Reflections of a restless eccentric

The fire alarm goes off. I wake up bleary-eyed thinking it is an ambulance, and then realize otherwise. I try not to panic, and quickly grab a mask and my phone. I head outside my apartment, and immediately see that the lift is not working. I turn to the fire stairs, but they are locked. I look down from the balcony, and I see everyone rushing out. Oddly, there are no neighbors on my floor. I call out, but no one hears me.  It is just me.  Alone. Trapped. On the eleventh floor. In a fire. This was one of my dreams last week. That morning, I had watched as BBMP officials clad in PPE suits sealed off our floor as our neighbors had tested positive. Makes sense. This is protocol.   I'm glad they're doing all this to prevent the spread.  I told myself this, even as I felt a little shaken. A little later that day, I heard voices on my floor again. I peeked from the peephole of my door. They were sealing off the lift and the stairway door with tape. I turned away quickly. A couple of

Women of genius are rare. Thus,  when we, driven by some mystic love, wish to enter upon some anti-natural path, when we give all  our thoughts to some work which estranges us from the humanity nearest us, we have to struggle  against women. The mother wants the love of her child above all things, even if it should make an  imbecile of him. The mistress also wishes to possess her lover, and would find it quite natural to  sacrifice the rarest genius in the world for an hour of love. The struggle almost always is unequal, for  women have the good side of it: it is in the name of life and nature that they try to bring us back. I found these words in a biography of Marie Curie. They were from a dairy entry of Pierre Curie and supposedly the reason he decided not to marry--he was of the opinion that marriage would be a distraction from his work. Ironically enough, he later found Marie, who was undoubtedly a woman of genius, and she like him, was deeply attached to her work. She was the l

A short while ago, I was telling a friend that I was volunteering to be a mentor to students from my alma mater . Then, I told her, I think you'd make a great mentor. Did you think of applying? She immediately replied: I am in dire need of a mentor myself. How can I be one when this is the case? I agreed with the first part of her answer, but not the conclusion she drew from it. I too need a mentor. Does that mean I cannot be one to someone else? This persisted in my mind, bringing up parallels from a book called Maybe you should talk to someone, where a therapist talks about seeing a therapist herself and how that causes her patients to doubt her credibility. I also remembered my mother telling me that she could never go in to the clinic looking or sounding sick, because no patient wants to be treated by a sick doctor. Maybe this is a commonly held perception then, I thought.  I myself have been guilty of harbouring this notion. Whenever someone tells me to publish my writing, I

This has been lying in my drafts for months now. Finally chose to put it up! Vellichor*: The strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured. One of the perks of buying an “old, handed-down” book! Nothing in these last several days made me feel this light at heart as this single flaky flower did! What is this flower? When did it land here? How did it land here? Did someone place it here on purpose, or did it inadvertently find its way? May be while sitting under the tree where it blooms? What used to be its fragrance? Its colour? What thoughts does it carry? And whose? Did it mean something to someone? If so, what? Does it hold any emotions? If yes, how inte

My mother neither had a penchant for cooking, nor the time for it. Yet, she looked at food as the dominant factor that decided health, and refused to handover the reins of our family's health to someone else. Therefore, she ended up cooking all our meals everyday, albeit in a hurry. As an infant, I was probably content with whatever she cooked for me. But once I got into primary school, I fell into the trap of peer pressure. My lunchbox would invariably have curd rice and a poriyal/palya. Day in, and day out. I became known as the 'curd rice' person. That's when I started looking around, and I noticed that all my classmates brought a variety of things for lunch. They sometimes shared their boxes with me, and I tasted in awe the culinary superlatives their mothers cooked for them-- neer dosa, akki rotti, paddu-- foods whose existence I had never known of. All of a sudden, my own curd rice seemed too ordinary and uncool. I berated my mother: Why can't you make me some

Shaken.   Rattled . That's how I feel. Like my breath was knocked out of me. Like the solid ground under my feet vanished.  I woke up today, with a concrete plan for the day. As I was eating breakfast, I called home for my daily check-in. I was blabbering about some inane detail of my day, when my Mom cut my call saying she was getting another call. And then, she did not call me back for a good five minutes. My parent radar immediately went on alert, because this behavior was very uncharacteristic of her. I called her back, and after a bunch of probing questions, she blurts out: One of my patients tested positive yesterday. I froze for a full second, and then felt a tsunami of emotions hit me.  Concern and worry came first, and they caught my breath and held it captive.  My mother. I hope she's fine. God, this is the stuff of nightmares! Why is this happening to us? Anger was a powerful second, and I was so tempted to yell. I told you  a hundred times not to see patients. Why d