BeingSoda

If you are a dreamer..

Thursday 10 October 2013

Musings

The reading of Tagore fills me with hope, paradoxically perhaps, that bleak hope which he writes of, that we cling to despite logic and reason.
It is not just hope; but also a remembering, a remembrance of beauty unsullied by human folly.
Tagore is one of the few Indian writers I love, and read over and over.
The newer stories, the ones that win prizes, I cannot appreciate, they are too unrelentingly dark.
I recently read The God of Small Things, and it say it plunged me into a blue funk would be an understatement. The next day I could not rise from the bed.
In Roy's work( Arundhati Roy), nature is ever present, painstakingly outlined, heart breakingly beautiful, but ever subordinate. It is a mere backdrop, so to speak, a foil for the humans that fall in love and are torn apart. Roy's characters are black and white to me, foolish, like moths that flutter around the flame and are singed for their foolishness.
Tagore works are slightly more optimistic about the nature of humanity, and his works are never devoid of a sense of beauty and respect for Nature herself, and her stunning glory. His stories are not all happy endings; but they are not bleak either. Childish though it may seem, his poetry renews that faith in me that was once so assured, so gentle and calm. A child's faith is one of the strongest there is.


Thursday 28 March 2013

Seeing and learning

I'm at that point in my life where you gotta learn to change, to adapt, cause you can see with your own eyes what your habits, your old traits are doing to your life. It's funny how you expect change from other people, but when it comes to changing the littlest thing about yourself, the Stages; denial, depression, anger and finally acceptance, kick in.
You make up every reason you can think of, to justify that one thing. 
"It's part of who I am!"
"It was justified under the circumstances"
"It's a much better way of coping than what she does!"
Blah blah blah.
Change is inevitable. Even without me trying, I've changed over the years. The way you perceive things changes, the way you react to stimuli changes; in your head, the principle is intact. But your emotions to it change. And the strongest sorts of belief run on emotion.
  Some of the pieces I wrote less than a year back, which I was so proud of, now seem melodramatic; they always, were, I just never saw it. Some of the things I said, thought and did, surprise me now. In a way, I'm glad, to know that I managed to change my perspective.
 I was in a hurry to change, once. It didn't seem to happen fast enough. I did things that are embarrassing to remember now. Some memories are funny, now. Most are still mortifying. Some have faded over time and lost their sting.
I was reading posts on my school's confession page, and I realize how hard it is to let some memories go. I wonder if the people who act like they've changed, really have. All I remember school by is a vague fondness, some pretty trees, memories that have faded over time. Children are cruel. 'Tis a fact of life. I experienced that first hand. I saw them change with age, most for the better. Childhood and children aren't always innocent happy and carefree. Learning what the real world is like, and what it requires of you, was a check that I felt a lot of them needed. Some of them genuinely changed; some learned to mask themselves beneath a veneer of polite socializing and attempts to act like everyone's friend.
I got a lot from leaving school, but I learnt a lot from being in it as well. I learnt what it's like being surrounded by people who are all, mostly above average intelligence. I see that stress might get you through a school exam, but in the long run, it does more harm than good. I see that it's better to talk through situations, and walking away isn't always a good thing. I see that it's better to take decisions because dawdling over them can do more harm. I see that it's not always a good thing to not vent.
 I see, and now I must learn.

Monday 4 March 2013

Jogs and food.

Hello there. Happy new year.
This is about new year's resolutions.
These are resolutions that I didn't intend to make, but my subconscious  subjected to years of festive propaganda, went ahead and made some anyway.
Happily I think they are in the hopes of being implemented. Sigh.

I lost a lot of weight in 2011, rather drastically. Not to mention unintentionally; I was so caught up the whirlwind of my life that discovering an unexpected granola bar in my bag was akin to manna from heaven, no joke. I spent half that year in a half starved state. 
So when I shifted back home last year and suddenly had a well stocked kitchen at my disposal and didn't have to travel as much, or stress as much, I gained pounds at an alarming rate. The numerals of my weight inverted themselves, and I am now the possessor of the body of a typical Greek female sculpture. While that sounds wonderfully Attic and voluptuous, I find that I admire the flat abdomen of Mila Kunis more than the love handles of Aphrodite. So, in consequence I decided to lose weight.
Now, I love food. Period. It is my antidepressant when I'm down and out, my friend in need, the only thing I can look forward to in a day of weary hospital posting, lectures, practicals and trains. 
So,I can't give up food, no Sir, I've been deprived of it for way too long to regard it disinterestedly.
Hence follows the only possible conclusion; exercise.
I made a pact with myself to make myself take some sort of exercise till I build up a sweat everyday, and the trudging to and from and in college I do is not counted.
Currently, I've taken to jogging just a little, everyday. One round of the track next to my place and and two rounds of brisk walking. I'll build it up slowly. Don't want to wake up with cramps in my thighs from over exerting.
That's all for today, I'm tired,lazy, grouchy and have a great deal of hopeless swotting ahead of me. Good night!

Compartments

Life is divided into neat little compartments. No, we divide life into neat little compartments. To help us deal with Life. Everyone's compartments are different. It's a girl's job to be tidy, because men won't be neat. So when a boy chucks his pants on the floor, he's told not to do it, without really expecting him to follow it. Maybe it's laughed off. A girl would be told off till the words go till how she won't be able to manage getting married.
 They can even be misused. A male ticket collector cannot check a loud mouthed brash woman refusing to pay the fine for travelling with a wrong ticket and forces her way out without paying. Women cannot be touched. He will lose his job.
Compartments help us deal with the world around us, to simplify things, to make them easier to understand. A boy who speaks couthly, must be better to deal with than a loud mouthed one.
 Make a compartment for girls who criticize , call them bitches, stay away from bitches.
I am being compartmentalized. I am compartmentalizing myself into a person that will be easier to be, it seems. I am forgetting a different person I used to be. Forgetting what it is to do something because you enjoy doing it, you enjoy being good at it, you enjoy working at it. Not because being good at it is important for your future.
The world will always compartmentalize you. Because it isn't everyone's job to understand you. But I never liked being restricted. I always tried breaking out of the mould. I wanted to be different. I wanted to be somethin' else. I wanted to be a surprise, always.
Lately, I'm not surprising anyone except myself, today. When I woke and realised what I'd been doing.
It's such a cliche, Don't Let Yourself Be Ruled By Cliches. But sometimes you think maybe, the cliche is what the real thing should be like.
Life is short, too fluid, too malleable for cliches.