Quarantine Times

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Endless video calls and psych
Is how I spend my day
And here’s to hoping that
This doesn’t go beyond may

This quarantine is annoying
There has to be another way
When is this going to end
when can I go out and play?

Virtual assistants have become friends
Siri is the only one saying hey
I ask her for the corona update
Beyond which we have nothing to say

You've done enough damage
Corona can you please go away?
And here’s to hoping that
This doesn’t go beyond may

I will never cancel plans
even to a classical ballet
I have learned my lesson
Corona can you please go away?

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All time highs

Think Non-Fiction is Boring? Think Again.

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You think non-fiction books are dry?  You think there’s no story, no suspense?  Just a bunch of facts or perspectives with nothing to keep you hooked?  Then you are very wrong, my friend! Non-fiction books can be incredibly addictive. Once you step out of the fictional world and into the reality of non-fiction, you’ll see the scales tip. Every decision carries weight. Every move has to be calculated, because unlike in fiction, when someone messes up in real life, the consequences are real. Watching people factor in risks, make tricky, bold, or even borderline insane decisions will leave you anxious for them. It doesn’t matter that it happened years ago—you’re right there with them in that moment of panic and uncertainty. Non-fiction also teaches you empathy in a way fiction can’t always achieve. You live through the triumphs and failures of real people, understanding the weight of their choices, the courage in their risks, and the humanity in their flaws. You begin to se...
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The Gravity of "Us"

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I am very much a family person. I love my family. I love my immediate family to death, but I also love parts of my extended family. Not that all of us are great, or characters straight out of the movie Hum Saath Saath Hain. We bitch, we gossip, we do panchayat, we take offence, we give offence — the whole nine yards. But somehow, we still manage to be nice to each other. We still manage to love each other through all the lies and backstabbing. We fight over petty things, but we also forgive easily — well, most of us. And we’ve had big fights. Fights where it felt impossible to come back from, and guess what? We came back. We might bitch about each other, but we fiercely protect each other from the world. Yeah, I can bitch about them. Geetika, you keep your trap shut. Think of it as a bunch of us being held together by clay. Sometimes, someone comes loose, but with just a tad bit of water, it’s an easy fix. But of late, I think the clay is starting to harden and become brittle. Guess g...
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First year :a look back (19 June, 2013)

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So, after one full year, which now seems to have gone by very quickly, I sit here thinking about it. This one year has changed everything. I still remember the very first day when I stood at the gate and looked at my college, my home for the next four years. It was nothing I had imagined it to be. Rather, from the first look, it seemed pretty bad, and I thought to myself, "How will I do it?" But then, as I took a closer look, it did not seem so bad. So what if the roofs had moss all over them, and what if my room was in the extreme corner? It was my world now, and I had to make the best of it. I met a lot of people and made a lot of friends—some lasted only for a week or so, and some are still beside me, partners in crime. College is a place where you make your own decisions and your own identity. And every single decision counts and adds to your personality and gets stuck to you . You meet all kinds of people here, some who are like you and some who are comp...
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A lot has been happening in our country over the last few weeks. There has been a lot of talk about it in every form of media available. I myself have been giving a lot of thought to the processions happening all over the country. It is a very complex and complicated issue. On the one hand, I cannot even begin to understand and comprehend the emotions of hundreds of millions of people across the world, who have their emotions invested in this and their joy on the 22nd of January and Ram Mandir. And my love to all of them. It has been a long battle, and they finally got what they had always wanted.  In a serendipitous moment last night, while engrossed in reading Walter Isaacson's "Elon Musk," I came across a chapter about Twitter, talking about Elon Musk and Parag Agarwal. This prompted a train of thought in my mind about the millions of Indians relocating to the USA annually. I imagined a future where, perhaps, a century or two from now, people of Indian origin would con...
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Five and a Half Years and a Lifetime Ago

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As I make my way from the airport to Bangalore city, nearly six years after I departed from it, memories flood back to me. I reminisce about the time I spent here, recalling one of my closest friends who used to reside near the airport, close to that massive mall. Instinctively, I yearn to visit her - the version of her from back then, in that old neighborhood where I used to travel long hours over the weekends just to be with her. She was like a home to me during those times, always there when I needed her, whether it was after getting too high from smoking up or during moments of conflict with others. We would spend hours watching random TV shows and engaging in heartfelt conversations. Mornings would find us cuddled together, reluctant to face the realities of our adult lives and the responsibilities that accompanied them. I remember driving through the chaotic Bangalore traffic for two hours just to be by her side when she was sick and alone. Our bond was akin to that of family; in...
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Home! :)

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Home! The place where your heart comes alive. Home, the place where you feel safe!   Home, the place with all your memories. You can travel the world, stay at four seasons, meet the most interesting people and have the most exquisite food, but in the end you will always come back home. Home is the place you grow up in. The place where your mom measured your height against the wall, the place where you hid maggi in your cupboard, the place you long to be when you need comfort. It makes you happy just to be there again. All of us have our own rooms and we like it so. If the magazine is on the floor, then that is probably where it is supposed to be. And we don't like it when anyone "messes" it up or even tries to clean it up. Our home is a part of us. What if I were to suddenly uproot you give you a new house and say here this is your new room, love it! This has happened to me every 3-4 years. My dad gets transferred eve...
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Posts, Likes, Updates, Instagram and the Web of Social Media

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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...
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BITS Connect

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This one's for the two of two! The title might suggest that this is something to do with the BITS initiative, but no it isn't so relax! We all have friends and then we all have best friends. The people who are always next to us, partners in crime, holding our hand during a breakup and then later kicking our ass too. You're actually supposed to know the other person for quite sometime and only then is when you start trusting the other person and you become best friends. I here have a slightly different story. Well its was summer on 2014, the sun was high up in the sky when..oh who am I kidding! Well in BITS after our second year we have a college mandated internship for about 2 months. This internship or as we call is Practice School 1 is allotted to us by our college itself. So in one station we are about 10-12 kids from all three BITS campuses,i.e. Pilani, Goa and Hyderabad. When I was allotted my station I was happy. It was close to home (theoretically) and I alread...
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There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing

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I am someone who generally feels very cold. A testament to this is that I would wear a windcheater in Goa in August and September when it would rain because I would feel slightly cold. I remember as a child, we went on a family trip to Himachal Pradesh and we had gone to through Rohtang Pass and then to a valley with a lot of snow where people were playing with snow. I remember being out for 5 minutes and then turning blue. My memories from the rest of the day are lying down in the car wearing every sweater possible and every blanket my parents could find, while the rest of my family were out playing in the snow. Again, I feel very cold.  Now, contrary to me, my husband, the Mallu, who has lived all his life mostly below the Tropic of Capricorn, DOES NOT feel cold at all. He will be roaming around the house in December in shorts, while I will be putting on my thermal socks. I really think he is a husky who would thoroughly enjoy extremely cold places. His birthday is coming up this...
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Last week, I had a really lovely dream and woke up nostalgic and happy, with almost a smile. Context: I took a week-long break from work, so my mind was quite at ease and not worrying about meetings and deliverables.  Alright, so coming back to my dream. I am in my college room (the one I lived in during my 3rd year). I was maybe visiting campus or coming back after a break, but that wasn't very clear to me. Alright, so I am in my room, and it is very cluttered and full of things such as books, photographs, clothes, guitars, harmoniums, pens, notebooks with a clothing line going right through the middle of the room, and whatnot.  As I took a closer look at the things in the room and checked the cupboard, it started returning to me. These are things that I have lost or forgotten about, all sitting in that room for me to discover and explore. There is a pile of books, and atop is a Manchester United book that I had gifted my husband last year on his birthday while we were in Goa...
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