Journey with My Hair

It was when I was around the age of 12 when I first started taking proper notice of my own hair. I had been blissfully unaware of its vices and advantages for a large part of my childhood. My mother would mercilessly oil and brush and braid my hair into plaits, whose ends would feel and look as dry as the metal wool used to scrub vessels. I also did not really use any hair products, tamely accepting the new shampoo that my mother would have bought (which would change almost every other month). No conditioner, no leave-ins, no serums, no anything. I didn’t even know what they were. I hated my hair at the time, it used to be extremely dry and get tangled by the time I could sneeze. I just had to leave it open for a millisecond before I would be wailing in pain as my mother would pull the brush hard, down my hair. I was used to the violent life, I still was until very recently, when I realised that I had been approaching my hair the completely wrong way.

As a young child, I wanted hair like the ones in the advertisements for top shampoos. I would look at a Priyanka Chopra or an Aishwarya Rai, throwing their hair around as it fell in beautiful sheets around their form. I grew up watching Sunsilk, Pantene, Loreal Paris, Garnier etc, and as I saw a new one, I would beg my mother to get the new one the next time she would buy shampoo. Of course, conditioner was still something I was partially unaware of, so I wasn’t asking for the conditioner. It was at this time that my mother would tell me two things–one, “if you are not tame yourself, how will your hair be tame?” and two, “no one’s hair ever looks like that in the advertisements, naturally. It is part graphics.” I would have gladly believed that, but I saw friends around me who had silky smooth hair, that they literally did nothing for. Some of them did even less than me, they wouldn’t even apply oil (which my mother sold to me as the miracle ingredient that would make my hair silky smooth) at times.

I had friends whose hair would just flow out of their ponytails while mine couldn’t even be left alone in one, because it would get extremely tangled. My only option to have decent hair was to have it in two plaits or a braid, and even then, the ends which were left free would be a tangled mess. No amount of brushing made it alright (and now I realise that brushing was, in fact, contributing to my hair issues), despite what everyone believed. I was asked if I didn’t comb my hair that day, had I not oiled it, questions and concerns directed at me from all circles. In a school where everyone was dressed conservatively and were very well-kempt in looks, I looked like I had been pulled through a hedge whilst someone banged my head repeatedly on the bushes by the side. While my clothes and attire were always meticulously worn, my hair on the other hand, there have been times when I wished I were bald instead.

I remember the first time I saw a curly-haired classmate, who had beautifully defined curls which weren’t frizzy. That started my desire for nicely curly hair, a desire I still harbour to this day. Every time I wash my hair, I wonder if that is the day when my dream of having gorgeous, defined and frizz-free curls will come true. There are days when I reach close to that dream, days when my hair behaved wonderfully for a couple of days and then, it goes back to square one. I remember that seeing this classmate’s hair was when I properly started wishing for my natural curls instead of the straight hair that a lot of my friends had. I was obsessed with beautiful ringlets and small, tight curls, that were bouncy and shiny. It was around this time that I was able to access the internet with a freedom beyond whatever I had ever experienced until then. I would spend hours online, looking for ways to take care of and maintain curly hair.

My grandparents’ house was my laboratory because it had everything I would ever need. From olive oil to fresh aloe vera gel straight from the plant, I could access multiple ingredients that dominated the world of DIY hair products. I started doing multiple permutations and combinations (this later became a joke amongst my friends, the girl who did P&C for her hair), with very varied and sometimes disappointing results. The problem could have been that despite making those hair masks, I did not have a good hair routine, a good shampoo and conditioner that I would have had to use, plus the freedom to leave my hair without brushing. If I did not brush my hair, it went extremely tangled and I needed to brush it out in order to save my hair was tangling up beyond repair.

This journey is by no means complete, and there are many parts that I simply did not find the space to type out here. Why did I even recollect this journey? I think a part of the reason why is because I grew up listening to people tell me that I should not be caring so much about hair. It is hair, after all, it doesn’t deserve my time and efforts, it never shall. That is quite a toxic idea to preach because it invalidates my insecurities about my own hair and personality, made me believe that in addition to feeling and looking bad and having self-esteem issues, I was, in addition, doing something as menial as worrying about something like hair. It added to my worries, it continues to do so. Even sometimes these days, I catch myself chastising myself for worrying that much about my hair, and then I immediately remind myself of what has been a tough journey, which is still a tough journey (that still suffers from a lack of support from my family). I am still plagued with my mother constantly nagging me to brush my hair and commenting on how ugly it looks, my confidence take a hit on those days, especially if I had just been feeling quite nice about my curls. It is quite a long journey so far, it promises to be an even more tough journey henceforth, I shall be able to progress here, won’t I?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Writing Right in LKG

I was put in LKG (Lower Kindergarten) at the tender age of three. The criteria had been that the child should have turned three by May 2003, and I just made the cut. I was still a very young child, one of the youngest in the class. There were a lot of 1999 born children in my class and in typical three-year-old fashion, we have had competitions about how old each child was and who was the eldest. There was a fascination with being the eldest child in class, a power (symbolic more than anything else) that came with age and everyone wanted to exercise that power. But age was not the only ways in which we could exercise our supreme control, there was a multitude of reasons and tactics that three-year-olds could come up with.

As much as these child-like plays helped me learn and grow, the teaching also taught me most of the basic things that run my life today. A great example would be spelling and writing, I first held a pencil in my hands and put it to paper when I was here. I found that there had been a completely different world out there where new and fascinating symbols could form words together. I could write my thoughts and ideas down, in whatever wrong way, with abhorring spellings and even more abhorring handwriting. It was a revelation, to enter the world of writing and even as a child, I knew the wonder of the land I was entering. But now, as a girl who has grown up from those roots, I also realise the privilege that brought me there.

I have mentioned in my other blog posts, the privilege that my family’s economic status accorded me. But this new kind of privilege was a question of my dominant hand. I am a right-handed girl and almost everywhere, being right-handed was the common way to be. If anyone was left-handed, they would feel out of place and alone because they knew no one else. And because almost every technical thing, even something like writing on a notebook, was strongly favourable to the right-handed over the left-handed. This is actually something relatively new that I learnt, how we live in a right-dominated world. A lot of cultures exclusively call for the right-hand side to be pure and the left-hand side to be impure. For example, we are not allowed to eat with our left hand or make offerings to God with our left hand, because it is supposed to be the one you clean your poop with. It is actually years of internalised thought that very carefully biases people against lefties. I had a friend who was naturally a leftie but who was hit and ‘corrected’ in her school to write with her right hand. It is something that many children undergo and it is a horrific form of violence, but one we have all grown numb towards.

It was this idea of ‘correction’ that got me started on thinking if I could write with my left hand and become as comfortable with it as I felt with my right. I started to try writing with my left hand, a month or so back and I tried practising as much as I could. When King’s started, I did not get time at all to practice. But I tried today and wrote the paragraph shown in the picture on this post.  The lack of practice is quite visible, I am ashamed that I let myself not practice. But there’s no use crying over spilt milk. For what its worth, I am glad that it is not completely hopeless and that my hand does feel better than it used to, before. I want to be able to write somewhat fluently at least with my left hand, I want it to follow my command. But I also know that it is a very ambitious dream, one that needs a lot of effort and patience.

Talking about ambitious dreams, this blog is one such dream of mine. And today, with this post, I mark my 200th post on the blog. It has been a rollercoaster ride and I am reminded of that every time I open a random post and start reading. As a person, I have grown a lot, I have failed a lot but I have also learnt a lot. Each of these posts is a unique one, one that was a response to different things of the day. I have learnt a lot about myself, many a time, they have been quite uncomfortable realisations. But I am of the opinion that I have been left the better because of it. I have grown friendships, I continue to grow them, I have become better with people as I simultaneously also fell out with people. But that is the process of growing up and I am glad I did it.

When we first started writing words in sentences, a lot of the children faced a problem with spacing. We did not find it instinctual to leave a particular amount of space between our words. It was funny, a bunch of kindergarteners who were struggling to tackle this new challenge they were being faced with. My teacher told us that we should keep our pinkie finger after the word and use that as a measure of space. It was a very rough estimate, one that did not even work that well for a lot of people. The pinkie space was quite right for me, but for a friend who wrote in HUGE letters, it was too small. But as we wrote more and more, we came to terms with a measure using our pinkies. And then, we became comfortable using no physical measure but trusting our hand and eyes when they move on to the next word. I think life is somewhat like that, we are provided with some kind of helpful tool that may not be exactly what you need. But you learn to work with it, use it as a base to forge your own tools, until the time comes when you can work by yourself, without any crutches. And those spaces you create, they are absolutely essential and important. If you had all the letters crowding together, you cannot read the manuscript now, can you?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Aches and Zandu Balms

The last week has been one, huge, rollercoaster ride, filled with complete and utter exhaustion, aching limbs, sprained necks, and joyful smiles. London is a beautiful city to explore and I have spent every afternoon, after class, going to multiple places within this highly fascinating, beautiful city. But my biggest revelation yet are the museums, what a wonder they are! The level of interactiveness in these places is insane, especially for someone who has only experienced the museum as a place of boring knowledge (but a knowledge I loved to learn, nonetheless). There are a thousand different things to touch, to play, to watch, to hear, and to try on in each of the galleries. They are extremely user-friendly, with state of the art technology and truly innovative setups. And the best part is, most of them are free to enter. Who doesn’t love free stuff, and the quality of things inside, the quality to which they are maintained, is mindblowing. I can only wish that more people from back home would get to witness these things, it would definitely change the drab view of history that they have.

I come from a school where history was actually a very hated subject, only a very select few liked them (I was one of them, even though I hated the exams part of it). Even right now, I can already hear how my obsession with these museums would be received. There would be this teasing, slightly patronising tone, a bit of contempt mixed in casually. Maybe it is for this reason, to save myself this pain, that I have slowly lost touch with many of the people I used to be friends with in school. It hurts me that I have been one of those kinds of people (just saying those kinds of people makes me feel bad because it is me taking a moral high ground I have no business being on). There is an ache I feel when I realise that I could have unwittingly been the cause for some of my other friends to feel like they could not be themselves around me for fear of my judgement, much the same way I felt around them. Sometimes I wonder if we had all been completely honest with each other (if such a thing is even possible in the first place), we could have salvaged a lot of our friendships. But then, that is the lesson I learnt, and now I know that my friends see what is me, in my complete honesty as I know it.

But it throws another, very important question at me. Maybe what I was in school was also me in my complete honesty as I knew it then. If that is the case, I cannot help but wonder if my current persona will change after college, where I would look back and wonder how I was friends with people like this. For the sake of my friends (because they would lose a friendship with someone like me–I’m kidding), I would hope that won’t happen. I think it would devastate me, it already did with a couple of friends already. I was left wondering how I had been friends with them in the first place, or wondering why I wasn’t friends with them anymore. I cannot point out a particular thing and say, that is the reason why things went the way they did. Maybe it was a mix of feeling unwanted, unimportant, misunderstood, and more, for both sides, or just one. But what I do know is that things did go the way they did, and somehow I have lost the drive to try again. This was the closure I think I was in denial of for a very long time, a closure I am now drawing for everything so far, school and college. And the ache is still there, it still aches (or maybe it is my tired limbs), and no amount of Zandu balm is going to make that alright.

Zandu balm reminds me of home, of my mother in specific. My mother is diabetic, and an anaesthetist who works long hours, standing for long periods of time. She also had varicose veins (a painful condition), and a variety of aches, especially in her legs. Her knees are problem areas, she has a tendency to pull her hamstring muscles quite easily, her calves are quite weak too. Being anaemic too, she loses energy and becomes tired quite easily. In the evenings, the Zandu balm would pave the way for our conversation about the day. She would lie face down on the bed, while I would massage her legs, from her calves to her hamstring. She would sometimes doze off, sometimes she would be awake. But nonetheless, this was the time when I would ramble on and on about school, about everything that happened. I took a lot of pleasure in doing this for my “Amma” (mother). When after I was done, or when I would get to a particularly bad spot, she would sigh and say “Yashu, anga dhaan, ah nalla irukku, vali ellaam parandhu poiduchu, thank you kutty” (Yashu, yes there, ah it feels good, all my pain has flown away, thank you little one).

When I was older, I did the job with a more serious solemnness. But as a younger child, I took it as a game I could play. I would make up beats, tap on her legs to those beats, sit on her legs (I still do that sometimes when my hands are occupied and she says that her legs ache), do a bunch of different things. I would have fun with what was essentially a chore (and I do not use the word in a negative way), deriving quite a lot of pleasure from my childish games. My mother also used to enjoy it, she would always say that my hands were soft and not hard and that my pressing felt much better because of that. She also had cracked heels that I would put cold cream on, during the night. She would joke that she would slip on our tiled floor and fall if she had to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. But nonetheless, she used to be very grateful and happy for my help. No matter what my personal aches could have been for the day, getting to do this one small thing for my mother always made me feel better. I guess, I unknowingly founded a different kind of Zandu balm, didn’t I?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Useful Little Things

I think it is the curse of a long break, that you struggle really hard to come to terms with doing work that had become everyday life for you. I am struggling to do a couple of readings for my course that starts Monday because I had not done much work all these days. It is hard to be able to concentrate and not wander off to the living room with the TV, or to my phone, or to the keyboard, or to the books I have borrowed, or to the thousand other things that surround me and capture my attention every second of the day. If I am not having my attention captured by these external things, then my mind is ready with a few thoughts, questions, and memories that inevitably end up making me move away from my reading material and concentrate elsewhere. This is frustrating work, I only hope that I start to be able to put in consistent effort and concentration into everything.

I still have a huge list of incomplete works, stories, ideas, reading books on my to-read list. The list is huge, and somehow, so much of the summer has passed me by and it feels like I have done nothing at all. I feel as useless as a cheap little ornamental plant made of plastic. Ah, wonderful thoughts once again, back to normal, I’d have me believe. Once some kind of work to do turns up, there comes the attention seeking, self-deprecating, whiny, complaining little girl who should have never been allowed to graduate from kindergarten. To be honest, I was a star in my kindergarten class. I was brilliant and smart, according to my teachers. They all expected things from me, truly marvellous. People had hopes and expectations for me, and I daresay I did too. But I think part of my growing up at least, I learnt the hard way that I was not worthy of that much expectations. That I was probably better off doing smaller things, and I mean that with a little bit of sadness and resignation, but also acceptance.

Even now, I can hear a few people say that I am being unnecessarily dramatic and maudlin and stupid. That what I am saying is not true, that I can actually do some great things. While I still cling on to that hope, I think I am finally coming to terms with the fact that I may not be destined for greatness. That doesn’t mean that I live a sad, pathetic life. If I can touch just one soul with something that I do, I shall be content with that. Wow, I am a philosophical, old soul now, someone should give me the monk robes already. But I would assume that would be pretty great, to be wise and mature beyond physical age. Somehow, like the bundle of contradictions that I am, I oscillate between the maturity of a six-year-old and a sixty-year-old woman.

I remember, when as a child, I used to be obsessed with ages and calculating someone’s age based on their birthday. I also had the annoying habit of counting months and days. So, I would ask a random relative when they were born. Then I would say, ‘oh you are 55 years, 3 months and 10 days old’. When I learnt the Tamil numbers, I started using this as an opportunity to practise my numbers. So birthdays and calculating ages became my favourite pastime. It was a harmless pastime, this job of counting, but it grew on me even into school. I had a weird affinity for doing calculations, especially multiplications of large numbers. I used to apply multiplication to cell phone numbers, 10 digit monstrosities that would occupy 3-5 minutes of my time.

And I used to be good and fast at it too, I would be accurate most of the time. The seed was sown by a teacher of mine who had said that doing a few problems like that every week would help us in doing calculations faster. It did help, I improved in accuracy when it came to calculating values. It helped me in math (chapters like mensuration, probability, etc), helped me in solving physics problems, chemistry problems, just a lot of school work in general. It also started making its way into my everyday life, like at a store or anywhere. My calculations were fast and accurate. In fact, the other day, here at the store, I calculated something mentally by the time the manager put it in the system at the till. He just looked at me in wonder when my answer was proven right, while I just shrugged because it was just something I had trained myself to do. I think that’s the wonderful part, we just do different things in our everyday life, even when we feel like we didn’t do anything. Right now, it may feel like a useless thing, but there will come a time when it would be put to use. So technically, that means that everything we do, has a way of coming back and making sense to us, doesn’t it?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Healing and Moving On

I think you start to realise that you are moving on from somebody when it suddenly strikes you that they are no longer the first thought you have in the morning. You are not waiting to speak to them anymore, you are not exactly as invested in them and their life as you had been before. It takes its time, you do break in the process. No one likes the taste of failure (at least that’s what I have observed in my short range of experiences). No one likes to confront the possibility that it is over, that it is done, that you have to now move on to greener pastures. I think that’s a quality for any kind of relationship at all, friendships, romantic interests, whatever. Once you realise that it is going downhill, you don’t want to confront the possibility of an end. Especially if you had been devoted to it. But once you confront it, once you know it’s a gone deal, once you start to see the cracks, the flaws, the problems, I think you start to move on, to heal.

I needed to get that out because it was something that had been plaguing me for quite a while. Confusion of course, regarding myself, my thoughts, my wishes, everything was called to jeopardy. I really needed to speak to myself, not like I don’t do it a thousand times a day already, to get it all cleared out. Would I have preferred to have a trusted confidante, to ponder together with? Maybe I would have. But I don’t think I can find such a person, yet. There are a couple of possibilities, maybe, but right now, I still struggle to trust myself with myself. It was a very hard conversation, one that spanned the course of many weeks, in fact. Weeks of denial, weeks of delirious happiness, then weeks of going downhill, then weeks of coming to terms with it and finally moving on. I woke up today morning, and I realised that things did not hurt me as much anymore. And what a wonderful feeling that was!

I had never liked anyone in school, that was just the kind of atmosphere I was in. My best friend did not want to have anything to do with crushes and relationships. In fact, the one time I spoke to her about crushes, she told me that she found the conversation to be extremely pointless, that she expected better of me, and told me that she wasn’t interested in it, end of the conversation. I made sure never to bring it up again. And besides, I did not develop a crush on anyone in school, so it did not feel like much of a loss. Moreover, my best friend and I shared a bond that was different from the mainstream portrayal of female best-friendships. I was content with what I was given, giving back as much as I could in return. It was a comfortable and safe friendship, one removed from any kind of hormonal drama. But there were times when I did feel the loss of not having someone to giggle at inappropriate jokes with, to gush about celebrities, to drool over some cool, beautiful people.

I think that is actually a craving, a void that I have carried forward with me into college. I have friends who gush about their crushes (or loves) to me. But somehow, I still feel alien enough to feel like they would not want me to do the same with them. Maybe that’s just a problem with me, or maybe it’s the other person’s fault for making me feel like that. I really don’t want to play a blame game and try to figure out whose fault something is. Finding fault is a deadly exercise, and to me, the price to pay is not worth it. I still struggle to find a proper space where I can receive what I intend to give (and end up giving). It is a struggle that has followed me through the years. Oh well, it is during times like these, when I feel especially lonely, that I remind myself that everything takes its time. Maybe it will happen, I will find that space sometime in the future. With the same people around me right now, or maybe with new people. But it will happen. I don’t have any way to say that with absolute certainty. But sometimes, belief, that’s everything. isn’t it?

And that’s my memory for the day.

 

Reclaiming (Seemingly) Lost Loves and Hopes

I was helping my brother with his math homework today, helping him make sense of the world of straight lines and closed figures. Towards the end of my schooling, math had gradually risen up the ranks to become my most dreaded subject. I was absolutely terrified of it, a far cry from the Yashasvi in the beginning who used to love the absolute logic and intuitive nature of the subject. When I was in tenth standard, I was one of those nerdy kids in class who used to come up with new ways to solve the same question. I always came up with ‘brilliant logic’ (or so my math teacher used to say), did well on my exams, and I loved the subject too. I found that it was one of the most brilliant things to be invented by humans, the irrefutable logic of it drew me in.

Those had been the times when I had been wondering what I should do in class 11th and 12th. For me, I found that I was a highly logical individual, one who could not do the ‘airy things’ that literature or other ‘arts’ subjects would demand of me. I did not want to do engineering either, and while I did enjoy and do well in English, history, pol. sci, etc, I was convinced that they were not for me. I wanted to continue with something that would allow me my math (and also let me have my favourite English teacher). It made absolute sense for me to choose computer science during class 11 and 12–I hated biology, which was the other option, and I also got my favourite English teacher.

But it was during these two years that I grew a terrible fear for the subject which had once been one of my favourites. I started fearing math, sometimes hating it with a fiery passion. Calculus made zero sense to me, I could reasonably handle limits and differentiation, but integration became the bane of my existence. I was terrible at it and my teacher knew it too. I somehow could not come up with ways to solve the integration questions as my friends could. My best friend, in particular, was absolutely brilliant at it. No wonder that she went on to do math in college, she was excellent. But my fear of integration, the crippling anxiety I faced whenever I was given a question to solve, only added to my troubles. I started faring badly in the exams, something that further pushed me down.

I could not find logic behind many things, maybe my teacher could not make me see it, maybe I was just dumb for it. But I was finding it all arbitrary and pointless. I found a little bit of solace in chapters like probability, and permutations and combinations, but even those became overtaken by formulae and theorems, ruining my intuitive understanding and logic. I started to lose my enthusiasm to solve a math question. Even when provided with a question I could have easily solved, I would feel doubt overtake me, making me incapable of solving it. I was starting to no longer see the picture, but rather the symbols. I was terrified of the words, of the theta and the sines and cos’s and the logs. I felt dumb, stupid, useless, and whenever my teacher used to ask, “you don’t get this?” (she meant it to help me, but it hurt nonetheless), I felt like crawling into a hole and never coming out ever again.

When my best friend nodded understandingly at whatever was being said, I could not help but wonder where I went wrong. Comparison became a problem, but thankfully I realised the darkness that I was turning to. I started to actively try to break out of it, I went to my teacher a lot with questions. I swallowed my pride and sat for the tutorial classes my teacher held to help the ‘weak’ students. I called my best friend and solved problems with her for hours on end. I was still very afraid of math, but I was trying to function despite it all. And my efforts finally worked, I managed to score very well in the board exams, and I was pretty pleased with myself. But I bid sweet adieu to math after that in college, preferring to put behind the hurt and move on.

Today, when my brother asked me some questions, I was reminded of what had enticed me about math in the first place. The wonderful logic of geometry, the beauty of lines and angles, algebra. For a brief second, I worried if I would be able to remember properties, to solve his questions. But to my pleasant surprise, I was able to do it with perfect ease. Moreover, I was able to teach him too, successfully, gaining his respect and the satisfaction of a lesson well taught. It made me happy, that I possibly still had some of that math in me. I want to take a math course next semester, it is part of the compulsory courses I need to take, and I would like to get it done with, in a sense. Also because a wonderful professor would be taking the course, and I would love a chance to take the course with her. I hope it happens, I hope the next semester will be a better one. I hope my summer semester, which starts thus Monday will also turn out fine. There are a thousand things I hope and like. I only wish that like how, today, I was able to reclaim a small part of my love for math, I would be able to reclaim at least a small part of other things. It shall happen, won’t it?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Imposter Achievements

Today, I dropped my phone in water, but I took it out really quick and I managed to wipe it, dry it off, and did everything I could to the best of my ability. But I am still very worried, terrified even, of what could happen to it. It seems dry, and it is working normally, but I am extremely terrified whether it would just go kaput one day. My mother told me to not charge it for a day, switch it off and allow it to properly dry off. Which is what I am doing right now, I have kept it aside, after wiping it one more time. I wiped through the holes, the earphone port, the charging port, the speaker holes, all the places through which water could have gone in. There is no water there, at least on the outside. And I am hoping and praying that it will turn out to be fine.

My dad is annoying me by telling me that this is the end, that my phone is a lost cause. But, it is working, I was able to restart it a couple of times. The microphone was working, the speaker too. The camera never got in the water, so that was safe. When I put it in the charger, which I removed after a couple of minutes when I realised what a dumb idea it was, it was charging too. At least right now, there doesn’t seem to be any problem with it. But I don’t want to talk about it for it to go kaput on me. I do have this bad luck with jinxes, I end up jinxing myself all the time. I count my chickens too early, or so my father says. I think it is the opposite, I don’t even count valid chickens sometimes. But anyway, my course at King’s starts next week, and I am highly dependent on my devices.

Which brings me to the main part of my post for today (I mean, that was a huge part too, but this is more recent). I was able to login to my King’s account and I found that my course material, timetable, syllabus, everything was uploaded. Naturally, I spent quite a long time perusing it carefully and thoroughly. I made folders for my readings and started the meticulous process of downloading the things and sorting them into the multiple folders I created. But me being me, I also spent quite a bit of my time reading about the instructor, reading about the course structure, the assessment procedures, etc. In retrospect, I should have known better and not done all that, because I was only left even more intimidated and terrified. A constant nagging thought at the back of my head, what if I am not good enough for this? What if this is all a mistake? What if I end up a major disappointment, a blotch on my own university’s name? No matter what I think to try to convince myself, I come back to this terrifying thought.

A couple or so years back, I was introduced to this concept called the ‘Imposter Syndrome.’ One of my friends, obviously exasperated with me and my overall scaredy-catness, sent me this article on the imposter syndrome and how common it was. She was like, this describes you so much, I just had to share it with you. Naturally, I looked up more about this imposter syndrome, and I was very fascinated by it. I could really relate to it, I have always felt like some lucky outsider, in my own life. When I topped my school in the class twelfth board exams, I could not believe it at all. I hadn’t really studied that hard, I hadn’t ‘prepared’ as well as many other friends of mine. Moreover, my score was below the average ‘topper-score’ (the scores of school toppers through the years). I hadn’t even been aiming for a good score, I just wanted to have decent marks so that I could walk around with my head held high (which is a problematic concept, I now realise).

The thing was, I was going to choose my university, a private university, to study god-knows-what. Many people had commented to my parents on how useless it could be, and there was also a bit of hinting that only kids who weren’t meritorious enough, who had no seat in the ‘good’, prestigious, government colleges, who would go to these private universities. For me, I wanted to do well in these traditionally set parameters, and then proudly ‘choose’ Ashoka. To say, I was offered a place there, in that university you speak so highly of, but I turned it down because I wanted to and because I could. While that was not such a huge aim, that was constantly on the back of my mind. But somehow, I didn’t actively work towards it. I told myself that I had gotten admission into the college of my choice, I was fine, I just had to do decently enough, and don’t have to prove anything to anyone for my decisions.

But turns out, unconsciously, I ended up achieving exactly what I had wanted. I got a great all-India rank in an exam that basically gave me admission into a very prestigious college (for a course that was pretty much ignored, but still, there were a total of 46 seats only for which nearly 3000 people competed). The course was not what the college was typically famous for, but the institution tag was a big deal. I think, again, in the back of my mind, I didn’t want people to say, oh, she did not get IIT Madras, and that’s why she chose Ashoka. No, I chose Ashoka despite getting into IIT Madras, and quite a few other places too. But why am I even saying all this right now, when at the moment, my fears are all concentrated on my summer course at King’s. This will, I believe, be my biggest challenge yet. To overcome my fear of failure, to overcome the feeling of being alien in my own life. Also, I hope my phone turns out okay. But I guess, sometimes, the things that run in the back of your mind have a weird way of becoming reality, don’t they?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Shoes, Shoe bites​, Foo(t)(l)s

I am doing a very small test (I don’t even know if I should call it that in the first place), for my own peace of mind and I daresay, my happiness. It involves my phone, but that’s all I am going to say about it. The results of this test, that’s a tricky matter. I guess I would want to write about it, but maybe a blog post for that isn’t a good idea. But that’s something I have to figure out once I get my results/answers/peace of mind/whatever. Why am I doing this test? Maybe that is a question I can try to answer for myself at least because I am full of these spontaneous, out of the blue ideas, that they do not make sense even to myself. I am doing this test because of the stress, frustration, angst, disappointment, and a couple of other things that I have managed to accumulate over a short period of time. I am doing this test so that I can finally find some answers, regardless of whether they’d be personally favourable or not.

Today, I went on a wild-goose chase for a good two miles to return an Amazon delivery I had received. I hadn’t been happy with it, I checked the website for return options, chose one that looked quite convenient, and decided to go drop it off at the place they collected it from. Turned out, that shop had stopped their service a couple of months back. A customer in that store pointed me in the direction of another shop, roughly another half a kilometre away. I was already a little over a mile away from home, in a locality I was completely unfamiliar with. But I went on that trip, found out that shop did returns, but that it was a different process. I walked back, completely disappointed and exhausted, when I stopped in the middle of the road to come up with a plan. Now I will go tomorrow to this new shop which does returns, but this time with all the things required to deposit my parcel there.

The whole process involves printing a label, sticking it on my parcel, taking a six-digit code I was provided, and quite a bit of walking. I hadn’t anticipated that long a walk today, I had worn a kind of sandals that were my mother’s which I used for short walks. But the way seemed to stretch on and on, leaving me with a mild shoe bite. I had never had a shoe bite before, this was the first time I experienced it first hand. In fact, I learnt that shoes bite only when I was in 12th standard and we had our school’s culturals (inter-school cultural fest) happening. The twelfth standard students are responsible for organising the event, we all get to wear ‘colour dress’ (non-uniform, everyday clothes), and so on.

One of my friends was complaining about how her ballet flats had bitten her, and how it was hurting. I had never experienced a shoe bite before, so I turned to her, confused. All my friends were surprised to hear that I had never experienced it before. What followed was a detailed lecture on shoe bites, treatment and management, and so much more. I remember saying, quite dejectedly, “Well, I never can wear ballet flats, so I probably never shall be bitten by my shoe”. That was one of my insecurities, my feet. They were too broad and short, with very small, puny fingers. Footwear shopping has always been a nightmare because all the narrow shoes never fit my feet. They refuse to go in, and if they do, they are too short for the shoe.

Ballet flats, flip-flops, heels, sports shoes, school shoes, formal shoes, any kind of footwear, regardless of whether they are ‘fancy’ or not, they almost never fit me perfectly. That is a problem I still face, footwear. It was during these trying times, that I was introduced to this brilliant revolution in the world of footwear, strapped sandals. They were the answers to all my problems, I could adjust the straps to ensure they would fit me perfectly, with no fear of slipping and wonderful comfort, I was in love. The catch was, somehow, the world had decided that it was only men who needed those shoes. Which doesn’t make much sense because men already have some really comfortable footwear. I know because I have tried footwear there since my feet fit better in those. If anything, women are the ones who need these kinds of footwear, since they already walk around in death traps half the time.

My feet have also been a point of teasing in my family. Not just my feet but also my hands and fingers. They are all short and stubby, like my father’s, while my mother’s fingers are more dainty and elegant. Blegh, I hate these conventions. My hands have always been extremely tiny, my friends in school were constantly fascinated by them. They would pick my hand up and measure it against theirs all the time, most of them could bend the top parts of their fingers over mine, that’s how small my hand was in comparison. My best friend used to say that it was so cute, like a little child’s. I was a child, I was somehow simultaneously the child and the grandma. It was a hypocritical existence that I lived, one that I somehow still do. But I think that is something to say about everyone. We are all foots (I know it is feet, but foots resembles fools and that is the point), trying to squeeze into footwear we don’t quite fit in, or feel comfortable in. We manage to go on in this footwear, hell, we even think shoe bites are part and parcel of life.But when we do come across those nice sandals once in a while, we take a respite, then we go back. We live both lives, trying to make the best of both worlds. After all, I would say, that makes us astonishingly human, doesn’t it?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Love, Appearances, Plans

There are days when I just sit and twiddle my thumbs, doing nothing at all except the basics. I haven’t been sleeping properly these last few days, and it has definitely taken its toll on me. I feel extremely tired and exhausted, even right now, my eyes are just drooping shut beyond my control, I am yawning every minute. Today, I feel in poor health, just bloated and uncomfortable. I want to do something, but I absolutely don’t feel up for it. I am guessing it’s the lack of sleep and worry about my own health (and weight, though I don’t want to get to those insecurities just yet) that has pushed me into this period of unproductivity (is this even a word?).

Right now, exhaustion overcomes me, I want to be more active tomorrow, get work done, get my review written, have my story completed. There is just so much to do, and I am making next to no progress. Instead, I am worrying myself with playing the keyboard or practising my writing in my left hand, all important things, no doubt, but currently of secondary concern. I have a deadline I have to keep and at the rate at which I am going, I will be a hopeless disappointment (if I am not one already).

This current period is reminiscent of the writers’ block I faced during finals last semester. I know that what’s at stake is probably much lesser than what had been at stake then. But things are still at stake, and I don’t want that to go waste. I am also reminded of myself back when I was in twelfth. It had been a time of worrying but also extreme laziness. My days were spent just sitting and trying to study, complete removal from any kind of activity whatsoever. Isolation, and a special form of feeling shy to go out and do anything at all. That was the case even after the exams were over, I started feeling ashamed to go out. 

I think this shame started when I was in 7th standard, I had just begun to notice that we were all beginning to grow up. Puberty was hitting everyone, a lot of the girls in my class started getting their periods, sometimes in class. I did not get my period till much later though, I was one of the last ones. But everyone thought I had already got it because I was big. It was during a summer camp between 5th and 6th standard when I was told by a girl that ‘people like me’ get their periods earlier. When I did not get my period even when roughly 90% of all girls in my class had, I started looking for ways in which I was different from them. 

The results were not especially favourable, especially for a pre-teen already struggling with body-image and self-esteem. The voices never really stopped, they still whisper nasty nothings at me, especially so recently. I have just got better at ignoring them and pretending they don’t exist. There have been times when I have desperately wished to be different, to look different, to feel different. I have also wondered if I would never get a chance at love because of the way I look. It is a very specialised conditioning that we are all subjected to, I still struggle with the idea that I would find love, and finding it, difficult. In fact, a part of me (one that surfaces quite a bit), is convinced that only some ‘great’ person would be able to accept me and like me. I cannot help but wonder if that is true. 

I agree that love is not completely about appearances, of course not. But tell that to the sneaky voice that is convinced I shall die ‘alone’ (in the ‘without any romantic partner’ sense of the word). Well, for what it’s worth, I am not completely averse to that idea. I envision a small orphanage/school I could start, taking care of the kids like they were my own, and living in a cosy place. I don’t think I would regret much in that life. True, there may be times when I would be plagued with what-ifs and how life could have been different. But then, what-ifs plague everyone, regardless of what they do. I think I would rather not wonder about love–if it finds me, I will take it, if it doesn’t, I shall accept it as my lot in life and proceed with my plans as usual. Sometimes, there’s really nothing else one can do, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Withdrawal Finale

My brother came back home today after a week-long educational trip to France. He had got me a small gift (the one in the picture) that he had won in a game. I used to have something like that when I was back in India, and I had been quite fond of it too. I was extremely touched that he had remembered. I had missed him, but I have to also admit that it had been quite a peaceful week, to not have someone to constantly be in a tug-of-war with. But the downside was that I became a target for my parents. In fact, it was one of those that went a bit too far on both sides that led me into a bad headspace and made me go into that period withdrawal. But I have learnt some things, found time for myself and now I am back, I hope to remain as sane as possible. There were faults on both sides, they’ve been understood and worked with, there’s still some bad taste remaining, but it will take a few more days to completely flush out. At least, that’s what I believe.

As an act of compromise, and also because they had been recently nudging me to get more active, my parents got me a tracker watch–those gizmos you wear on your wrist that creepily notes down how much you have walked to everything. It looks quite cool, and to be honest, I feel it works. There is something about seeing the number of steps on the monitor that makes me want to actually get up and moving. I want to see those numbers increase–I even started walking to the bedroom and returning to the kitchen when I am heating something in the microwave oven, or going somewhere in the opposite direction before making my way to the bathroom, just so that my watch will count those steps too. Just so that I can say, voila, I have done 5000 steps already! How amazing, burning those calories, I am. It is funny, it is such a small thing but it manages to crack me up.

So aside from this new gadget in my life already inhabited by so many others, there is nothing much new. I have started practising to write with my left hand because I read that apparentl learning to write in your non-dominant hand, as well as taking up some extra tasks with it helps improve your concentration as well as coordination while playing the keyboard. I had been struggling lately, especially with playing with two hands, and moreover, being able to write with both hands in a cool skill to have. So here I am, writing my alphabet in big and small letters, my numbers, and small sentences (pangrams, they are called, because they apparently have all letters of the alphabet) in a notebook, like a small kid doing imposition. My arms hurt after some time because it is hard to be able to sustain and manoeuvre the pencil around. But I feel I am making fair progress. I am not that bad to start with and to be honest, I am faring quite okay. I think I need to start acknowledging the times when I feel quite proud of myself instead of being dismissive of myself, this is a start.

I remember when I was a child in sixth standard–the girl sitting next to me was a left-handed kid. I was extremely fascinated with how she tilted her notebook the opposite way from mine, how her letters slanted the other way, how neat her handwriting was despite writing with her left hand while my writing with my left hand was abysmal (I had not thought that her left hand was like my right hand at first). We would often have small fights because our notebooks would hit each other’s when we ferociously erased something, or when we were writing really fast as our teacher dictated notes. But we also used to share notes quite a lot, she used to take mine quite a bit because she was struggling more than I was. I was actually a pretty smart kid back then, kids wanted my help with many things, I was considered quite important. Personally, I also enjoyed being wanted and useful, it made me feel like I was someone that mattered. For a young child just entering puberty, any kind of ego-boost was welcome.

I remember once when we were going to have a ‘board leader’. The board leader’s job was to clean the board at the beginning of the day, and before classes, make sure the timetable for the day, the day and date, the names of the absentees, the number of absentees were all noted clearly on designated spots on the board. The left-hand top corner was always the date (DD/MM/YYYY or DD/MM/YY), below which was the day. A box would be drawn around them, and then below the box, the timetable would start. We had two periods, a break, two periods, lunch, two periods, break, and finally three periods. Each of these separate sections would be divided by horizontal lines. The final vertical line will complete the timetable box for the day. Sometimes, the board leader would get lazy and erase only the words, leaving the boxes intact. After writing the necessary stuff in, they would touch up the lines (if they were a perfectionist) and all would be well. The right-hand top corner would have one box with three categories–“No. on Roll,” “No. Present,” “No. Absent.” This box would be followed by a box titled “Absentees” which would list out the names of the absentees.

This was highly monotonous a job, but it was also highly useful. It meant a never-ending supply of chalk (and despite my dust allergy, I wanted them) and full-time access to the duster. It also meant that the board leader would go to the staffroom at the end of the day to return the duster and extra chalk to the class teacher. This was an important thing because you could gather valuable gossip this way. Both this girl and I also wanted to become board leaders, I was finally chosen because my handwriting was better and I was also proven to be more responsible. I remember feeling quite elated, I had been chosen first, after a long time of being the second choice. But I was also sad that she hadn’t gotten the chance. So I informally set her up as the assistant board leader, giving her permission to write on the board on days when I was running late or when she asked me. We both were pretty happy with the arrangement, and I felt happy. There is something about sharing joy and gifts, it is something beautiful. I think I am ready to share with the world again, this withdrawal now comes to an end. This was a much-needed break, I am glad I got it. I feel ready to get back, and that is the most important thing, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.