Oblivion

I'd rather get a brain freeze or camp in a tent than sit with a cast and my torn ligament! I'd rather go to the gym or in winter I would swim I'd rather study for an exam have dinner with the extended fam I'd rather eat broccoli and have my car get a dent than sit with a cast and my torn ligament! I'd rather clean my desktop go on a date with a mop I'd rather wear a fluffy dress I swear I would clean up my mess I'd say yes to all plans and go to every event than sit with a cast and my torn ligament! I'd rather break my iPhone dance to a stupid ringtone have my headphones get lost pay double the shipping cost I'd figure out my taxes and log every dollar I spent than sit with a cast and my torn ligament!

Everyone, literally everyone you meet will tell you that your undergrad will be the best 3 or 4 years of your life, and there will be nothing like it again. Those of us who are yet to go to college eagerly look forward to it, and those of us who have completed our undergrad go down the staircase of memories and nostalgia. Having completed my engineering about three years ago, I can certify the notion that college life indeed is a lot of fun. You have independence but don't have to worry about the realities of life yet. Not quite yet. I myself have had a wonderful four years filled with Maggi, cheese garlic naan, lots of cheap alcohol in beach shacks and one particularly shady bar, road trips, and conversations on footpaths that end only when the sun shines at you. But let's just stop here and think, if what everyone claims with such gusto is actually true, and estimating that our average lifespan is about 80 and college ends at roughly 21, that means the best part of our l

In the last year, I have come to realize a few things about myself. Or maybe I have changed and these things are a part of the new and improved Shiro. If any of you have been following my blog, a year ago catastrophe struck and I packed up my bags and moved away, closer to home. I believe we can never heal in the environment we were hurt in, so I left and decided to change my life and everything I didn't like about it. It has been a little over a year since I left 2063. The house I had found after 2 months of roaming around the streets of Bellandur and made my home. The house I loved, with its twinkly lights, the balcony overlooking the lake, and the plethora of bean bags lying around everywhere. I loved everything about it. It was my home. I felt at peace there. Okay go getting back to the point,  what I have realized about myself is that I like to be placed into challenging positions. It makes me stronger. Somehow over the last year, I have transformed into the sword of Gry

I tear up every time I leave Goa. Life is so different from what I imagined it would be back in college. I can't stress enough how different people are, and not just how different I have become, for the better, of course. Life is not bad; it's half-decent, but just not what 22-year-old me thought it would be like. Goa is my innocence. I was a naive little kid, drinking, eating fries, and having fun. Oh, and cheese garlic naan. Can't forget cheese garlic naan. Goa and BITS, they are home. They hold so much and have given me so much. I am indebted forever. People often ask me, 'It's been three years since I graduated, and I am still that excited to go back.' It's just a different world there, a different time, a familiar yet different feeling. Recently, I have been exploring the mountains, going trekking, sitting by the streams, driving through those clouds—the whole thing. And I have to say, it's wonderfully different. I have been on a couple of trips, an

ज़िन्दगी है चौराहा नहीं भीड़ नहीं चाहिए इन रास्तो मे मुलाकते तोह हुई मुलाकातों के संग थोड़ी बातें भी हुई रोकेगे न हम तुमको कुछ यही समझ कर जाईये ज़िन्दगी है चौराहा नहीं भीड़ नहीं चाहिए नेक हो अगर इरादे तोह कुछ पल तुम रुक जाना वरना जिस रास्ते से आये वही वापस चले जाइये ज़िन्दगी है चौराहा नहीं भीड़ नहीं चाहये

As I sit down to write this, I have too many things going on in my head. Too many Manali stories, too many ideas, a lot of great places to visit if you ever happen to go down there and maybe somethings that made me think. Let me start by saying, that this short vacation to Old Manali, was by far the most chill 4 odd days I have had in I don't even know how long! It was a lot of French fries, every board game ever, sitting by the river and listening to the gushing sound of the water, smoking up to the point of indescribable chill, talking endlessly and enjoying silences, walking along the street with no purpose and trying to take one decent picture on the bridge. This was my trip. Though the best part was trekking to the waterfalls, sitting down along the water with Magoo (the doggo who led us there), eating Maggi, listening to soft music, glancing at my Malcolm Gladwell, laughing at strangers as they were attempting to get a candid profile picture just right with the girl wh

Our generation doesn’t go to doctors, it googles or webMDs. We eventually do go to doctors but not unless we have diagnosed ourselves fully. So, we claim to have various ailments and diseases that sound so complicated you could find them in my dust-infused organic chemistry books.  One such problem people claim to have is “Depression”. A condition very serious and just as misunderstood and exploited. If I were to take everyone on their face value every second person is suffering from depression. And yes, the number has increased significantly. But people throw this term around very casually. I have too. Until I actually suffered from “clinical depression”. I did not realize how serious it was. Earlier, if I were a little down or sad, I would term it as depression. And what this does reduces the seriousness of the problem. If everyone is going through it how serious could it actually be? But that is not true. Everyone isn’t going through it. Taking a quiz on the internet doesn’t give

I’m almost 10 years or so into my mensuration and you would’ve thought, aah it’s been quite long, women must be used to it by now. Let me tell you something, we don’t. Unbearable discomfort and out of control hormones wait to greet us every 30-40 odd days. And we are expected to function at the same level of competency, let alone talk about it openly. I remember as kids, it was very hush-hush. You weren’t supposed to talk about this, especially to boys who would snicker and giggle every time the mathematics teacher said the word mensuration. So mature. Now you will say, c’mon Shiro they are only kids, but sorry, if girls the same age are supposed to go through this, then we should educate our boys to at least not make it more uncomfortable. As a kid if I was down figuratively and literally, all I could tell my friends is I have a stomach ache, but how often can you use the same excuse? As an adult, if someone asks me what is wrong, I tell them clearly, I am down, or if

Being able to share happy moments with your friends and family makes them even happier. We all like sharing our little achievements or moments of joy. Back in the 1990s that pool was very limited, we only had word of mouth, so the reach was limited to our mahaulla. But now with the explosion of social media, it has become far easier to share things with a larger audience and there is a template to do it too. Damn, social media has templatized our lives, let that sink in. There is a template for everything. Now you don’t even have to write happy birthday, it’ll just ask you if you’d like to wish someone and present you with options and you just have to click! But yes, my point being, you join a college it goes up on social media, you get a job that too, you go for an outing and you can’t resist sharing it on Instagram and the same goes for our vacations and trips. So something that began as just a naïve way of sharing your experiences with your close ones has now become an importa

Last night I faced my worst nightmare That’s right I found my first grey hair How could I be getting that old? Though At 30 degrees I do feel cold! Whenever I see those rowdy boys I so want to complain about the noise Last night I faced my worst nightmare That’s right I found my first grey hair I can’t go to work after a night out I’m hungover, please don’t shout! Friday nights I am home by twelve I spend the weekend cleaning my shelves Last night I faced my worst nightmare That’s right I found my first grey hair

Birthdays are a lot of fun, if you are a kid. As an adult, birthdays become annoying. I think it is a bell curve, wherein the beginning you don’t care about your birthday because let’s face it, you are much too young. This interest or enjoyment increases with time when you are a kid and finally understand that birthday = gifts, and then comes back slumping when society thinks you are much too big to be wearing a birthday cap and blowing out candles. I am one of those people who always dread their birthdays. Somehow because you expect your birthday to be special, and as a grownup, there isn’t much special left to be done in life, ice cream cakes are not a novelty anymore and any money you get goes towards your credit card fund and not to buy a magnifying glass and playing detective. Somehow there is too much pressure on birthdays, and hence the dread. You've got to party, you have to have a good time, and in achieving that, simple things that otherwise make you happy fail to

It was the first week of August in 2016, I believe, when I rushed to Bangalore to start my internship a full month after everyone else. It was my first time in Bangalore, and I remember being intimidated by the city itself. It was very different from everything I had known. The very next day, I was to start my internship at a management consulting firm called Zinnov. I knew one college senior who worked there, so it was a relief that I’d have a familiar face around. I entered, filled out a heap of forms, and then was ushered to another building on the same fateful “Jyoti Nivas College road,” barely 20 steps from the main office. The words BSR arcade glared at me as I entered the office. The HR brought me to the first floor, where I saw about 20 people working on their laptops. I was introduced to everyone there, but I barely remembered anyone's name. I was assigned a seat and told to wait for the manager, who was busy with a meeting. I opened my laptop and waited for it to start. I

So, google has this pesky feature where they show you your “memories”. This day, that year format. For instance, it’s 21 st today, it’ll show me whatever photos are on my phone around today going back even 4-5 years. This could be both a good and bad thing, totally depending on the current situation. You can go aww and send those pictures to your friends and reminisce or look at them get angry and blow your presentation. These could be two extremes. And google does this almost every day. Every single day. It’ll show me old photos of college, with friends sitting in the library or hanging out in the hostel, of my internship days, when I lived alone in Bangalore and kept hopping around, or my first job and apartment with my friends. They show a transition from a totally care-free “too many friends to handle” with the love of my life college student scenario to a fatter, older “when did I last speak to my friends” giving up on love kinda situation. That escalated or should I say d

Having overeaten at an office lunch, I was too sleepy and sluggish to actually work in the office. So I started talking to my friend, generally, what is going on in our lives, discussing our point of views on a quote I misread that morning! The quote was "Just because something works, does not mean that it can't be improved" from Black Panther. I read the opposite and thought about it and that actually made a lot of sense to me. So that is what we were talking about. In the midst of this discussion, I tell him, "Bro, I'm going to tell you something. Don't freak. Don't judge." And then I told him that I wanted to start going to a temple. Not to pray as such, but just to find some peace and maybe a bit of strength. Let's rewind. I am an agnostic. I need proof. I can't blindly accept the fact that this statue in front of me is God. Show it to me and I will believe it. But over the last few weeks, I am beginning to understand the appeal o

When you live in a city long enough, you get to know the ins and the outs of the place. What are the best places to get some ice-cream at 2 in the night, where can you get a decent cup of coffee, which movie theatre has the best popcorn and so on. You make a little black book. I've written about this in another post of mine, I think it's called a little black book. And when you move to a new place, you don't know anything at all, it takes time to crack these codes unless someone has done those for you already, like with Bangalore, I already knew the best places because a friend, (let's call her the one who fed us to our heart's content) for us had already been there before me for a good six months or Goa before that, where we had a hoard of seniors guiding us. I did not have the initial period where you don't really know if you're going to work or not with a city before. This time moving to Gurgaon, a city I have come to love for many a reason, was a bl

I have been reading Becoming, Michelle Obama's autobiography (my first autobiography) and I must say it is a really good book! I have finished just the first part but I am thoroughly enjoying it! How she talks about her life and describes everything, so simple yet so impactful, is what has got me hooked. There are a few lines that I already love, one of them is, "Your story is what you have, what you will always have" Now, this was something that made me think. It got me thinking, that our stories are really all we have, our story of becoming who we are, and we must own it completely. But getting back to the point. In the book, she talks about the time when she was going to start Princeton. She talked about everything going on in her life at that point, and how it was a big change for her. She also mentioned a boyfriend she had and that they were in love, so much so that he even came to drop her off to college. And even though they loved each other, they broke up,

We are who we are because of where we come from. My god, so many W's. Bear with me. This is a good one. This is something that I have heard people say a lot, but I finally understand what it means. Theory padhi thi ab practically samajh aaya hai.   You may agree to disagree but what I have come to understand is that who we are is heavily and I can't stress enough but extremely heavily dependent on our family background. When I say family background, I mean how are parents are, what their nature is, what was the atmosphere of our house and how we were brought up. And this influences us in ways we are not even aware of. Our personality is our family, our background and our experiences. Our likes, dislikes, triggers, turn-ons, reactions, confidence, issues have all come from our families. We are more like our parents than we would care to admit. In fact, we millennials think we are different and unique, we think your personalities are unique, haha, they're borrowed. You

I am so very bad at making small talk The sick I frighten, the elderly I mock. Why isn’t “Hey, Good morning!” enough Why do you ask me what is up? I just smile and say nothing much Showing my teeth, my phone I clutch Why do we have to follow this charade? This is the reason earphones were made! You do your thing, and I’ll do mine If you wanna talk, let meet over wine I am so very bad at making small talk The sick I frighten, the elderly I mock.

How many of your opinions are actually your own? If you think carefully, you will realize very few, or maybe even none. Most of our opinions are either picked up from some article we read or some famous personality or that friend who has lots to say. Quite a lot of our opinions and likes exist due to influence. Maybe you love Priyanka Chopra and you get influenced by her and actively participate in feministic issues around you. There is nothing wrong with being influenced, as long as you process that recommendation on your own, rather than, just blindly accepting it. This brings me to my next point, Groupthink. A few months ago, I became aware of this term called groupthink. While struggling to make sense of certain situations, one of my friends, he'd like to be called lil' bitch (he is the wierdo! you will get the reference, keep reading) told me to not take it so personally, as this was a classic example of groupthink. And that made a lot of sense. I finally had an e

I have woken up But I'm still not awake I might look interested Believe me, it's fake I am sitting in a call But my mind is away I'm wearing a jacket But I'm thinking of may The screen is out of focus And I'm stifling a yawn I'm sitting in a room I'd rather sunbathe on a lawn I have woken up But I'm still not awake I might look interested Believe me, it's fake I am nodding along With affirmative sounds You're paying me in rupees But I'm spending in pounds! I pretend to understand and scribble on my pad please end this call or I'll end up mad! I have woken up But I'm still not awake I might look interested Believe me, it's fake

The winter refuses to end. It gets warm for a couple of days, I declare that winter has finally come to an end, and what do I wake up the next morning? Ahh! It has rained again, so crawl under your blankets people. This touch and go winter game, has caught up with me. Unable to go to work, I decide to work on my blog today. I was going through my older blog posts and came across one called Clutter, where I talk about how all the clutter/junk we have in our lives is not non-sensical junk but actually tidbits of memories, each telling us a different story. This post reminded me of a very sweet story, that I think deserves it's own post. So here it goes. I call it "The stolen shot glasses". I think it was my 4th year and I was hanging with a couple of my friends. It was the four people, three of us dual degree students and were always neck deep in assignments and labs and projects and whatnot. Chemical engineering put a serious damper in our college lives!  So yeah, one

In trying to make sense of the world, you forget to make sense of yourself. You sometimes forget who you really are. Or maybe in trying to adapt to this world, you change, unwillingly, unknowingly. You forget your essence or don't value them anymore. I know I have. I have been consciously trying to change my ways, no exactly change, but tweak them to be able to survive in the circus. I was going through old posts and photos and came across something that made me smile and then cry a little. It was a post one of my college friends had put up for me on my birthday. She had written a small poem for me, and believe me when I read it now, I think there is no better way to describe me. I mean every single word she wrote is who I am. And trust me I am not just saying that because she said nice things I genuinely mean it. Reading it, reminded me of the person I am and have been always and that I do not need to let go of myself to be able to fit in. Here is what she wrote. It is jus

Update: Instagram has disabled viewers for stories post 24 hours now, even if they are saved as highlights. I think this is a good step on Instagram's part to limit the kind of insights they give us. Giving us insights into who is watching our story is fine, but the ranking system they had in place for the viewers of a story based on profile visits and interactions, was just not required. I don't know how many of you have seen that meme or read this quote somewhere, "Disney is what is wrong with the world". Those Disney fairytales and movies paint a picture which is far from truth and people spend their lives living with such notions. Little girls grow up watching these movies, where the princesses are always pretty and thin and petite and that is the entire depth of their character. Then comes along our handsome prince charming who overcomes an obstacle, a monster or the evil stepsisters, eventually rescuing our princess and then they sail off into the sunset for

Has it ever happened to you that you completely blanked out on the name of a place that was a regular hangout spot for you? I am a person with an impressive memory. I remember things decently well. More than normal people do. This is an added advantage in an argument. You can go "San do hazar aath mai, baaies janvary ko tumne blah blah" Somehow Hindi gives a more dramatic effect. So yeah anyway, I am a person with a good memory. My friends always get annoyed with me because of this. Yesterday I saw a photo of a friend, in front of a restaurant and it looked familiar. And me, the memory woman, blanked out. I must've been to that place about two dozen times and can even remember what it looks like. But for the love of God, could not manage to recollect the name of that place. And when I thought about it, trivial details kept coming back to me, the long waiting lines, the dessert counter, the jug I liked and that fact that anytime you go there, you are sure to spot a BI

So all day I have been working on a report on Customer Experience. I have been wracking my brain to figure out a comprehensive value chain for the same with the minimum possible overlap there can be. For those of you who are unaware of the term value chain, here is the Wikipedia definition. A value chain is a full range of activities that businesses go through to bring a product or services to the market (Now I know it really doesn't fit, but just go with it) After a really long discussion with a colleague on the same topic. I came back to my desk to do a bit of research and you know what struck me! The value chain of a breakup, not a romantic relationship breakup, but a breakup in a platonic relationship, for instance, friends. Well, the name is a work in progress. The one you see in the title is the final one. I don't know how or why. It just came to me. I turned back to the last page of my diary (good old school days!) and started scribbling. I made something in und