Dear reader, hey you! (yep, still figuring)
I want you to hit the play button on a relaxing studio ghibli playlist before you start reading this month’s letter. Also, this one might be a long elaborate chat between the two of us, so go get your favorite beverage ready, I’m waiting. :)
For as long as I can remember, I've been a person who gets excited on discovering a heart-touching tune of music, an impressive book, an article or any piece of art that speaks to me. So much so that there’s an urge to share it with a friend, or with someone I’ve recently started speaking to, or to any of my social media channel. A couple of days back, when something similar happened, I had the same urge and instead of giving in, I decided to keep it. I told myself to cherish this for myself first. Completely, whole-heartedly. And told myself to later think of sharing it with someone else. I feel this applies to the grander scheme of things too. I get excited about a short trip with someone, to get along with an idea that is someone else's and is not speaking as much to me, an exciting thing that someone else is doing and I feel like getting onboard immediately. But only a handful of such excitements truly give me satisfaction. I’ve delusioned myself into grabbing instant gratification. It’s that gram of an instant where I feel I'm being heard. Or my happiness is shared. Whereas it’s not and I know it. My core knows it.
I’ve lied to myself to the terrible extent of impersonating anybody’s reality as mine. This time in 2019 I was thinking of quitting my job to pursue a course in either writing or journalism. I had no plan and no one to guide me on how to go about anything. A little voice inside me didn’t let me act on the quitting aspect. I got so involved in the noise & the clutter that I couldn’t think of giving a second chance to my current job or to the possible likable opportunities that could branch out from there. Cut two, here I am submitting assignments as part of a tech cohort that I joined last month.
I made this happen for myself because last year, when things slowed down, I got a chance to reflect and make note of what I was doing to my personal and professional life. I needed to start savoring my own pieces. Let them live with me. See how they mould me or I mould them. And ensure that this feeling doesn’t become a momentary shallow pass of indulgence into “happiness”. I let it be a roller coaster of all kinds of emotions. I let it consume me to the point that it was sustainable.
Oh by the way, that two hour keeping-the-phone-away rule didn’t work out. So I tried another technique, it’s called lapse yourself & get things done. This means, I've started recording myself to ensure I don’t touch my phone in the midst of doing an activity. With this, I accomplished two tasks this month. I was able to redress my book rack & do a bit of sweat exuberating yoga. We’ll see how long this pans out. My aim is to cut my daily average screen time to thirty minutes. Ambitious, I know. Additionally, my little one also helps me in sparing my eyes from the blue screen.
I promised I’ll talk about a book I was reading in my last newsletter. The book is called Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto. I would describe it as a comforting humorous lie. A good escape to look at a somewhat similar reality as yours, with a deep spicy twist. My takeaway from this book was that if you think that broken families can go on living together without secretly taking a slow stab at someone else’s mental health, you’re quite mistaken. For proof, this particular monologue by the narrator shook me, “Sometimes I would see myself as a book with bad binding. You know, like one more reader, one more face down on the bed and I was going to spill everything, lose control.”
I would 10/10 recommend you to read this book. The way each of the characters have nick-named each other is heart-warming. Read and find out the cuteness for yourself, hizonner. ;)
While I read 4 books last month, I couldn’t pick up any book in July. But towards the end of the month I somehow got my hands on Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami and I LOVE IT so far. The story, the writing, the quick connection established between a reader and the narrator, it’s amazing! I’m experiencing such a brilliantly written book after a long long time.
I also got lucky with reading 3 intense essays in the last two days which I’d like to share here:
Little Yellow Pills by Valeriya Kipnis
“In my family, illnesses of the mind were often felt but rarely defined. Nothing was ever as bad as what they had left behind, and so everything was always rendered fine, just fine.”
A purely vulnerable outpour of a woman, late in her twenties discovering the lineage of mental illnesses that she carries. It comes as a resounding shock because the reality was always kept in the locks from her merely because
a) no significant importance given to mental disorders in general
b) lack of a dictionary for words like “anxiety”, “compulsiveness”, “panic” in her native language which was Russian.
Confusion of Tongues by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes
“I’d been brought up under the wing of two insecure teenagers, themselves deprived of affection, and my whole life had been one long lesson in denying and pushing aside my true feelings to avoid provoking their hatred.”
You know the violation you feel when your truth gets shunned to the point of making you believe that you were not the victim in your story? This personal essay screams of that violation. It's around the theme of a teenage girl trying to avoid conflict with her parents by keeping the physically invasive stuff, a professor she admired did to her. It’s a painful story to read but I know that these stories are so common in occurrence that our heads should hang in shame for we hardly give them space to come out in open.
A Letter of Appreciation for All the Men Who Haven’t Sexually Harassed Me by Meghana Indurti
A satirical piece blowing a big cheer on the silent clowns and riders of the not-all-men parade. As I read the sarcasm filled scenarios in this essay, I could picture the men in my life who would fit into them just right. I could constantly hear Run by Awolnation ringing in my ears while reading this essay. If you’re at all into satire, you’ll love this read.
I want to share two beautiful things that I discovered on the internet as a parting gift:
My new favorite poem, One boy told me by Naomi Shihab Nye
This eye pleasing cinemascape composed by a traveller, Leonardo Dalessandri who captured Turkey from north to south (i would have visited Turkey in 2020 :( )
Ciao!