Wordside Woman

                                  " 1Q84 " By Haruki Murakami (Book Review) #1                     This is not exactly a book review, rather, some random thoughts about the work that came to me on the day I finished reading it. I bought this book in the October of 2021 as a treat to myself after receiving my first paycheque. This was all the luxury I could afford with my meagre salary from working as a faculty on contract. I had read two other books of Murakami’s previously: Norwegian Wood (1987) and Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage (2013). There was something soothing about these novels that made me gravitate to another work of his. However, the sheer volume of the book quelled my excitement by the time I reached home. I tried reading the first couple of pages only to realise that my headspace was not tuned to vibe well with the...

                            The Reality Called Depression To most of the upstanding citizens of our society, depression is still an uninspired excuse given by delinquents and deadbeats to wash their hands of responsibilities. These empirically shaped mortals obsessed with productivity have a problem with wrapping their head around abstract illnesses. Even considering the possibility of its existence among their peers or within oneself is viewed as a betrayal of their carefully cultured misplaced convictions. Unless there are festering wounds, lethal cuts, exsanguination, detached limbs, misbehaving cells or at least a cytokine storm, one doesn’t qualify to be addressed as “sick”. The community doesn’t make things easier for the depressed either. The well-meaning aunties in the neighborhood and opinionated uncles making unsolicited visits to your house fuel you on guilt trips that more often than not end with self-lo...

  SHADOW   Directionless, I walk through lighted corridors, I force myself to move along, Unyielding to the luring offers of the shady corners, Heaviness slows me down to a crawl, Let me stop, bleed away a little of my beingness, Reduce myself, shrink myself to naught, Make myself light, I look down and realise there are two of me, We meet where my feet begin, I run back and forth to no avail, Can’t seem to outrun it, My constant creepy companion, Reluctantly I lie down, And we became one in an embrace.  

  A Word to the Practitioners of Non Scientific Disciplines from a Peer      Having your existence and worth questioned recurrently in life can be a mind numbing and soul crushing event. When the same happens in the field of academia it is belittling, embarrassing and intellectually lethal at best. The practitioners of non-scientific academic disciplines are, now more than ever, being forced to validate their existence in the academic world, repeatedly, to no avail. Considering this eventuality to be premeditated on the part of the scientific community to project their relevance by contrasting it against the “opposing group” will do no good to anyone. It is time we stopped pointing fingers and took responsibility for ensuring that our disciplines be made current, in keeping with the course of the global civilisation’s path ahead to the future.      So, how do we alter our roles as mute spectators, indulging in stodgy running commentaries on life al...

  JAN 28TH FRIDAY 2022 Some days are confusing. The weather is confusing, the temperature is confusing, sometimes the destinations are also confusing. The past three weeks felt like Summer and today its windy. I could feel dust beneath my feet despite the fact that Amma had moped the whole house. It irritates her. I worked online today. I can find more and more greys in her hair with every passing day. Time has an obvious as well as insidious presence in our lives. It is rarely that you experience the latter. Today was one of those days when I had an excruciating awareness of it.  I've been staring at the screen for a long time after writing the first paragraph. It seems I have run out of ideas to write. It is as if there is a pause in my existence. How do you write about pauses? The feeling of being the only stagnant thing even while time is taking everything else forward in its torrential flow. It is both a privilege and a curse. I can find dust accumulated between the ...

  JAN 12TH WEDNESDAY 2022 CLUSTERFUCK!!!!!  I cannot think of a better word to describe the past Sunday. Whenever I have let others take decisions for me in my life, it has more often than not turned out terribly. This was just one among those classic instances. The very thought of it disturbs me viscerally. I don't wanna talk about it. But, what really struck me is how perceptive my parents are. I had braced myself for the volley of questions awaiting me from my parents. Even as a child I used to share every little incident with both my parents. Actually, I used to talk with mum more, considering she was the one readily available. She would always be there awaiting my return every evening from school and later college. Unlike other mothers she wouldn't rush me into doing my homework. She loved listening to me speak about my teachers, friends, enemies, and several such insignificant things. Sometimes I would feel that she was living vicariously through me. Growi...

JAN 2ND 2022 SUNDAY       It is another beautiful winter evening. I am sitting at my table, my laptop open, trying to delude myself into believing that the past ten days were productively spent. It is an exercise in futility, as I am well aware. But I need to make an attempt to get out of the rut called routine. It is dangerously reassuring and unsettling at the same time. Lets leave it at that. I can hear my mum watering the plants and dad typing away something on his laptop. The niggling in the pit of my stomach will soon takeover my sense of peace. I need to write a little before that happens.      Sometimes things happen to us in our life, things that can make you question the permanence of the sense of security that you would have taken for granted otherwise. You begin to appreciate a lot of things that must have come across as insignificant, not worthy of attention. So the question is, is it a good thing or a bad thing? Frankly, I don't know. My ...

I think I was watching the trailer for the second season of this romantic anthology series called"Modern Love". As usual I was not paying attention to most of what was being said. My focus was on catching a glimpse of Kit Harrington. And then I heard one of the characters say something like, " We can only be as happy as we allow ourselves to be", and it got me thinking for a while. I, in fact even texted it to someone I know, who is yet to acknowledge that text. (Its been two days.....I know.... but I am used to being ignored like that.....sigh!.....)  The word "happiness brings" to my mind a series of interviews that were aired in Kappa TV, hosted by Dhanya Varma, called "Happiness Project". Though it was indeed all about happiness, I loved how she interviewed the people without ever letting a feeling of redundancy to creep in. Unlike several other interviewers I have come across, she never pried into their personal lives or dug up scandals from...

                                         SHERNI (2021) The title “Sherni” is applicable both to the predator in question as well as to the protagonist. Vidya Balan seamlessly plays the role of a rookie officer trying to combat corruption and inefficiency in the government system while simultaneously attempting to hold on against the slighting remarks and gender bias within her sphere of work. The lopsided power dynamics become apparent in several scenes, where the hands of the conscientious officers are tied and are further made to made to feel feckless. Unlike many other movies with female leads, the character played by Vidya Balan doesn’t dominate the narrative. The viewer is offered a fulfilling viewing experience without a wasted scene or dialogue. The movie begins with a seemingly insignificant scene indicating the lack of subject knowledge among the officials of the forest de...

    I didn’t know if I was his friend or just somebody he talked to over the phone when he did not have anything better to do with his time. Whatever the case might be, I had gotten a good and patient listener to my rantings and whining in him. Most adults will agree to the pricelessness of such an acquisition in life. Also, he never seemed to judge me, mostly on account of the fact that he simply didn’t care. His aloofness was comforting to me for some reason. In his words, he lived in a bubble of his own making through which he did see the world, but chose to observe only what he felt was worth his while. It’s been ten years since that message I sent him on a particularly depressing day, during the first year of my bachelors. Now, years later, I was beginning to read Truman Capote’s novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s when his descriptions jogged my memory, and that day when we met for the first time as acquaintances after spending eight years in the same school as ...