Reflections of a restless eccentric

I was looking to find solace from music amidst all the ongoing chaos. I signed up for the next module of my course, looking forward to it. And then, I got a call from support saying that I would be reassigned to a new teacher. I was utterly shocked. I had not seen this coming at all. I felt betrayed. Let us take a couple of steps back. I have been learning Carnatic vocal on a premier online platform with distinguished teachers for the past one and a half years, with one particular teacher. In this period, my life went through drastic changes: I graduated from college, got into my first job, got married, shifted house, volunteered as a mentor, made a significant career change, and also faced a few ups and downs in my health. But through all this, music was the one constant. Mind you, I was not an excellent student. I could never practice as much as my teacher wanted me to. Time and again, other parts of my life would take over, and I would lag behind in my assignments. I would apolog...

Yesterday, I watched a video of a migrant worker break down as he was offered food--it was heart-wrenching, and I had tears in my eyes just from watching it. I wondered how hungry he had been, and when he had last gotten a decent meal. He must have been deprived of work, and of his meager income therefrom. Soon, within no time at all, the first line of Maslow's pyramid, food shelter and clothing, must have vanished into thin air, leaving him desolate, both physically and mentally. Can you imagine how harrowing this could be? I, for one, find it hard to, never having known hunger or homelessness. I am sure I am not wrong in assuming that you too, Reader, come from a place of privilege. Yet, such is the harsh reality of lockdown for several people who live in our country, India. I am not trivializing your struggles or mine. I agree that they are real, that we have problems too. But it is important to re-orient our perspectives on the situation, to feel truly grateful for what we h...

A colleague of mine once told me: We need to reinvent ourselves every now and then. Erase our previous perspective and look at things in a new light. That's how we improve and grow. Profound words. The afternoon sun saw me sitting drowsily, tired from the chores of the day, struggling to continue with my work. I found myself restlessly pondering over the tenuous future, and contemplating what an extended lockdown could do to my mental well-being. I tried hard to reassure myself that this too would pass, and I re-read a post I had bookmarked last month:  No feeling is final . I had commented on the ephemeral nature of happiness, but I had missed the author's reply to my comment, which I now read: But the more I think about happiness, the more I sometimes feel true joy is not ephemeral – we tend to think of happiness as a feeling and that it goes away the minute we are sad. But what if we can be happy even with the sad? What if we are happy with the challenges? What if we...

Writing has always felt cathartic to me. Therefore, in this time of despondence and dystopia, I take to it in an attempt to restore some semblance of normalcy to my life. However, I find myself unable to think or write about anything other than this pandemic--it has completely ensconced me in a cloud of gloom. I thus resort to chronicling my days in the old fashioned journal style. This will not be just a direct retelling of events in my day, though it contain a fair bit of that. I hope to delve a little deeper, and give my Readers something to reflect upon. The second week of working from home. A gentle dawn greeted me, birds chirping away happily, trees swaying gently, as if celebrating the purer air. But one man's meat is another's poison, and the insides of my house were like an unkempt nest. No coffee or breakfast awaited me. Instead: Two bucket loads of laundry that needed to be dealt with, three meals for the day that needed to be cooked, a sink of vessels that needed...

NB: I write this article to share some wonderful ideas I discovered in a book with my readers. Consequently, most of the content here is directly excerpted from the book. I'm sure you've heard of at least some of the defense mechanisms that Sigmund and Anna Freud studied and outlined. The most popular ones would be denial and repression, and the lesser known ones are perhaps intellectualization, sublimation, reaction formation and displacement. In layman terms, a defense mechanism is a strategy that our brain employs to cope with reality, especially those situations that are unpleasant. I have always wondered about the purpose of defense mechanisms: why do they exist? what do they accomplish? The traditional explanation that Freud proposed and has been widely accepted is that it helps ward off unpleasantness, stress or anxiety that is situational. While this made sense to some extent, I still had questions: Isn't a false perception of reality harmful? Does this benefit...

Note: This post assumes that you are passionate about your work and enjoy what you are doing. If that is not the case, I suggest you first introspect on why you feel that way and what you could do to change it! :) This post is based on my 'working from home' experiences. Since most of the world is trying out working remotely for an extended period now, I hope some of these experiences and the consequent wisdom is of use to my Readers. I am sure countless articles have already been written on the topic, but I hope to add some personal flavor and novelty to it.  The first time I decided to work from home for more than a day, I couldn't be more excited. Yay! No more commute--I get back 3-4 hours of my day. How much more productive I could be! I'd get more work done, find time to exercise, and even catch up on a neglected hobby or two. Also, I could do those dratted household chores in parallel, schedule grocery and other deliveries throughout the day. Snacks...

Never before has a cough or a sneeze sounded more ominous. Yesterday, my cabbie was sneezing incessantly through my two hour journey home, and I must admit, I felt worried. As I covertly tried to open the window, I noticed that I was skittish touching the handle. Similar things have happened to me while pressing elevator buttons. While opening doors. Such are the times we live in, such are the things we are going through. Somehow, every disease comes down to survival of the fittest, and I worry for all those who do not fall under this category. For whom statistics predicts dire things. My 63 year old mother, a general physician, who is now inundated with patients worrying if they have caught the virus--I find myelf thinking, inevitably, one of them is going to test positive; it's just a matter of time. My 71 year old father, who suffers from diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, and travels by public transport everyday. My 91 year old grandfather, whose immunity system is e...

Dear Reader, I want to take you on a walk down my memory lane today. Indulge me. Walk with me. Let me paint a picture for you with my words:) Back when I was in school, I was the impossibly asocial combination of an introvert, an eccentric, a bookworm and a nerd. As I result, I ended up with less than a handful of friends. As the stereotype for a nerd goes, I used to be meticulous in my homework and disciplined and attentive in class. I also got reasonably good grades throughout, and needless to say, most teachers knew me or had heard of me, although I doubt many understood me. A convent school being what it is, my teachers never gave me more than the occasional understated word of encouragement or praise, on the other hand I never got any criticism. Never. Not once! And then came 9th grade English. We were assigned a teacher who had never taught us before, I wasn't personally acquainted with her, although I'd seen her around. I wasn't very worried, owing to two th...

Recently, in a music concert that I attended, a musician mentioned that she and her husband had musical conversations at home. On similar lines, I am conversing with a friend using blog posts :) So my friend, Dragon Rider, a couple of day ago, wrote about Women's Day. You can read the post here:  https://talesofincrediblycommon.blogspot.com/2020/03/international-womens-day.html In summary, she was aghast when a few men questioned the need of a special day for women, citing that men's day should be celebrated equally but was not, and that was unfair. In response, she outlines the struggles of women starting from the early 20th century, and feels that we should be honored to be leading the lives that we are today, owing in no small parts to our ancestors' efforts. That we should have a day to recognise how far we have come seems like a natural and fair culmination of affairs to her. She concludes that Women's Day is very relevant and necessary, and a celebration of al...

This article is not edited or proofread. I am too tired for any of that today, so I am sending it out into the world raw. :) Hygge, qualia- Both of these words are from two different books I read recently. If you're a regular reader of mine, you might already have noticed my obsession with words, especially ones that are obscure and convey something that isn't present currently. Hygge is of Danish origin. The author (of the book I read), who works at the Happiness Research Institute, talks about this word in great detail, for the length of the entire book. He stresses that it is untranslatable in several languages, that the closest we can get to it English is coziness, but that it is so much more. Qualia(singular:quale) is a word that I encountered in a book about neuroscience(Phantoms in the brain by V.S Ramachandran if you're wondering), and it stands for instances of subjective, conscious experiences. Since the author has done a much better job than I can in expla...

A while ago, a bunch of friends and I started a blog on introversion:  The introvert's guide to life . That effort took off but eventually dwindled down, but I'm still keen to write more on this topic. I checked with my co-authors, and so are they, hence we are officially reviving this series. However, due to various reasons that pertain to logistics, we do not yet have a common home for these articles. Hence, we are probably going to employ the crude method of posting on one of our existing websites, with possible re-posts on all co-authors' blogs. And now, I introduce to you the author of this post, Dragon Rider. Apart from being my friend and co-conspirator, she is also an amazing writer with a very unique voice. Queen of satire that she is, all things in the realm of sarcasm and dark humour fall under her purview. She's also a lover of the feline species, and a self-proclaimed introvert.(questionable if you ask me:P)  If you'd like to read more of her work or...

A while ago, a group I belonged to had this activity where we were asked to name women scientists in India. I struggled to find names, and that struck me as sad. Surely there must have been inspiring women scientists in my country too. Was it that no one chronicled their lives? Or maybe it was just me who was blissfully unaware of their existence? So this weekend, when I was looking for a book to read, I searched for something that would shed more light on this topic. And that's how I stumbled upon Lilavati's daughters , a collection of 100 biographical essays on various women scientists hailing from India scattered across a multitude of disciplines. I started reading, and I was immersed into stories of various women and their struggles in science. But one story instantly stood out for me: it tugged on my heartstrings and inspired me, and it is that I choose to narrate to my Reader today. Disclaimer: My narration is based mostly on the essay I have read, and the few articl...