Beautiful Gratitude

I think part of what I am doing after coming back to campus is thinking and trying to reason what it is about campus that is making me feel quite peaceful. I have quite a lot of work to do and I am getting through it little by little, but I think just the presence of people around me and the general atmosphere on campus keeps me quite happy (satiated, maybe). Despite facing quite a few issues on the way back at both the airports, long stories not worth recounting, I finally got my peace only when I was on my way to campus. It was like this relief that came over me quite strongly and all was well when I was back inside and saw my friends. Isn’t it quite scary that seeing my friends made me that happy and glad?

Well, to be honest, I think that is the highest form of flattery someone can give you–to know that your presence made someone’s day and that they were genuinely glad to see you. It would probably come up there alongside knowing that something you had done or said or given was cherished and valued by the receiver. Don’t we all, at the end of the day, want to feel like we had done something of some meaning that day? And well, to know that we contributed to someone else’s happiness is to tell us that our day had some meaning (as problematic as it can get to constantly define value with respect to the external all the time). But anyway, that feeds into one of my core beliefs–gratitude, that you should show your gratitude, voice your thanks, put out your gladness so that the other person knows that something they’d done had not gone in vain. In action, in words, in some way or the other, it is always beautiful to show gratitude and for it to be accepted.

Aside from gratitude, any form of affection is beautiful. From hugs to kisses to head pats to smiles, every form of showing care is beautiful. It is extremely gratifying to know that there are people who care, who are genuinely excited to see you and have you present in their life. There are people who run to hug you, people who will patiently handle your luggage for you, people who will sit by you, people who will drop by your room to say hi and offer you food, people who will drive you places, people who will move hair out of your face, people who will tuck your blanket around you when you sleep, people who will quietly turn off the light and sneak away after you’ve fallen asleep. There are people who show affection in so many different ways and to be a recipient of that love is one of the most gratifying things in my life. I think that is one thing I can positively, with absolute surety say about my life–I have been surrounded by love. There are times when that love has seemed non-existent, but surely, if not one kind, then another has existed in my life. And well, it is still beautiful to feel gratitude for feeling gratitude, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Attached For Your Perusal

The best part of travelling alone is that I get my thoughts alone to myself. I am free to think, to exist on my own terms. But of course, that comes with the risk of my thoughts running away from me and flowing away into crevices I don’t want it going into. There are thoughts that have become so ingrained inside of me. They have become “the usual” and, I was telling this to a friend today, it has become that one thing on the menu you will order regardless of what you are going to be eating that day. There is a difference you start to draw between the different thoughts, familiarity belies seeming comfort and acceptance but is actually all the more sinister. But again, familiarity is what we all stick to, so there comes an acceptance of the sinister (?), I don’t know, I probably am making as much sense as the next lunatic on the street.

I travelled today on the train, alone, for the first time on the train and it was a weirdly liberating feeling. Well, it was also accompanied by an almost crippling sense of loneliness because there was no one to talk to, not on the phone or in real life. So I read a book and well, I also suffer from mild motion sickness so I felt nauseous for a while after I was done with my book. But I didn’t regret the book, it was probably one of the best I have read in recent times. It was simultaneously heartbreaking and it is the story that I am better off knowing, the story I didn’t know I needed but once I read it, I cannot get over it. I have no doubt that it will feature in some form in my dreams today (if I dream, that is). I have been having quite a few dreams recently, sometimes I wish they were true because they are beautiful and I wish my real life were that way. But again, familiarity, right? My dreams, the ones I like are ones that have an element of familiarity, a reliability that is probably all the more sinister because real life does not provide me with that anyway. Real life is not as stable as I would like, and it is probably time I made my peace with it.

There is always the search for stability, I search for it everywhere. I search for a place to call “home” and right now, it seems like nothing shall fit the bill. I think I find it in a place but turns out I am not as stable as I would like to be over there. I am a traveller, but I don’t want to be, I want to stay somewhere (again, random fun star ‘fact’: Apparently Taureans hate change and always search for that solid ground, owing to their ‘earthly’ nature). I probably am never going to find that stability anywhere or with anyone, no matter how desperately I want to. And that devastates me because I realise that I relate so much to a character in that novel and I can almost envision my own raging emotions for the character take over, but this time for myself.

There are times when I wonder if maybe I am searching for stability only because I am told by everything around me that I need to have that thing in my life. That place, that person, that thing that keeps me stable and alright and ensures that I don’t go spiralling out of control like a kit whose tail has just been cut. Or if there’s something inane in me that is looking for all of these things. And regardless of the cause for the search, the search is still legitimate and it makes me wonder if maybe, in my misguided haste, I am looking for it in the wrong places. These are all just questions and I am an overthinker by profession, sometimes and heartbreak is real and it is painful and I would prefer to not have it. The thing is, attachment is scary, it is tricky, it is familiar but sinister, it is stable unstability. It is the thing on the menu I know shall happen, regardless of what other thing happens. And unless I remove it from the menu altogether, or change my restaurant, it is going to continue to happen. And well, it is probably not a bad thing, but it is still scary in its familiar unfamiliarity (there, I have officially reached levels that I would have made fun of a year back, almost). Talking in abstractions is actually quite a fun exercise, I should do it more often. What do you think?

And that’s my memory for the day.

To be Privy to Myself

Differences get more pronounced when you put them against a backdrop of seeming homogeneity. Changes seem more alien when you keep them next to what had once been familiar. I went out with a friend today and when I spoke to her, I realised just how much I had changed from the person I had been. From the smallest things, from the way I held myself to my hairstyle to my way of speaking, everything has changed quite a bit. I view them all as positive changes, I am quite happy with the changes, they are changes I have wanted for a long time and they are finally happening. But I had not been privy to my own change–it sounds extremely dumb, how can I not be privy to things that happen to me? But that’s what it is, I have been quite spectacularly clueless about myself (I still am, but growth curves, they are quite real).

Another uncomfortable thing I realised today was that till date, the biggest compliment that anyone can give me is to say that I have lost weight. I seem to have quite an unhealthy obsession with weight, with wanting to lose it and feeling inordinately pleased when someone says that I have lost weight. It is an extremely insidious thing, I feel, to feel that way about myself, because I end up fat-shaming myself if I don’t lose weight. Possible serious issues that could raise because of this includes eating disorders, and I don’t want that on my plate (okay, that was an unintended pun, but a good one nonetheless). So I am going to actively try to stop myself from this obsession, it is difficult, especially in a family where weight is given a lot of ‘weight,’ where judgments are passed freely for weight, where being shamed for weight is normalised and is actually considered to be a motivator. I am probably at my healthiest right now and my weight should not be dictating my ideas and thoughts like this.

I do concede that just a year back, I had been a lot heavier and a lot less healthy. My weight was adding to my period complications and it was only after I came to Ashoka that I started losing weight. I was also losing weight fast, and a lot of it was also due to unhealthy eating habits. I have lost nearly 10/11 kgs in this one year I have been in college and in numbers, that is quite a mind-boggling thing. But I think this is where I shall draw myself a line, I don’t think I want to be heavier than this but I also am apprehensive of getting lower than this. I am probably still in the overweight BMI scale, but it is pretty skewed and not quite accurate and so I am just trusting what I feel about my own general health and I feel quite positive about (and I pray I am not jinxing that) that.

I also felt weirdly pretty today and just when I was feeling quite happy about myself and my life, I was whistled to on the road and I felt a rage I could not explain. I had been cycling to meet my friend and this man on a motorcycle was travelling the other direction and he just whistled to me in the cinematic hoohoo way. And before I could respond, he was gone and I had to go on my way. At the beach, as I was trying to find a place to park my cycle, I was once again stared and pointed at by a group of men. It all made me extremely angry, I was finally feeling in control of my own body and finally learning to feel confident in my own body and skin and this just pulled me down. And I felt helpless too because it felt like I could not do anything against them. They knew it too, they thrived in the knowledge that nothing would affect them. Well, that was a ruined mood, but I refuse to let it boil for longer than this in my head. I had sambar vadai, I am going to a movie probably tomorrow, and I am excited to do it all. So, I am going to sleep after a tiring day and because of tired hands that cannot type. My break will be good, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Turn-Around

I finally got out of campus today and to be honest, I think it was much needed and I am extremely glad I did it. I got some important work done about my whole flight debacle and I think I can finally get that part of my semester done and dealt with. I also had good food, good South Indian food. In fact, I had so much to eat that my stomach is still full despite not having had dinner. Before someone can chastise me for not eating dinner, I have to clarify that I slept because my ears were paining and it had been keeping me from sleeping all these days. I was glad to sleep after quite a while and I don’t regret it at all. In fact, even now, I am feeling quite sleepy but I am quite at peace, which is refreshing for me.

I think a lot of that has to do with how I felt quite successful today, I was able to get my work done and without many casualties. I travelled alone for quite a bit in Delhi but I still managed to keep myself safe and my things safe too. I went for lunch with a friend and I had a splendid time. Today was a great day, in terms of how much I managed to get done and how grateful I felt for having had the opportunity to do it all. I think I can finally close the file on Kuwait airlines in my mind at least, I can finally start my recovery and start healing. I think I needed this closure and I am glad I got it now, I feel a lot more hopeful now.

It seems quite convenient though, a trip out of campus, good food and closure on an issue that had bugged me for too long, all happening in one day and leaving me in a much better mental state. I think even I am quite in disbelief, but I am not going to let doubt ruin me like it always has, not this time at least. Which is also a refreshing feeling, this feeling of fight, I think I missed it. I have always prided myself on having a fighting spirit, on being strong and capable and when I was faced with a situation where I could not be that way, I crumpled from the inside. I could not bear the thought that I could be pulled into incompetence, and it hurt me, it made me feel like I was incompetent in all spheres (As I write this, I am slowly realising how much things make sense, I am making connections I had not thought before).

I also edited my first article today, I think I might not be a good editor, because I bring in too much of my own style into the editing (at least that’s what I think) that I fail to bring out the writer. Logically, it is a lot of work that I will be putting into the work without getting the credit. But ethically, I would not like my editor to expect me to write like them, because that’s not me (all this holds only if I have an editor in the first place). I think I need to rework on myself, but I will see how this article works. I think it is a first-year who wrote it, it is pretty clear from the lack of clarity. I think university really makes you better writers, you don’t use words as liberally as you would have otherwise. For someone who writes stream of conscious, you realise that even your stream of conscious has largely started to get better in clarity. It is extremely fascinating and rewarding, I would say. The fact that I am seeing good things in life once again is a symbol of hope right? I can turn things around, can’t I?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Messy Situations

It is funny that I am sitting here and I want nothing more to get to a breakdown already just so that I can get back to normal after that. It feels like I am juggling too many things at the same time and my brain does not enough capacity to deal with it all at the same time. But my brain also seems stubborn enough to wait it out and hold on for as long as possible. It is like I realise that a breakdown shall make me feel better but at the same time, my breakdown does not seem to want to happen any time soon. It is like the sneeze that is not coming but you know that sneezing shall make it all better. And so you wait for your body to decide that it can finally sneeze, but the wait is horrible.

Now, the thing with the sneeze is that it can be induced (apparently). I do not know this for sure, I do not endorse this method, but apparently looking directly at a bright light makes you sneeze (and also go blind, which is a minor inconvenience/side effect in hind’sight’). But is there any way that you can induce a breakdown and then proceed with your life in happiness. I do not know and I daresay I never shall. So at the moment, I am only hoping that I will have some breakdown of some kind and live in peace after that. It is too early in the semester to have a breakdown, but honestly, who defines what’s early or late? It is all a social construct and well, if it shall help me deal with stuff, then I don’t really see why it is such a problem.

But I think the problem comes because I have the view that breakdowns are for the mentally weak. Before someone comes at me with a menacingly positioned rake, let me explain that this is actually a viewpoint I hold predominantly for myself. Why? Because I am the only one who knows what pushes me to a breakdown and well, I can very well make a judgement on the seriousness of the issue. And let me say that when it comes to matters that concern me, I am not the most understanding or kind. But nonetheless, what I feel is that I have given away too much of myself and my mental space to others and this is being extremely harmful to my own mental health. Now, all I have to do is see how I can get out of this extremely messy situation, unharmed. Sounds like an easy job, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

 

Fans, Heat, and Stories

I love fans, I always have, even though they have an annoying capacity to accumulate dust and dirt and could trigger an allergic reaction in me. I am allergic to dust, smoke, and pollen. It makes me sneeze continuously, gives me a runny, stuffy nose, and if it is my good day, that’s all that happens and it settles in a couple of days, by itself, or a day, with medication. But if it turns out to be my bad day, I would have to face the trouble of a blocked nose, wheezing, and at least a week of being sick. My parents say I have a very sensitive trachea and that is the reason I have drastic reactions to these things sometimes. I hate it, but there’s not much I can do about it. My grandmother says that doing Pranayama (a breathing exercise routine which comes under Yoga) can help me a lot, but save a few times when she tried really hard to get me started on it, I never continued with it. Well, I am most definitely at fault for that and she uses all opportunities to point that out to me. But in my defence, it is hard work and I don’t always run on amazing levels of motivation.

In India, as far as I have seen, almost every house has a ceiling fan at least. The heat makes it imperative to have one. I was of the impression that in the UK, one might not need fans because the weather is cooler. I could not have been wronger, it gets boiling hot here and I feel like jumping in a bucket of ice and staying there. The buildings, the cities, they are all built for the cold weather. They are built to be as heat-absorbing and holding as they could be, meaning that when temperatures shoot up, the buildings continue to do their heat-absorbing thing and people inside get slow-cooked to medium tenderness. My clothes are drenched, the one table fan my brother and I share in our room gives me brief seconds of respite before it turns away to do the same for my brother. It is unbearably hot, even though it is 11:20pm and it is supposed to be cooler.

The whole of England is actually facing a terrible heat wave at the moment and everywhere is as hot as here. There is quite nothing that can be done except escape into a place where there could be AC or some other cooling device. In India, even when temperatures shot up, we had the luxury of fans and ACs in our house, which would keep us quite comfortable. It was the outside that felt hot, Here, the outside is relatively cooler than the inside, but the windows don’t open fully, and the breeze is not very powerful either. I wouldn’t have, for the life of me, thought that I would miss Chennai’s heat, but I do. I miss it very much, it was a wonderful city, a wonderful house that I miss terribly.

Speaking of Chennai, I finished writing a story today. It is for a competition and I set my story in Chennai, during the 2015 floods. I actually felt quite proud of my story, which was a very welcome change because I generally am very critical about everything that I write. I am almost never happy with my work and for the first time, I felt quite content with my piece. Of course, I still wish I had the capability to make it sound as beautiful as the stuff I compare it to, quite unconsciously, in my head. But I am oddly at peace with it, I am okay with just letting my story speak in its own voice.

In fact, I think I have realised that the problem with everything I have written was that they spoke in a voice different from what I wanted them to speak in. For me, I thought it was a demerit, but I have come to accept it as something that is inevitable and not necessarily a demerit. I still have quite a long way to go before I could start seeing it as a merit, but I am getting there slowly. This has actually been something that has taken me the whole summer to arrive at. I am oddly at peace right now, there are a thousand conflicts and issues in my head, a thousand disappointed thoughts, but somehow I have managed to gain some form of control over them. I still struggle, I fail a lot, but I am getting better. I may never be 100% scot-free, but that doesn’t necessarily put me on the naughty list, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Growth, Love, and Peace

Today was an important day for me, for my own growth, for my happiness and peace of mind. I managed to clear the air with people, finally made sense of my frustrations, and worked to resolve them. I also managed to find a volunteering job for myself at a local charity shop. I will be working twice a week, 4-hour shifts, and I start coming Friday. Understandably, I am excited to do this work even though I have absolutely no experience of working in a shop. But one thing that had been on my mind was whether this voluntary work would be worth it for me, whether it would add anything of value to me. To be blunt and honest, I was thinking about my resume and whether I needed to find something that would look great on a resume, something that was not ‘worked in a charity shop’.

But what I realised was that I did not care about it as much as I made it out to be. I wanted to volunteer, I wanted to work in that shop, and my CV never featured in my list of primary concerns. It has been my dream to work in the social sector, and any kind of volunteering job is only going to provide me with more experience in the social sector. Moreover, I believe in karma and I like to believe that my volunteering will one day come round to help me when I (hopefully) start my own NGO or organisation, that I will not find it very difficult to find help and/or funds. Yes, selfish motivations are big on this one. But I will say with absolute surety that I am looking forward to volunteering at the shop, regardless of what benefits I could get out of it.

I heard back from one of the internships, their vacancy was apparently filled and so they wanted to know if I would be interested in another position. But I was not very keen on becoming a campus ambassador, after applying for a content writing internship. Moreover, I had not liked their website that much either, so I am not that disappointed. I was definitely not as disappointed and heartbroken as I had been when I got rejected for two other internships I had been really interested in. I am still not keeping my hopes very high for the other internship I applied to. I want to be selected for the internship, but that’s the thing, isn’t it? What you want is not going to happen all the time. But I am not fretting too much because I have something else in my bag that I am genuinely excited about.

The break has been largely lazy for me, it has left me bored and lonely. I miss the times when I could just meet my friends at 12:30am, chat with people round the clock, go for a walk around campus when I feel particularly down. There was something my university that somehow simultaneously robbed me of my comfort but also provided me with it. I had been eager to leave for the holidays, I had missed my family a lot. But now that I am here, I realise that I miss my friends and my university equally. I miss everyone, I want to go back soon, and give them all the biggest hugs I can possibly give. I realise that I cherish these people and their presence, I absolutely love them all. It feels nice, to be filled with love and gratitude, especially after a particularly dry spell. I did tell you I believed in karma now, didn’t I?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Conflicts, Vulnerabilities, and Peace

There is something that I hate about fighting, it drains me completely and makes me completely malleable and defenceless. All my life, I have hated violence and fighting for this very reason, that it makes one vulnerable. You fight when you are vulnerable and in the process of fighting, make yourself even more vulnerable. Now, of course, you could emerge victorious and the fight may suddenly be deemed ‘worth it’. But I have always been of the opinion that the fight itself is a defeat. There should not have been a reason to fight in the first place, it could have been avoided if the parties involved had behaved a different way, one that was more conducive to peace.

Isn’t that the case with every fight ever–the fight for women’s rights and freedom could have been avoided had patriarchy and society been structured in a different way, the fight against racism could have been avoided if people had not been discriminatory toward people of certain colours and features. Well, I understand that is very idealistic of me, but I wonder if it could possibly be a reality that our future generations could inhabit. I would like to see such a world, where there would be no need to fight to be given basic human rights and to be treated decently and fairly. It would be a wonderful world, I would assume.

This is where something my father says makes me pause–he talks about conflict and violence is inevitable and actually, imperative. I have also heard that from different people in my life, to be honest. They argue that human differences are bound to occur, and these differences always hold potential for conflict, and they do cause conflicts in the world. I agree, human differences–differences, period–are inevitable and could and do act as steps for progress. But this difference, while it may hold potential for conflict, does not necessarily carry within itself, the conflict. Conflict and fights are human creations through and through. This is precisely why I harbour a hope for a future where differences do not prompt conflicts, but rather understanding and dialogue.

I see small sparks of this in my life every day–I see it when my father nods understandingly at me when I wish to change channels, I see it on the road when a white man at the bus stand converses freely with an Indian woman and her kids. I saw it when during a tour of London, an old woman from Ireland made conversation with me throughout the hop-on-hop-off tour, after starting off by complimenting my ‘very good’ English.

It fills me with hope when I see this in life all around me. It makes me confident that the world to come could potentially move ahead towards a more peaceful, secure future. Call me optimistic, delusional, whatever. Yes, the world right now has too many problems to lose count. I am saddened by it, I want to fight it, help make a change. But the world is also filled with beautiful things, it is filled with wonder. I am not willing to stand and let people make other people vulnerable enough to prompt them to fight. I am not willing to let myself do that. Sometimes that’s where it starts doesn’t it, from ourselves?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Leaving Home But Not Hope

I’m leaving back to college tomorrow. A week has passed by so fast that I am left struggling to come to terms with it. But I am grateful for the respite (however fleeting and short-lived it may have been). It was getting too hard to stay sane and in control and this break has done me good. I am in better spirits, I want to fight now. It is refreshing to myself and I want this attitude to stay with me as I inevitably battle my way through college.

It is so funny to think that just a year back, I had been giving my board exams. All those worries I had then, about whether I’d get into a good college, whether I’d get good marks, etc etc seem so trivial and pointless now. But back then, they were very important and consumed my whole mind. And I keep telling myself that what’s happening to me right now will feel the exact same way a year later or so. That I will look back to 17 (nearly 18 year old me) and be like ‘tch tch, what an immature child, worrying over such useless things’. And honestly I think my future self would be quite justified in feeling that. And it is weird to acknowledge it and come to terms with it.

I was reading back to what I’d written during mid term week here in my blog. I consider it an achievement in itself, that I managed to get my submissions done while also keeping up with my blog and writing here everyday. It has been very difficult but I think, for all the stress it does put me through, it has been a worthy journey so far. And I hope I don’t jinx it but I think I can take this moment, right here to acknowledge that I have been writing every day for slightly more than 2 months and that I am proud of it.

Writing this blog has become a routine now, I need to write. It gives me some clarity and perspective and I feel lighter at the end of the day. For whoever is reading this, I am sorry if it gets too boring and diary-like. I started this blog to just write about my memories and I realised that memories are not just those that you have of the past. Every day, I make new memories, memories worth remembering. When I write about a very bad day, it is still a memory and I like to think that my future self will have quite the laugh about all this and I hope for her, I make this good enough.

I am not perfect, not exactly the most productive person around. I am not exactly brilliant and I’m not the best writer either. I want to be better though and that’s something I am working towards. And this blog was one of my methods to improve myself, to make myself write better. It has helped me a lot, I write faster these days than I used to and better too.

I realise that I have been quite down, not exactly the best person but it is all part of a learning curve. I may not be as lucky as I used to be, there are much bigger fish in this pond I am swimming in. But I am going to continue swimming regardless. Knowing that I swam as much as I could does wonders. There will always be things I will be bad at, that I will slack at, that I could do better but I should be able to get up and move on. It’s a long trudge but I finally feel like I should fight my way ahead. I had gone to a temple today and for the first time, I found myself asking not for results but for the strength to push myself to achieve those results. I am growing, I have grown a lot and there’s still more to come. It is wonderful to feel this hope again.

And Yashasvi, when you read this as I suspect you will after getting your mid term results, I hope whatever they were, you stop pulling yourself down that spiral you were stuck in before. Stop fretting about it and go ahead with your job. It won’t be easy, you will feel mad and angry and wish you knew better than to give ’empty’ advice but think of hopeful Yashasvi and get back to work. You can still turn things around for the better. Hope is so underrated and is so subtly there in your everyday life. I have found some hope now after a long time. I will be able to hold on to you for long now, won’t I hope?

And that’s my memory for the day.

In a World of Nice Siblings and Cute Kids

There is a kid whose grandparents live in the house right above my grandparents’ house. She is a small kid, 5 years old but looks so tiny and just so cute. And she came to visit me after knowing I was here. And she honestly seems to like me and she came and sat on my lap for nearly half an hour. I was sitting on the swing and she laid back on me and that was it– just sitting together, my arms around her, her lying back against me. And it was so peaceful, the swing was swaying slightly, making that soothing noise and we were relaxed. When she finally had to leave, her mother came calling, she was half-asleep and drowsy. It was a peaceful time for me.

There is a paper due tomorrow and I am stuck with it, I have been stressing about it a lot. This is for the same professor who had written that mean review on my paper last time. So, added to that fear and overall hopelessness I was feeling, there was also the teeny tiny problem that I know nothing about cinema, much less to sit down and analyse it. Well, we now know who won’t probably be doing a film studies minor. Anyway, I was pretty stressed out, whiling away my time watching the dumbest TV serials and YouTube videos. Well, all was well and good till I noticed the time and realised I had successfully put nothing at all to paper or screen (technicalities, technicalities).

I still am in the same dump but then, I am a lot more peaceful about it. All thanks to the little one. She came and calmed me down for that half an hour. It is amazing how sometimes, the smallest of things (quite literally in this case) is all it takes to bring life back into focus and to put it all in perspective. I really do love babies and kids and it is something I am led to believe is against ‘millennial thought’. The sheer number of memes that talk about how dogs, cats > human babies are all so unrelatable for me. I am quite scared of dogs and cats, I am not a dog or cat person. But babies, throw as many as you like at me (not literally, oh god please no!) and I will take them all and die trying to handle them all.

I watched this really wholesome video about little babies getting their hair washed. Their little heads with those tiny hairs getting lathered using this amazingly small and soft brush and that slight flow of water that washed the lather off, all the while managing to stay away from the baby’s face. Oh god, I was just obsessed. I watched the video so many times, the little ones were so small, in fact, one was a newborn baby. She/he was having their washed by the nurse and it was so wholesome. Oh god, I can fantasise about it for ages.

Anyway, I was immediately reminded of my own brother when he was younger. He was a cute baby, very cute in fact. I used to tell my parents and tease him that he was a very pretty boy and that there would be a lot of romantic prospects later on in life (as a young early teen, I said you will have many ‘girl’friends, but as a relatively older teen I realise the problems with that statement and hence I have changed it). Well, he was a cute little thing, with a head full of noodle-like hair (that has now become almost completely straight, with some waves if you search hard enough) and a pretty smile. It didn’t help that he had naturally long eyelashes and pretty big eyes. Well, he looks ugly now (it is my sisterly duty to say so, you see). Puberty is the devil in disguise, I swear. But he should clean up pretty well, I certainly hope so.

Well, as a kid, I remember teaching him how to cycle. It started first with him learning to pedal his three-wheel cycle. It came with a handle kind of thing that I could hold on to and use to push and pull the cycle. So I told him to place his foot on the pedal and I would push and he would get a feel off how the pedalling happens (since the pedals would turn when the cycle moved). It was a pretty brilliant plan if I do say so myself. He started pedalling soon after and then we proceeded to a proper bicycle with trainer wheels and then without them. I felt like the proud sister I had always been.

This was the same case even with his studies. I loved teaching him stuff since he always had many questions that I tried my best to explain. But right in front of my eyes, I saw how as he grew, he started moving away and not coming to me for studies and so on. He lost the curiosity, in a way and whenever I tried to tell him a cool thing to get him thinking, he would go away complaining that I was not helping him with his studies and that I was wasting his time by asking him questions that ‘were not needed’. I have spent ages talking to him and telling him about how important it is to be curious and ask questions instead of just learning to regurgitate in the exam. And for the longest time, I feared it will never happen, that I will never see the younger brother I knew and cherished. He has grown now, in a new school, and he is slowly gaining some of that earlier curiosity I guess. Whenever I think of this all, I tell myself, that I did try. I did try to introduce him to new things and ideas. I may not be the best at it, but I did give it my all. And sometimes, I guess I just have to sit back and watch it all unfold and hope that it all turns out well enough. But that is not very easy now, is it?

And that’s my memory for the day.