You can only improve your writing by writing.
Anything multiplied by zero is zero.
Do you understand the problem here?
Threads
‘The system is flawed,’ you say.
‘The system is exactly as I weaved it to be,’ says the spiders you will never see.
For there are spiders – nameless, faceless monsters in the dark that control everything around you. A part of me worries that this is being read and my name flagged to be dealt with soon enough. The saner side of my mind realizes that this is merely a result of the shows that I watch and an overactive imagination.
Just because there are a thousand different depictions of alien life does not make it any less the fiction that it is. The numerous adaptations of Jurassic Park does not a real life dinosaur amusement park make. Moriarties and Whiteroses and Donullias may just be that – a fictional rationalisation for a system that seems to be failing the ones that it is made for. There could be perfectly logical reasons behind its failings that does not point to elusive spiders weaving intricate, delicate threads that benefits only them and disregards everybody else.
On the other hand, fiction does have a way of not staying that way. Big Brother does exist, after all. Then the question is, do these spiders exist because of fiction, or do the stories follow their misdeeds.
The transition from an existential question to a chicken and egg debate seems very natural, does it not?
- Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
- Moriarty – Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
- Whiterose – Mr Robot, Sam Esmail
- Donullia – Paatal Lok, Sudip Sharma
- Big Brother – 1984, George Orwell
A Thing That I Wrote
I haven’t written in months, maybe years. No wait, that’s not true. I write every day. I ask people how they are, and they say okay. They are obligated now to ask me how I am, and I say okay no matter what the real answer might be. We exchange mundane pleasantries, more mundane now that there’s a pandemic that restricts us to four walls as much as we can manage to do so.
I guess I do write. What I meant was, I haven’t written anything important in a long time. No. that’s not true either. I have a job, I write emails because when I don’t, I get phone calls and that’s better avoided. I also write on excel sheets because if I don’t, I won’t have answers to questions that are asked of me regarding the work I do.
Let me rephrase once more and hope for the best. I haven’t written any articles for my blog in months. There. That’s specific enough to be the truth.
I am going to hit publish before I realise what an insane piece this is.
Some Things 101
And I started another blog. It’s called Some Things 101 and is an attempt to explain business concepts in a simple and (hopefully) fun manner. The idea came from one of my professor’s lectures about creating traffic and then me realizing that hey, you know what would be cool? If I actually tried to spread some knowledge and do something with my degrees that may be useful to someone somewhere.
Go check it out if you have the time. There is a grand total of one post as of now but click the follow button for updates.
I hope to cover topics from marketing, finance and international business but we’ll see where it goes.
Wish me luck!
See my cool new site: Some Things 101
Blogging
So my marketing professor tells me that we all should have strong blogs to create traffic to improve your marketing portfolio. Which is when I realized that I actually had made a blog (more than two years ago, as WordPress reminded me when I logged in after literal ages). And I half-assed it like I knew I would even before I started. My marketing professor would tell me it’s hindsight bias and my organizational behaviour professor would talk about self-fulfilling prophecies and that I am not, in fact, capable of knowing myself and what I am actually prone to do after knowing myself for about two decades. (Although to be honest, taking a class on consumer behaviour was like getting on the table in Dead Poets’ Society – you do a complete 180 on your worldview of things).
I doubt he meant go back to that blog you once made which has a handful of posts on absolutely eclectic topics filled mostly with personal ramblings that tend to go nowhere but in circles and often have no point whatsoever (refer line you just read). He probably meant a site for recipes or book reviews.
Anyway. That’s not the point. Actually, there is no point for this post except to flex my writing muscles (apart from the clinically detached reports I write for my assignments).
I am actually thinking about a semi-serious blog that I could be starting. Although I have no ideas yet. And considering the frequency of this blog, it really is quite a far-fetched fantasy that seems, well, fantastical. Time will tell.
For now, adios.
My High School Graduation aka Memories I don’t want to look back to but keep doing so because I’m a fucking masochist Part 1/?
My high school graduation, in one word, sucked.
I’m not sure how much of a graduation it actually was, considering I passed out from a tiny little Indian school in an Arab country whose idea of a graduation is the handing out of copies of ‘Yay you’re out of school now, congratulations, now get out’ a month before our exams even started. It’s a pale imitation of the ceremonies held in US and Europe and all those countries we defer to while trying to be a global citizen.
But that’s not why it was a bitter memory. Nope. It was a pretty special occasion, for the school at least. For the first time in our school we had rented graduation robes and caps and a printed scroll that was somewhat official (of course we had to pay for it, but well, someone has to pay for those rentals and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the school).
The sari was the first thing to go wrong. In hindsight though, the first sign to destruction was my hair. My hair that has a life of its own and looks absolutely lovely when I’m home turning into bed but perfectly horrible when I have any kind of an event to attend (or even just school). I’m not an expert in hair products and cosmetics, I just let the wind and the water determine how my hair decides to behave that day and it apparently wanted to go for sticking out stubbornly in all directions in a decidedly not-cute-very-ugly way. And the sari definitely was not in the mood to cooperate either.
My mom was supposed to drape that thing over me. My mom who does this very often and has apparently helped other young women with their first and subsequent saris till they were experts. My mom, who was struggling to determine which bit went where and why was nothing staying where it was supposed to?
Looking back, we should have tried putting it on earlier.
Hindsight really is a fucking bitch.
Author’s Note: It’s been over a year since I updated this blog and I’m just glad I’ve written something of some semblence to a blog post so I’m updating it despite the fact that I haven’t reread it even once, and that’s ignoring the fact that it’s incomplete. I’m trying to be a better person and update but procrastination is what I thrive on so bear with me.
If you’ve read this far, I appreciate your patience. Much love.
Why talking about social issues is hard
It’s been a month since I started this blog, and I still haven’t talked about ‘social issues’, which was supposed to be the main content as per my plan of changing the world one Post at a time. I realized that it’s difficult for me to talk about said social issues partly because it feels like a huge responsibility and I would never feel like I said it right, but mainly due to three reasons.
One. Much of what needs to be said has been said. There are talks and discussions and debates about it, and while I may have a lot to say, I wouldn’t feel like I’m adding anything to it, which makes me feel like the kid who mashes up all the points to make it sound like she’s bringing something new to the table.
Two. The talks that do happen fail to do anything productive. Discussions often turn into debates where people take extreme stands and stay there. You don’t find people accepting what another person says; they find ways to disprove their points – earnestly, like it’s some sort of a pissing contest. You end up having thoughts like ‘What is the point?’ and ‘Will people ever change?’
Three: How do you determine who is right and what is not? Nothing is ever in black and white – they’re all in varying shades of grey. Haven’t we all sympathized for a villain at some point? Aren’t we all guilty of forgiving certain wrongs in the name of ‘the greater good’?
I try to live by the ‘If you don’t know them, don’t judge them’ rule. It’s not easy living by that rule when you see people who are so obviously stupid and wrong, but then I remind myself that beliefs are a product of upbringing and experience and that people have their reasons to do and think the way they do (even when what they’re thinking and doing is stupid).
I do think it is important to talk about social issues not only for more awareness, but also because it helps people know that there are people out there who feel the same way. And while this can be harmful, it also makes people realize that they’re not alone. That there are people fighting for them, and trying to do something in the way that they can.
Need to unKnow
Some things, once known, cannot be unknown.
Once you know certain things, it starts to influence you in ways you cannot imagine. It creeps into your subconscious and influences your every decision and makes you act in ways you may not even realize is atypical of you.
Suppose you’ve been living in an apartment for a couple of years without a hitch. One day, somebody tells you that all of its previous owners have met with bad luck.
Suddenly it all comes back at you – falling in the bathroom the other day, the remote that constantly refuses to change the channel, failing to find true love, cutting your finger while chopping vegetables.. could it be true?
No, you rationalize. This could happen to anybody. Superstitions. Pfft.
But it happened to me, says that tiny scared voice in your head that pops up whenever you’re in doubt.
Now, everything feels like an accident in waiting. Every actual accident strengthens the veracity of the prophecy. Even if you try to invalidate this irrational thought processes, it will get into your head and mess with it.
Don’t all superstitions work this way? We try not to break these norms because – what if it might be true? No harm in not cutting your nails on Tuesdays, right? Or at night? I can refrain from whistling at night. A black cat crossed me. I have time to go back and take a shower, right?
See how it escalates from okay to plain weird? That’s what could – and does – happen when you know and allow these things to spread.
Some things are better left unknown.
The Best Thing Ever
I don’t like to use the word ‘best’ except while wishing luck (All the best, Best of luck & Do your best). I think it simply robs me of the chance of using it again.
What if I watch a movie and declare it to be the best movie ever, and the next day I watch one I like even better?
There is always going to be something better than what you’ve watched or heard or read or even experienced. And that’s a good thing. It means that the world is full of endless possibilities for happiness and wonder.
There are also going to be things that are worse than what you’ve come across. And that’s a good thing too, even if it doesn’t feel that way. After watching a badly made movie, you can find solace in the fact that somebody probably watched a movie that is much worse than the one you’ve been subject to. And this is true for everything – bad movies, books you didn’t enjoy, experiences you wish to forget – nothing is truly going to be ‘the worst thing ever’.
You are not the first person on this planet, and you’re certainly not the last. You’re neither the only person on Earth, so you’re never going to be able to see everything, read everything or know everything. So why try and make the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ of anything?
A Cynic’s Rant
I can sit here and admonish all the rapists and the serial killers from the comfort of my home, but that’s not going to stop them.
Crying for all the homeless and the sick and the downtrodden isn’t going to change their lives; all it does is make it that much harder to go on with mine.
And my empathy doesn’t extend to that old lady with a rag for cover stretching her hand for a coin or two, because – how do I know if she’s really homeless? What if it’s a trick, and if I stop to take my purse to give her money, one of their gang snatches it and disappears. And if I stop and give her money, I’ll have to give the other person I see something too, because otherwise I’m being unfair, and the other one, and the other one… and how will my two coins help them, exactly? They’ll be there the next day, and the next, until one day they’re not.
So I pretend not to see her and walk past her, cringing in self-loathing while I do so, but walking past all the same – blaming the government for being so negligent about the less fortunate. Soon I forget this entire incident altogether, until I cross paths with another one… and repeat.
As I write this, I know I sound like a horrible person, but it is the harsh truth, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t run away from me. I think that the most important thing is to be true to yourself, and while I may not do the things society expects me to do, at least I’m not delusional to think that a million likes for a picture of a starving kid on Facebook isn’t going to fill his stomach.
And when I truly want something, it’s not the people who are worse off than me I think about – it’s the millions of people who have what I want.
I used to care, I did. But there is so much violence in the world that it is not humanly possible to think about it without breaking into pieces. The extent to which people will go to please their deepest, darkest desires is unimaginable and, frankly, not something I want to think about when I can’t do anything about it.
And because I can’t seem to do anything – anything useful, that is – I try to detach myself from these horrors. It gets easier once you try. When you’ve heard about serial killers with 11 murders to his credit, hearing about one with 2 is almost a relief.
Because they’re strangers. And it’s easier not to care because of that. Not to think of them as fellow human beings with hopes and dreams and loved ones whose lives have been snatched to satisfy a whim, or some wild fantasy.
So I focus on finding answers to my problems, and leave world peace for other people to tackle.
Mean and selfish, I know. But also the truth.
dumbnerd 