Saturday, June 25, 2022

 The (psycho)logic or vengeance


Vengeance is a psychological reality. My mild manners and forgiving nature makes me look like an easy target to aspiring bullies. I mostly watch them fall on their own toes. But even I do take revenge sometimes. 

There are many arguments against revenge, but it does calm the mind of a person who has been emotionally abused.  It also restores a feeling of equilibrium in a world, where not only the world view of the ones who have been exploited, but even that of onlookers and non participants are set off balance by thoughts of how unfair the world is. 

I have had my fair share of revenge, and in my defence, that revenge was rarely exacted by me and I was a mere witness albeit a joyful one, to the downfall of those who wronged me.

But there have been instances when I said or did something that was a catalyst to the other person breaking down. In my defence, most of it was unintentional. I am just confessing to being the instrument. 

The last line here would be that these instances have been moments of deep satisfaction, calmness and sometimes goosebumps.

Sunday, April 24, 2022

 I now live on a campus. in a village My quarters are right next to the gate. 

But in between my digs and the gate there is a single room allotted for the watchman and his family. Not only do his four kids and wife live with him, but so do two cousins, an uncle, the wife's sister and an assortment of relatives who come and go. 

Nowhere is the acceptance of logic-less, magic-less reality more apparent than it is here. My quarters are simple, according to living standards of today. One living area, a tiny pathway dubbed as the kitchen, a decent bathroom and a small bedroom. 1BHK, as they say here, in Bangalore. But I cannot imagine how all of the watchman's family fit in that single room.

I live here with my two puppies, who snooze on the bed or the foot mat. The watchman's wife is woman in her early 20s or late teens called Sabu. Her sister is a seven year old called Paru. She takes care of her nephews, one a toddler of two and the other an infant of a say 6 months, when her sister Sabu goes out to work as a maid. 

Today ,when Sabu went to work, Paru also wanted to go to the toilet. She gave the infant in the arms of her 4 year old niece, Sneha. Sneha, unable to carry him gave him to three year old Neha, her sister. Now Neha's arms ached so much that she started to bawl in pain. When I went out to find out what happened. Paru beat Sneha for giving the baby to Neha. Sneha beat Neha for bawling. Sneha also accused Paru of lying and said that she really didn't have to go to the toilet.

I had the baby with me for a few minutes as Paru went in to the shrubs to relieve herself. She returned, took the baby back and thanked me. 

Will we ever live in a society where the rights of children are not so systematically trampled upon? While this is still better than a system in which the state takes care of children without caregivers, it's so unfair on the kids and the terrible unfairness of it all keeps pricking me.

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

The eternal magic of LIterature

 Today I read a book: The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst.

It was eminently readable, and after i finished the book I realized that I had somehow missed or inadvertantly skipped the part which explains the title.

So I looked it up, and was pleasantly surprised to read that this randomly selected book  is quite reputed in the literary world. And the title is from a poem, and puts the spotlight on one scene around which the whole story revolves. So I accidentally got to read an acclaimed book.

I have to agree. My experience with the book was that, in these days of distraction from multiple sources,  I had read the 562 pages at one go. Of course, over two days, and when I was left with no work to do. It was about writers, and the world of publishing, of ageing, of changing times, homophobia and the randomness of fame. 

After I put the book down, and even before I came to know of it being 'literary' I had actually browsed for History of Literature courses online and found one from a reputed University. I intend to enrol in it. So much did the book invoke memories of my college and the excellent lectures I had listened to therein.

I also began my second day with the book by reading a few verses from "The Waste LanD", a poem that I was asked to write about in my entrance exam to my English Course at Stella Maris College. 

I am at cross roads of my life now and this book reminded me how much I had loved being a student of literature before life and its demands swallowed me up. 

Though I may have lost the ability to review the book in a scholarly way, the lines here are my tribute to it as good literature; Literature that makes you want to be in touch with similar excellent works that have attempted to explain life with all its nuances.

Supposedly magical, but just logical: Salary

 Let's praise salary first

It's regular

It pays bills

It makes one respectable

It makes one financially independent

It helps to shop for non-essentials too

it gives a sense of security


BUT 

It can be 

a pain 

 monotonous work 

 non productive

soul crushing if unethical


The real danger however, is in believing that salary aka money can win you love, respect, familial devotion, admiration, credibility and proof of your intelligence and validity.

Tell me you never fell into the trap of believing that money would provide you with one or all of the above.

But the worst part about salary is when you are supposed to get it but it comes very late.


Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Strange, not logic, yet true

 So I was eating the mud of humiliation...

By the way, why on earth am I a soft target for humiliation? That is a question that I will learn the answer for , sometime in the future, I am sure.

Going back to this particular wallow in the mud of humiliation, my heart was heavy, brain was a bit out of joint and I was in a state of mild paralysis.

Then I started to google something, and Good ole Google suggestions came up with the name of a friend

A fine woman

An upright, outstanding leader

But she had died unexpectedly. 

I had always thought  myself fortunate to have known this person. But she had died suddenly. Seeing the name of my dead friend filled me with a sorrow and this sorrow filled me up so quickly that all the feelings of humiliation was flooded over by it.

I was sad, but no longer unhappy with my situation.


Strange, so illogical, but yes, she had died,  and the shock of this thought wiped the sorrow away from my heart.

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Magical Creativity vs lack of it thereof

 Well, I am going to start working on something new.

Exciting Topic

Work that will keep me engrossed

I am ready in front of my laptop.

So, what do I do? I must subconsciously be feeling upset or tensed at the difficulty level and the amount of work.For now I don't start. I become conscious of the noises around me and get annoyed. Worse, all enthusiasm seems to have drained away. Feeling empty and dull.

Rather than start something like going to YouTube for a quick fix of my feelings, I thought I would work on this situation here. 

Updates on whether this helped or not


Did writing this here help? In a way. I went back to You Tube, watched my favourite channel, became happy, opened my work document and started typing. 

Writing and a quick fix after that, helped me to enjoy and at the same time not linger. Good day to anyone reading this.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Money, no magic or even logic about it

What must it feel like to be a leader in a company like Aircel and Reliance Communications that owe thousands of crores (count the zeros, more than 10 I'm sure) to their creditors?

I hated family members who ruined the family economy by overspending and taking loans. They hated me for being boring, unimaginative and casual. This is how my economics works. I keep away from overspenders. There is no such word, right? No such person too, it seems in modern times, you do what you like, leave your creditors high and dry, ruin life as you knew it and ruin it for millions, and never let the poorest of the poor see a better day.

Money has no magic, no logic. It's nothing and it's not even a piece of paper anymore.

Cheers to a new world with no logic and no magic and just numbers with more than  ten zeros