Sum of Everything

It seems oddly serendipitous to begin the new year with a post titled "Beginnings", although this one has been in my drafts for an embarrassingly long time now. Much like most other posts, this post would also have looked very different had I written what I originally had in mind. However in the several intervening months between my last post and this one, life changing things have happened, the most significant one being that my sister officially moved to Korea to start her journey as an MBA student (and by the time this is posted, she has even completed a semester; so much for being regular with these posts). To say that my sister and I are close would be quite the understatement. Saying “ joined at the hip, reading each other's thoughts, and telepathically communicating even when not in each other's line of sight ” would be a more accurate description. So having her go from living 3 steps away across the dining room to 5,583 km spanning 7 time zones away is not ...

The title of this post is a trigger warning in itself, but just to be sure, there are going to be some heavy topics discussed in this one so if you are not ready to read something like this or are not in a space to tackle issues of love and loss, I would suggest revisiting this post another time. I doubt there is a single person on this planet who has not experienced loss - be it that of a loved one (human or fur baby), a favourite object, or relationships. We have all been at the receiving end of that merciless blow that life deals - sometimes, it isn’t as painful, we just stand up, brush the dust off our shoulders and move on. Sometimes though, the blow can be life altering. Loss is a feeling I am reasonably familiar with. Not only have I lost numerous possessions to the void of clumsy forgetfulness (I am convinced there is a galactic lost and found box that holds all the hair clips and rubber bands l have misplaced over the years with the only explanation for their random disapp...

Sometimes, the most insignificant of things can serve as a reminder of just how a random event led directly to the life you currently lead. One such seemingly insignificant thing happened last weekend, when I met my friend S after years. She was in town and we grabbed the chance to see each other in person after what seemed like eons. I was also finally introduced to her fiancé, who just happens to be a low key celebrity, just like S herself. While we were catching up, she told me her grandfather had asked after me and that set off a chain of thought… S and I have known each other since we were about 7 years old. She joined the school I was in and as both Tam-Brahms and late entrants into the same class, we developed a natural friendship. We lived in the same apartment complex, and soon her family shifted from Building B to Building A, right above the apartment our family lived in. Our families became close and we remained in touch even after they moved back to Chennai. About a year or...

It has been over a month since my last post on the blog for the 52 Week Challenge, or anything else for that matter. Going in, I knew it was ambitious to attempt writing and uploading every week for a whole year, especially considering the social events and exams that ominously dot my calendar, but I had not expected to fall off the wagon after a mere 3 weeks. That is a new low for me. A lot has happened in the weeks that I have been AWOL, and not everything deserves a mention here nor should it be mentioned; but there were a couple of thoughts I believed merited a post. So here goes.  Everyday, we go about life taking in the millions of things that are thrown at us, and react as we go along. As a person particularly sensitive to external stimuli, whether tangible or intangible, it is nearly impossible to keep track of all the thoughts that race around in my head as a reaction to something I perceive. Each stimulus triggers in me a chain of unending thoughts that often stops only w...

The unpredictability of life ironically guarantees that the universe often delivers to you what you need in the most surreptitious of ways and then sneakily watches you go about your day, none the wiser, all the while laughing at you for not realising that what you have been asking for has just been dropped into your lap. This seems to have happened to me, more than once, on a recent trip to Mumbai. While I was pleasantly surprised at some of the things I did manifest, I feel rather grateful to have found something I didn’t even know I was missing - i nspiration. It arrived in the unlikely form of reconnecting with an old acquaintance from college, one I never thought I would be friends with, largely because of a mutual indifference caused by misunderstandings . So it came as a surprise when we randomly started connecting over each other's somewhat controversial posts on social media, and having conversations on topics that would mostly invite not only the opposing points of ...

Work. It has been my observation that this word, simple and unassuming as it may seem, is rather subjective and its meaning relies heavily on user. Usually, it is used in the context of jobs done to earn a living. The prompts for this week too, were in line with this and nudged us to think about the trajectory our careers have taken - first job, most satisfying job, job that felt draining, job you stayed in longer than you should have, and while I do have enough and more to say about that aspect of my life, sometime during the week I had an epiphany which led to a very different theme for this article. Housework - the unpaid work we do that often goes unnoticed, unacknowledged and unappreciated, although one could argue that a lot of work at a paying job could be unacknowledged and unappreciated as well, but, as usual, that’s fodder for another day, another article. Household chores are seldom thought of as "work" in the traditional meaning of the word. Indeed, it is usuall...