausted or sick or even being in an unfamiliar place. What do you then do? Do you claw at each other in frustration? Do you act upon your impulses and take it out on your companion? Do you trust someone enough to take risks with them? Do you trust them to care for you when you are unwell? These are questions to ponder upon, and traveling sheds a lot of light on them. In this post, I will attempt to capture some of the answers to these from our travels in 2019. I'd never been abroa...