Reflections of a restless eccentric

This year has been difficult for all of us. Over the past couple of months, I have felt an overwhelming hesitation whenever I look at a blank screen and try to write. Add to that a time crunch, and you see why my posts are dwindling down. But, there's another reason. Ever since the lockdown, life has felt listless at times. I look around, and I see the struggles of so many people. I wonder, what is it that I can write about to alleviate some of this dystopia? Silence greets me. Today though, I see a glimmer of an answer, and I attempt to bring some peace and happiness through this series of articles I call "moments". Here goes! The subject of my article and my latest delight is this tiny cassette player. Yes, you heard that right! In today's era of music streaming services, it is doubtless an anachronism. Yet, it brings a smile on my face. Let me elaborate. In my childhood, we always had crazy mornings. There would be breakfast and lunch getting prepared, my parents a...

 I have always hated negotiating. During the years I grew up, online shopping hadn't come into existence yet. Therefore, whatever you wanted to buy, be it vegetables, clothes, or gadgets, you had to visit an actual shop and negotiate. Of course, you could always buy without negotiating, but the chances were that you'd have paid way more. This would be because the salesperson, having expected you to bargain, would always quote a price that left him/her some wiggle room. Needless to say, I hated the whole ordeal. Just thinking of negotiating made me sweat. When the world transitioned to online shopping, I sighed in relief. But as I grew up, I realized that negotiation wasn't just limited to this sphere of life. Negotiation is everywhere. At every job, your salary involves a negotiation. Buying/renting a house. Dividing up responsibilities among people. Pick any activity of your life, and you will find some amount of negotiation involved in it. I observed people who negotiated...

“I truly believe that the single most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that partner is.”  Just a couple of days ago, a friend quoted Sheryl Sandberg from Lean In. I'd never heard this before, and it annoyed me the first time I heard it. The statement seemed to place undue importance on marriage for a woman. The next day, another friend shared an article on Marty Ginsburg , RBG's amazingly supportive spouse. It got me thinking about the impact a spouse, particularly, a husband has on a woman's career, and I realized the enormous truth in that statement. This article is attempt to chronicle my own experiences, as well as others' whose lives I have witnessed, and the conclusions one can draw from them. Growing up in India, I was introduced early on to the notion that a woman's life and therefore her career, largely revolved around her family- husband, children, the likes. I witnessed first hand hordes of educa...

Warning: This is going to be a rant on several first world problems I'm grappling with. While I am aware of that, I feel overwhelmed and need to spout this out. It is a Sunday afternoon, and I feel frustrated. Frustrated because I haven't been able to get any work done all day, and now I'm listening to this annoyingly smug service person who has come to fix my washing machine. He tells me: No water should fall on these buttons, Ma'am. Obviously, if you let it get exposed to water, it'll stop working.   I feel like ripping my hair out in frustration: How is this a reasonable expectation for a washing machine? It's not like I poured a bucket of water on the panel. But when I'm taking wet clothes out, water drops are bound to fall on it. I try not to lose my temper as he patronizingly lectures me on rust and voltage fluctuations and other 'here-be-dragons' before he makes his pitch for buying AMC for the machine. He manages to contradict himself in eve...

 It has been a while since I last wrote. I draw a deep breath of trepidation as I begin to write this. I am almost tempted to close it citing a random excuse, but this idea has been in my head for a week now, and I must write about it. A short while ago, my friend SM wrote in an article that her fitness goals caused her to become obsessed with reaching those goals, and took away from the joy and peace of actually working out. This idea remained in the back of my mind, and during the week I saw several examples of the same.(Baader-Meinhof anyone?) There was a customer care executive I was talking to, and he spoke at 2x the normal conversing speed. He also cut me off mid-question several times, already answering what he thought I would ask. It seemed to me that he was trying really hard to minimize the time he spent addressing my concern. The logical answer, was that he was incentivised on average time per call. Thus, his goal was to spend the least amount of time talking to people ...

Growing up, my mother was always scornful of sickness. The occasional time that she fell sick, she would never take time off either from work or from household chores. She would pretend that everything was normal, and work through her sickness. Sometimes for a day, or maybe even three. Similarly, when she once injured herself badly after her two wheeler fell on her leg, she came home and bandaged her leg and went back to normal. I have heard stories of how she worked till the very day I was born, and then returned to work in a couple of days. She looked at sickness as an enemy, and she would never let it declare victory over her. She was invincible. I saw her as an epitome of strength, and these incidents as testimony to that fact. In contrast to her, I was someone who struggled with sickness and pain. During my childhood, I would catch a fever every two weeks if not more often. Like every other person, I hated being sick. But because of the example she set for me, I also started feeli...

 My journey with music began as a toddler of 3 and a half years. My mother noticed that music soothed me when I was tempestuous and excited me when I was morose, and like several other South Indian mothers, immediately concluded that I should learn Carnatic Music, and the earlier the better. She sent me off to a teacher who was conveniently located next door, and who already taught a few people. The teacher looked at me in disbelief, as I hadn't even started kindergarten yet. She told my mother that I was too young, and that she should probably wait another year, but my mother was insistent. They finally came to the conclusion that I would be allowed to sit at the back of the class and listen, and that she would consider teaching me after a few months. So I went to class twice a week, and soon enough, I started singing along. My teacher changed her mind, and took me into her fold of students. I learnt this way for a year and a half, without understanding the grammar of a raga, with...