Posted on by Anamika

Time and Emotions

Pic credit: Pinterest

I am a slow learner. Not when it comes to hard facts, remembering historical dates or even chemistry formulas. It’s more about emotions, so we can rather say I am not able to adapt easily.

I realised this while returning from home after Chhath Puja this time.

I am not really a flight person unless, obviously, it is very urgent, or it is a very long journey. Trains have a special place in my heart, probably because my father is a retired railway engineer. Our family has enjoyed a lot of free rides, my favourite being the journey from Lucknow to Nasik, all thanks to him.

But, as you grow up, one thing that you are always struggling for is time and flights help you save that time. With three days’ leave in hand, all I could do to make the best out of it was to catch a flight.

While I was heading home, it didn’t feel that weird that I woke up at 4:30 in Indore and by 10:30 the same morning I was embracing my mum at home in Lucknow. Happiness and excitement do make you think less. Like I am pretty sure the pilot announced the outside temperature when I landed in Lucknow as well, but it hit me only when I was returning to Indore and I started wondering why they do that.

Pic credit: Pinterest

I know that most probably it’s just basic courtesy or just a piece of information that passengers find interesting. But, I would like to believe that they do so because you have travelled a very long distance in a very short span of time and inside the aeroplane you have no idea how your surroundings have changed.

When I landed back in Indore and reached my flat it took me some time to comprehend the fact that just this morning I woke up in a house full of people and life. Where I did not have to think about what to have for breakfast, where my mother had already packed my lunch box before I even woke up, where my sister packed my bag for me and where my father dropped me at the airport without even me having to ask for it. Then, all of a sudden, back to nothingness or independence, as we may call it euphemistically.

I am so used to sleeping in one city and waking up in another that crossing that same distance, on the same morning, within two hours, took me off guard.

The longer journeys give you some time to gulp it all. On the train, you see the whole journey unfold in front of you, almost like a very slow transition. From one station to another, our surroundings change gradually; the weather, the people, the language, everything.

I remember almost tearing up at Lucknow railway station every time, but by the time I reach my destination, I have already made up my mind, sorted the course of action and sort of back to what I am supposed to be in this city.

The situation is almost similar to how we find ourselves begging someone to stay a little longer when they break up with us. It is because we don’t know how to act after the connection is suddenly snapped. We ask them not to completely stop talking because we are used to that communication, and so we want time to let our feelings resolve. This request often gets rejected though, as the other person has already moved on and cannot waste their time with us anymore.

So, it’s a battle between time and emotions everywhere and there is no solution to this. Life doesn’t give you time to settle down, sometimes not even physically, let alone emotionally.

Posted on by Anamika

The road taken and the consequences

Pic Credit: Pexels

Its a never ending battle. It’s not even a battle actually for it never makes you extremely scared, not for your life, not anything else. It just suffocates you. It’s so difficult to know things expecially about yourself. Other people can tell you about themselves but who is gonna tell you about yourself? What do you want to be in life? Why is it even necessary to be something? For money? For passion?

Who knows and honestly no one cares. It’s actually crazy to me how our interests keep changing over time.

Remember deciding your profession solely based on the last movie you watched? If you loved the movie, then, for sure you wanted to take up whatever profession the lead character was in.

You realise your skills by the time you reach High School and then leave behind your fancy dreams. Then comes the realisation of competition in this world and the pressure from your parents. That makes you drop some dreams. And finally, ‘money’, the most ‘important’ aspect of life. After all, what is the point of being in a profession, though your favourite, that doesn’t fill your stomach?

It’s almost like life gets narrower as you grow old. Fewer dreams, fewer friends, fewer expectations.

There is a funny part to all of this as well. You won’t find out till you actually step into it. If you think that you can decide what you want to be in life in a day by just sitting and thinking about it, you are wrong. You will have to pick up a path. It can even be the path that ‘Robert Frost’ did not take, but you must walk. You will feel like wasting your time or might actually enjoy it, but the point is, you won’t find out till you actually do one thing or the other.

It’s time taking for sure or euphemistically speaking, demands patience and is heavily dependent on the ‘Its never too late’ concept.
And you know what, it’s extremely difficult to even try to end a piece of writing on a positive note when your soul itself is confused and still figuring things out. But, I am glad that atleast I am walking whether it is the right or the wrong path.

Posted on by Anamika · 4 Comments

Growing apart together

Pic credit: Google

Feels like yesterday when we were six or seven. What prompted us to be friends is still a mystery to me. But, I don’t remember us being strangers either. We didn’t have checklists back then. No judgements, no rules, for who to be friends with.

It must’ve been your tasty lunch that bound us together or the agreement we signed to help eachother in exams, dripping with innocence but adhered to very sternly. What next? A simple handshake and boom, 15 years have passed.

Lately, I can’t help but think how different we are from eachother. Our field of study to pastime hobbies. Different personalities, different ways of looking at life. I have noticed that what interests me, causes you boredom. Without mentioning, we have started avoiding so many topics for the sake of saving quarrel. What was obscure a few years ago is very obvious now. How you will react in a particular situation, what would be your point of view on a certain matter. Both of us have become aware of our different social backgrounds and thus our unfortunately different positions in the society, which has ultimately decided out political leanings as well; that too different.

I keep wondering, whether I would’ve liked to be friends with you if I met you today? Now, at this age, when I pretty much understand myself, my interests; with the baggage of all my experiences till date, leading to subconscious judgements, would I have approached you? Would you have approached me?

I have distanced myself from so many people saying “our vibes don’t match”, when they very obviously share personalities with you. How did we manage to be so different from eachother when we were together almost all the time. It’s so strangely astonishing how the same soil and water begets different plants and the distinction becomes clearly visible when those plants bear their own flowers.

Still something keeps us together. It’s either the comfort, the memories or the fear of us knowing way too much about eachother. Then there is the gargantuan task of finding someone else like you, which I admit is quite impossible given the fact that I’m very lazy when it comes to striking a conversation. Perhaps if they also bring tasty lunch…..nah, nevermind.

Afterall, we don’t like 100 percent of the people we like, but we are willing to make adjustments for them; or we have already adjusted ourselves according to them without anyone of us knowing. Also, with each day passing we are getting older and busier and the time we spend together is getting shorter. That automatically leads to lesser differences and more efforts to cherish every moment we get to be together.

Posted on by Anamika

For the materialistic love of a “bed”

It was a very ordinary bed I swear. Pic credit: Creazilla

Have you ever been emotionally attached to a pen, a watch, a car, or just a handkerchief? If you are a human being I’m assuming, yes. Degree of attachment may differ from person to person but it’s nearly impossible for me to believe that there is a person in this world who has never been attached to his/her wordly possessions.

I started thinking about this after we bought a new double bed replacing the old one that was on the verge of breaking anytime. When I asked my mother how many years has the older bed been with us , she said, ” it’s as old as your brother”. You see, there, from that one phrase you can decipher the value of that bed. It is associated with the age of a human, the only son of a family. So this bed which has already celebrated its silver jubilee at our home is saying a goodbye now.

In these 25 years things have drastically changed in our lives and this is the thing with these non- living items; they don’t change but they witness change. There was a time when me, my elder brother and sister, and my mother used to sleep on the same bed. Time flew by, we grew, but the bed remained the same, and we kept growing till the bed could accommodate just me and my sister. That bed has changed houses with us after we came to the city. It was one of the few items we had when we shifted to our own home. I remember when me and my brother hid under the bed and as soon as my sister walked in the room my brother suddenly held her leg, scaring her out of her wits. As a kid, laying down under the bed is such a comfortable thing to do. The new one doesn’t have space for anyone to hide, since it has storage boxes. The manufacturers know that with increasing income, space decreases.

I wonder if I would’ve felt all the emotions I am feeling right now if I was still a kid. As we grow older, the sheer happiness and excitement of anything new is replaced by lamentation and reminiscence over the old. The amount of memories with that motion, as well as emotion less piece of wood are immeasurable. All three of us siblings have studied on that bed leaving the study table to eat dust in one corner of the room. A bed is anyways a very dear item as it is associated with rest. The sleep you get at your home in your bed, even the super comfy Five Star hotel beds fail to deliver that. My mother used to call it our ‘nest’.

All of this sounds extremely futile right? Why be sentimental over a damn bed and write paragraphs about it? Every religion, every philosophy of life asks us to not get attached to anything in this world, not even human beings, not even the ones we have blood relation with. The world itself, which includes everything biotic or abiotic is called ‘materialistic’. The reason behind this is to make your departure from this world easier. But if there is one thing that makes us human more than anything else, it’s being helpless with regards to certain things. Nostalgia, is an emotion, in my opinion, reserved only for us. Or maybe animals too feel nostalgic, they just fail to express it.

Surely there is a difference between a moment of attachment and obsession. Attachments might get you in trouble in afterlife but obsession hurts you in this very own life. Now, I have no idea how to end this blog, all I can say is that as long as we live we will get attached to objects or people around us, might even obsess over certain things because more than a sin or stupidity, it is frail humanity.

Posted on by Anamika

A late new year post

This blog is a testimony that I have already broken my new year resolution, which was to post something here on every first and fifteenth of the month. Anyways, it took me some time to realise what actually is the significance of a new year? Why is the changing of a digit in the year column of the date or the replacement of a calendar so important to us? It doesn’t matter if you celebrate New Year or not. You cannot deny the fact that the new years eve has you reflecting on the past year and making plans for the next year.

The sole reason for this is the fallible nature of humans. Every one has failures and everyone commits mistakes. Thus, we are always looking for chances to make a fresh start. A new year gives us that chance or atleast a sense of starting anew. The hope of doing better in the coming year is what makes us celebrate its arrival.

Now, one may ask why don’t we celebrate a new month then? Honestly I don’t know. I am not a philosopher. All I can say is perhaps the burden of mistakes or disappointments not accumulated enough in a month to make us look for something new. Perhaps we still feel like we can handle it and put everything in the right place. But a year is a long time. It is long enough to make you tired and give up. And that is what makes the new year so significant.

Perhaps the tons of messages and greetings we receive on 1st January, comparing it to the rays of the morning sun or new blossom or the first page of a diary, albeit annoying, not wholly wrong. Everyone deserves to choose when they want to start their race against the odds of life. If they deem the start of a new year to be fit, so be it.

That being said, I would try to start my race from now on and probably keep my new year resolution too.

Posted on by Anamika

Because the living can be manipulated, dead cannot

Picture of a crematorium in New Delhi, clicked by Danish Siddiqui

In 1993 Kevin Carter, a South African photojournalist, clicked a picture during Sudan famine, famously known as “The Vulture and the little girl”. In the picture a vulture is seen sitting near a child, who was on its way to a United Nations feeding center, but collapsed midway most probably due to acute starvation. This picture started a debate regarding the ethics of journalism and the humanitarian instincts of a journalist. People often quote the example of this picture to regard journalists as vulture feeding on people’s misery, grief, pain.

Something similar happened a few days ago when Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui posted pictures on his twitter handle including a picture of a drone shot of a crematorium in Delhi where 50 funeral pyres were burning. India is going through a deadly second wave of Corona virus and the increasing death toll has caused an overflow of dead bodies at crematoriums. Some big twitter handles starting complaining that media is stirring distress and fear among people, at already distressing times, by showing pictures and footages from funeral grounds. Some people compared journalists to ‘vultures waiting for their prey to die’ while others went as far as alleging that media is trying to ‘undermine India’s image’ and ‘disrespecting hindu culture’.

The allegation of disrespecting hindu culture doesn’t hold much ground because there are several examples of news channels live broadcasting funerals of big politicians and bollywood actors, with nobody objecting to that. On the other hand the allegations of media undermining India’s image at world stage and comparing media coverage in India to media coverage in foreign countries to claim that the foreign press didn’t cover deaths and burial grounds in US and UK during the first wave of Corona virus last year, is just a blatant lie. From Washington Post to BBC to The New York Times, almost all big news organisations covered the horrific scenes of mass digging of graves and coffin makers struggling to meet up the demand for coffins, in US, UK, France, Italy.

Now as far as the vital question of ‘what is the need to cover crematoriums’ is concerned, we need to understand a few things. First of all, the real picture is always at ground zero. Many Indian newspapers have reported huge discrepancies between the official Covid–19 death toll and the number of dead bodies being laid to rest as per Covid protocols. For example an Indian Express report states that from April 16 to April 20 the official data for Madhya Pradesh recorded only 348 deaths, when three cremation facilities in Bhopal alone reported 597 bodies being buried following Covid-19 protocols. This is the case across several other states in India including the national capital Delhi. To understand the gravity of the situation it is necessary to highlight these discrepancies and the most effective way of doing so is reporting straight from crematoriums.

Any humanitarian crises often becomes just a case study due the official figures which maybe useful for future references. What brings life to these figures and makes us understand that the zeroes that keep getting added every few days in the death toll actually represent someone’s mother, father, son, daughter, husband, or friend, are actually these pictures and articles that the journalists experience firsthand.

Anupam Nath, an Associated Press photojournalist, replying to a query from Newslaundry said, “We should record for history. If no one had taken photos of the Hiroshima bombing, we would not have realised how bad it was. You can’t visualise until you see the situation.”

The situation certainly is very distressing right now. But it is important to report the truth now to avoid an even worse situation in future.

Posted on by Anamika

A child’s fear

Pic credit: Google

When I was in twelfth standard, we were taught a poem at school, ‘My mother at sixty six’, by Kamala Das. The poem is about the fears of the poet, which she felt looking at her mother’s dull and pale face. The sudden realisation that her mother has grown old, and will not be with her forever, makes the poet a bit uncomfortable.

When I first read the poem, it was just another chapter of the syllabus which I had to study to score good marks in the exams. But, today, something happened that made me realise a lot of things. I saw my father holding a glass of water. His hands were trembling. And all of a sudden I could picturize not just the set up in which My mother at sixty six was written, but also the pain the poet must have felt while writing it.

Do you know what causes shaky hands, especially at an older age? I, unfortunately know. Sometimes, it’s easier to move on if you don’t know certain things, and I wish I didn’t knew. That strange feeling when you start hesitating to call your dad to pick you up, because you know it might not be good for their health. When you know, your mom isn’t making you do certain things because she wants to teach you, but simply because she just cannot do it on her own. When your parents falling sick is not just a random excuse to take leave from college or work, but actually makes you feel scared. It’s sad. It’s annoying. I don’t know any other words to describe this feeling or maybe I just don’t want to use harsher or more realistic terms.

Sometimes I think I’m feeling this way only because I don’t want to take responsibilities. Maybe I just want it going the same way it was. Living a carefree life, under the shelter of my parents, just how my childhood was. But it’s not totally correct. I am okay being the responsible child but, I still want someone to hold my back. Someone to correct me, to scold me.

What is even weird is that, the only thing that makes you feel a bit relaxed from these feelings is the thought that you too will go through this phase. Just a few more years, and you will be in your parents shoes and your children in yours. This is how it has always been.

Kamala Das in the poem tried to distract herself from these thoughts by looking at young trees. I will try that too. Young trees, young saplings, new buds, new flowers, another dawn , another day.

Posted on by Anamika

Chill, it’s just a pizza…

It has been more than two weeks since farmers are protesting against the new farm laws. Several rounds of talks have happened between the farmer leaders and the central leadership but to no avail, as the farmers don’t want to settle for anything less than the repeal of three farm laws. Amid these protests several pictures have emerged from the protest site at Singhu border, one of them being of pizza being served to the protesting farmers and other one of foot massagers at the protesting site.

Many people appeared to have not taken these pictures positively and started trolling the protesting farmers. Farmers, in our country are stereotyped with a certain image. When a video of Punjabi actor Deep Sidhu surfaced on social media in which he was seen talking to a policeman in english, there were several nasty comments about it. Twitter was filled with comments like, “Is he really a farmer?”, “How can a farmer speak in english?”. While Deep Sidhu is not a farmer, but there are many farmers in Punjab who are well educated, graduates and can easily converse in english. The fact that we are so used to seeing farmers as some uneducated, skinny, old man, in maybe a lungi, with a gamchha around his neck, that any farmer being even a little bit different from the usual type, seems less genuine to us, is actually concerning. While most farmers in India can actually be the same as the one described above, but discrediting others because they don’t fit our criteria just shows our ignorance about the lifestyles of people from different parts of the country. Punjab’s culture, it’s demography, and geopolitics is very different from that of other parts of India.

Similar reactions emerged on social media with the pictures of ‘pizza’ at protest site. While the foot massagers are setup by an NGO, Khalsa Aid, the ‘pizza langar’ was organized by a group of friends from Amritsar. In a normal society the source of these massagers, pizza, langar, tents should not be a matter of debate at all. But people are enquiring about the ‘funding’ of these commodities so eagerly as if it’s not food but some deadly explosive or weapons of mass rioting. We saw exactly the same reactions last year too when biryani was being served at Shaheen Bagh for women protesting against CAA. It’s actually ironic how people find it completely normal for protestors to get lathicharged, shelled with tear gas and water canons, but protestors eating pizza immediately becomes the talk of the town. This also highlights the classist mindset of our society, “who is worthy of eating what?” Farmers, or for that matter, anyone can eat anything they want. A person’s occupation cannot decide what they are worthy of eating, wearing, or places they can go to. In a democracy, nobody can dictate what a protest site should look like, unless it is causing harm to fellow citizens or the law and order situation.

It connot be denied that there are constant efforts from the political leadership to dial down the cause of the protests, but such agitations also serve as a mirror in the face of the society. If a pizza makes us ask questions instead of the death of fifteen protesting farmers till date, then that says a lot about our dead instincts.