Tag: Reality

The story is always there!

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t written much frequently in the last 3 years. I blame having nothing to write about apart from the misery of the world and the personal drama. For a long time, I thought there was nothing ‘happening’ around me. So finally took a step, and decided to venture outside my 4 walls to see what the world is dealing with. And what I saw, in a single day, are all worth pages of stories each. Let me summarize today, so that one of these days when I have nothing to write, I have something to brood on.

  1. Scene 1 – a vaccine centre in urban Kerala. Sparingly crowded, with enough and more frontline staff taking care of the entire arrangement. And then I notice, the crowd is almost fully elderly. Not surprising since free vaccinations are mostly for the 60+ age bracket. But what struck me is how all of they were alone. One or two couples, one or two with a bystander. But most of them, alone. For a vaccine that keeps them safe from a fatal virus. But, alone.
  2. Scene 2 – a town bus stand in urban Kerala. I enquire bus timings and walk away as I was running late. But the driver reminds me he is my best bet and assures to reach my destination in time. And he does. Drives safe, but keeps his schedule. Kerala private bus? Oh yes, I was surprised too.
  3. Scene 3 – an office reception in the heart of a Kerala city. I rush in with my share of food delivery (juice for the scorching heat). The guy at the reception insists I try out his food recommendations. Casually mentions vaccination, Covid deaths and how he lost his family members. Casually? Is he over it? Or is he just too much in denial?
  4. Scene 4 – security guard at the office reclined on a sofa. The building is empty except for me and him. Is cctv all that’s making me feel safe? Or is it his occasional checks on me? Or is it his taking away the earphones as I approach the door? Or is it just his greeting and enquiring if I’d be there the next day?
  5. Scene 5 – an auto rickshaw in urban Kerala. The mobile app is screwed and I am struggling to make him understand how to ‘fully’ quit an app and reopen it. App lights up and we begin our journey. Visibly distant to conversations I initiate, he looks new to the city, with his distinct slang. I get down a bit too away from home so that he finds his way out of the maze quickly. I explain the route and walk home. And I turn back to see him still parked where he dropped me off. I walk again and turn back again. He is still there till I take the last turn and out of his sight. Then I hear him accelerate and go his way. Was he looking out?

Patriarchy and misogyny

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

I casually throw these words away in friendly conversations with my people. Sometimes jokingly, sometimes desperately trying to hide the hurt with a joke. I understand I am not entirely fair in throwing these words around so easily. But, it just makes life a bit easier to hide under these blanket statements than pinpoint this person or that incident.

Patriarchy. We are all victims and survivors of it. Men, women, others. Young, old and ‘lost in the middle’. You, me and them. But often, the grand layer of privilege helps you look beyond it. Privilege of money, people and freedom lets you move forward and leave it all behind. But yet, once in a while, it creeps up through tiny crevices and hits you before you know it. Misogyny soon follows and drowns you in a pool of guilt and helplessness. That’s not to say we are bunch of helpless clueless beings. But when the blow comes from unexpected directions, it’s only naturally you fall and struggle.

Very evidently, this blog has been all about me and my experiences and how I perceive life. This is also one such, but I am unusually hesitant to write this down. It brings me shame and sorrow to quote people from my life this way. But I need this to be off my chest. So here it goes. Fair disclaimer: none of these is immediate family/friends. Phew!

  1. Doesn’t matter what you achieve or do. A woman is a burden to the family. ‘It’ needs to be unloaded onto another family through marriage.
  2. You will be defended and protected because we care about you. But only as long as you abide by the ‘rules’ we lay down for you. Else you are an outcast. An immoral woman.
  3. You may be 30 or 50. You better check with ‘family’ before you decide what to do with the money you earned. Oh this credit card? No, that’s not for you. Why would we waste our time trying to sell it to you!
  4. You may be on the right track, driving abiding to rules of the road. Bang! But that accident is all because of you. Why did the men of the house ‘let’ you drive?!
  5. Okay, let’s say the mistake is on both sides. But now if we go to the police, it’d be ‘uncomfortable’ for you. So let’s just say your male family was driving, and not you. 17 year old teen boy would also be okay, just not you.

The list doesn’t end, but let’s just stop with top 5 for now. So is the blame all on the world and none on me? Absolutely not. There a lot of times I have played the ‘woman card’ and got of annoying insurance/loan representatives. Many times when I have been over protective and unnecessarily worried about a female family member or friend. I have enjoyed a childhood favourite movie overlooking the spewing misogyny. It’s one step at a time to break this century old thoughts and ideologies. One step at a time.

A conversation

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

Person:
Why can’t all people be equally happy or equally sad?

Why are some more happy and some more sad?

Another person:
I guess that’s an eternal question that doesn’t have a solution.

It’s also similar to asking why are some people rich and some poor.

Disparity is rooted in humanity.

In material and immaterial attributes.

Wealth, happiness and what not!

Person:
Beauty is in disparity is such a cringing statement that I can’t stop uttering.

Another person:
Isnt it not?

What drives us to live?

Desire?

Where does desire come from?

Disparity.

If all of us live unhappily, or equally happily, what do we look upto? What makes us live for the next day?

Person:
Yeah, that’s what I meant. But we can say that philosophically because we are on the other side of the equal.

Another person:
Yes.

Person:
It’s simple. When problem hits us, it stops being beautiful in disparity.

Another person:
Disparity is not really beautiful or ugly.

It is merely something that exists. And could be a root cause of all human existence.

Exactly like ego.

Without ego, there is no humanity.

These are some abstract constructs that keeps us alive.

Desire is driven by despair. Despair is driven by ego. God knows what ego is driven by. Our human nature?

Person:
😊

Person:
Some equals are more equal than some other.

How (un)fortunate!

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

So this weird thing happened today. Mom was upset about something in the family. And she was loudly retrospecting on why does this happen to us alone. Me, not okay with mom feeling bad about anything, immediately pitched in on how it is not just for us. Things go wrong for everyone and we just don’t get to know since its private. Tada, did my part and I was ready to move on from the topic. Out of nowhere, my sister weighed in her perspective of things and elaborated my point with some neighborhood stories of similar experiences. And mom seemed visibly calmer. Maybe because she realised our point is valid and began to share the perspective. Or maybe because she was surprised about how her daughters are all grown up. I’m not sure what she thought. But I personally am quite proud of how insightful my sister has grown up to be. Last I checked, she was just a kid!

Off topic, if you feel bad about how 2020 has made your life horrible and feel miserable, take a deep breath and close your eyes. Now think of all those 2020 desk calendars eating dust on the locked up office tables. With no one to flip their leaf and with no realisation of life’s purpose! How does that make you feel now? A tiny bit better is the right answer. 😉

Tears make you…

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

Strong, or weak? It’s a debated topic. Boys shouldn’t cry, men shouldn’t show their weakness and so on. Sometimes it’s beyond gender. Crying is somehow always associated with weakness and fragility. It’s weird though, that the other extreme of emotions aren’t associated with weakness or vulnerability. If you ask me, I think a person is the most vulnerable when they are angry. Of course, crying is perhaps the saddest phase, but anger is when you have no control on your words, your body language, your psyche as such. Anger is when you say things you wouldn’t have said otherwise, anger is when you lose your mind – anger is your vulnerability. When you cry, you expose your vulnerability, of course. So do you, when you are angry. The difference is, one vulnerability is exploited in favour of others but not necessarily against you, and the other vulnerability is almost always exploited against your own interests. When in tears, you might agree to give away half your wealth to someone empathizing with you. But in anger, you might just end up breaking the most expensive vase you bought last week. Without having to explain, wealth and the vase are all just metaphors and not literally about their physical worth. I always fear being exploited in a way that I lose something cherished, than someone else gaining something from me. But again, I cry as often as I lose my temper and throw stuff around (atleast inside my head!). It’s a balance most people struggle to establish. I would totally like to say crying makes you stronger, but that could be very one-sided since I don’t know how strong you get without crying. One thing I can, however, is that anger makes you equally fragile and weak in the knees. Should we not start a saying that ‘Boys shouldn’t be angry’? Perhaps, take out the gender and rephrase – ‘People who make it are people who start with inner balance!’

Ashamed!

~ Soumya ~ 2 Comments

I am inexplicably ashamed and mutilated by this day. Today. Despite a screeching proud mob around me. It was such a disgusting experience. Feels like I just became a part of some unforgivable crime. An offence to humanity, whatever tiny bit that’s remaining in this world.

I had high expectations of this, people. You, every single one who worked for it, made me feel good. Until today. Until one of you proclaimed it so loud, that, all these that’s done right now, is totally ‘just for the sake of it!’ Well folks! That was total *******. What the heck was that then? The whole ‘social-networking’ about ‘social-commitment’! Who do you think you are bluffing here? Listen up people! It’s EXACTLY this way that you screw something as BIG as this! And yay! You have set one wonderful example! If you think this is how you carry forward a legacy bestowed upon you, then shame on you. Not me. But if you think this how you ‘boost’ your good for nothing public image, then shame on me. For trusting such a self centered organisation.

People do things wholly for themselves. 100% for their happiness. Their satisfaction. Their well being. But when people form a group, a stupid few like me expect something more. A group is looked upon, to contribute beyond the group. To do things beyond ‘just for the sake of it’. A minuscule amount of goodness and ‘commitment’ that the group claims! Be just. Be fair. Be transparent. And above all, continue being a group, not a mob. Be the ‘actual’ change you want to see in this world!

P.S. Names, people, events, or places are not mentioned here ‘purely’ out of a moral discipline and sensibility. Recipients of the message are free to respond, in private or public. And mind you, this is not a singled out voice. There’s a subtle group behind the voice. Thanks for the understanding.

Echoes of the silence!

~ Soumya ~ 1 Comment

Can silence echo? Does silence take a form of sound? I am wondering. How do mute people think? I mean, I think in English when I communicate in English, or Malayalam or Tamil, or whatever is relevant. How does a mute person think? Aren’t thoughts associated to words? And words to language? And language to syllables? And syllables to sound? Don’t we all need sound to think?! Obviously, no. I know. It’s not the knowledge. It’s the amazement. It’s the sheer marvel of life around you. I see a lot of mute people here. In bus. In the road. Mostly, coz there’s some school/institute for them nearby, which I haven’t come across with yet. So my awe is not totally out of place. I always see them communicate with each other in those crowded buses. They want a seat to sit down so that their hands are free to communicate thru their gesture. I used to feel bad. But then thinking about what might they do in the dark, I often let the thought just pass by and close my eyes in silence.

Ganesh chathurthy. Grand procession was on its way from the heart of the city, to the beach nearby for the auspicious ritual. Huge statues of Lord Ganesh would be thrown into the sea in reverence. The festive mood had stricken the city and the crowd hustled in the backdrop of deafening audio systems. Devotion was at its peak, with the blaring woofers. And I was to get a phone call exactly then, as I maneuvered myself out of the chaos, of noisy people and shrieking sound systems. I could do nothing but to put the caller on hold until I was out of the vicinity. On the way, I spotted two people. Probably, somebody whom I have already met but hard to recollect. The one thing I could connect, however, was that they were mute. They were talking. Calm and uninterrupted. The deluge of the sound systems hardly made any impact on their conversation. Life stood still. As the moment passed, I walked away, turning back at them once more. They were still talking. Unaware of the deafening sound. Unaware of the marvel. Unaware of the admiration.

Keep smiling!

~ Soumya ~ 1 Comment

Now that most conversations and relationships are maintained online, and there’s more ‘CAPSLOCK’ than actual yelling, more ttyl, more brb, more dnd, more cya, more whatever. Frankly, I don’t care. I don’t care if the soul in people’s communication is absent, I don’t care if emotions are dead, or if intimacy is lost or if distance builds between people! People are talking (rather blabbering) whatsoever! That’s more than glad! If you want warmth in your relationships, closeness with people of your life, and enliven the spirits, probably one should just go for it. Put your heart to it and do it. Online or offline. It’s not the means, it’s always the place where you make upto! Just wanted to say, to all those intellectual freaks, who lecture about how technology seeped into human relationships and fucked it up. How whiny is that! You don’t even know to guard your own mind and soul, and blame it all on the mind-less soul-less technology! It’s not gonna blame you back afterall!

But certainly, there’s one thing I greatly despise or find upsetting about the turn of events as such. These emoticons! Truly annoying! I’d rather say, misunderstood, misused and that’s such a mishap! Nobody ever fully gets what the other person tries to convey with a combination of colon, semi-colon, paranthesis and p’s and d’s and o’s! It’s been of such extensive use that it no longer means anytging. Well, use them anyway. I do too. They are the ice-breakers and once in a while, funny too. But I am sad how my smiles don’t pass by this. I put a : followed by a ) coz I actually really genuinely love to smile. And when I say keep smiling, I totally mean that. In the havoc of millions of colourful and disgusting smileys, I wish 🙂 could win the throne back and be the master of all smileys! Bring the pioneer back, I say! Back then, with the smiling face, was the only time we could actually communicate ’emoticons’ without confusion! A sad face, once in a while, was fine too!

Now thinking of it, ‘Keep smiling!’ was the motto of my school. The school that laid that basic blocks of my morale and principles. Wonder why it took me so long to assimilate the thought! Everytime, I saw that writing on the black board, I was wondering what’s up with the grown ups! Why would they even teach us to be escapists, run away from life, and ignore problems and just keep smiling? But now, at 21 years of age, I feel like Buddha! Like, the meaning just revealed to me. Like, all that I ever wanted was just buried so deep in my mind, next to a school girl’s confused thoughts! The answer reveals itself and it’s all in the smile. Putting it short, the whole deal here is that, when I tell you (you being my online conversation partner) ‘Keep smiling’, I most genuinely mean it. More than words.

Smile away!

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Learning and unlearning!

~ Soumya ~ 2 Comments

EntSo is the definition of the New Age success mantra, according to career guidance experts and professionals from the field. You learn things, aka the academia, and then you join the company and unlearn all that you learnt. From the Company’s point of view, it may so happen that everything that you have acquired as ‘seamless’ ken, may seem outdated and statistically irrelevant to your hirer! Now, that’s the twist in the story. Your ‘x’ number of years of ‘intense’ and ‘dedicated’ education unfold as a pile of futile acquisition of multitudes of ‘knowledge’! And this is when the key roles enter the drama. The trainers, come boosting you up, cheering you up, and finally ‘groom’ you into what the companies always wanted of the ‘Human Resources’! You now turn into ‘resources’, that can yield a huge market share of profit and fortune for the company.

At what stage should you approach the companies for being trained? Now that’s more like asking, “When can I sign up for my life screwing up program?” Well, technically, I am incorrect. After all, the end goal of every aspirant student is only to succumb to some fancy job offers and secure the future!(Or so presumed!) Out of the box thinking and innovations are all welcome, at every other phase of your life, but in your career choices! No matter what you learn, what you are exceptional at, by the end of the course, grab the offer letter and gloat about it. Or else, you are making a terrible mistake in your life. How are you gonna answer, ‘Ningade collegil placementin aarum vannille?’ (Nobody came to you college for placements?), ‘Ella paperum kittkyilla alle?’ (Didn’t clear your back papers yet eh!) The concerns and queries are never ending. Forget the annoyance they may cause, but the discouragement is irredeemable. If you aren’t placed by the end of your course, you are by default, deemed something well below an average potential person. Your lack of interest totally doesn’t count, as long as the fact remains that you weren’t offered big ‘corporate jobs’!
Brush up your skills and groom yourself, and there you are, right opposite your HR interviewer, the offer letter filling the space between you two! All IT giants have climbed all the way down the ladder to help groom and uplift each one of us, to escalate the overall ‘productivity’ in us!
My college had a session scheduled. Conducted by an IT giant, venturing into New Age domains of business. And the people who came down, aka the trainers, interacted with a group of 150 IT career aspirants, or so assumed. The session was an unbearable branding of the company, its achievements, pointing out why might we prefer this company over some other company and on and on. The people who came down, gloated about their unusual activity patterns and achievement scales. At the end of the session, we were asked to fill in a feedback form. Rating the experience with the trainers, the whole impression about the session etc. That was one glad moment for me, where I could break the shell, and express my detest. I spoke my mind into the paper, ticked the most negative responses for half the questions and then casually looked around. Alas! Am I the only one again? The person next to me had polar opposite answers. It so seemed that the sheerfutilityrendered by those few hours of life wererecognizableonly to me.
What I found totally unacceptable and pointless is the way they sell the company. The promotion techniques, the strategic planning etc. are all well plotted and custom designed. Their progress has been entertained and enjoyed by us, but that just wouldn’t stop them, not even for a moment of pause. The struggle continues. To be trained under the best. To be training the best. Placing the best, and finally, being the best of all. There were never any compromises. And there’s never enough room to think beyond! And may be, that could be why there exists polar opposite attitude and perceptions amongst us!

Talking to my mom casually, I mentioned how nice it’d be to have my/our own idea of a company brewing up! And guess what she has offered to say! Well, its the same that all mothers ever would have said! Go secure my career with some company, and then ‘consider’ innovations! As if!

Sudden death!

~ Soumya ~ 1 Comment

Again I clarify, this post and me have nothing to do with football or sports. My blog titles are vaguely related to the actual content of the post and are easily misunderstood in the context. I seem to like it very much personally, like one would name their kids after celebrities so as to make them popular or on the hope that atleast the kids would reach great heights, for the ‘namesake’ atleast. So I name my posts, for that extra response to it.

Now here, the sudden death is actually about the real death, that may happen any time, almost very suddenly! And that’s mostly gonna be an accident that’s brought upon all by myself. Something needs to be done before I fill the orbituary column, with a sudden death. Somebody do something about cancelling my driver’s license. I am not yet done living. Nor learning diving.