A Life Update
Why not write what a vlogger would capture with his camera
I wrote about some thoughts last week,(you read it a couple of days back) and now I hope to write something about me. Of course, I write about me, but these are directly about me. Consider it as a textual version of those “A day in My Life” videos. I’ve always wanted to vlog. I like the way people share their lives, however tiny frames they might be. I think the audio-visual aspect makes it a better way of getting in touch with people. Podcasts and blogs use only a single way of getting in touch. Vlogs combine audio and video with storytelling. In addition, I think people are more likely to spend scrolling through YouTube, or other video service platforms than through Substack.
But then again, think writing is an art that gives more creative freedom to the consumer. When you write something, you give hints of something that happened in real or in your mind. The readers are now able to understand and derive from it the world of their choice. They can change the lighting of the set to their choice, they can change the colour of chairs, or the height of the doctor and on and on. That’s also one reason I don’t give many visual descriptions in what I write. I hope that the readers will try to imagine the setup. Also I think it gives you a way to express feelings you experienced. I remember reading many feelings and being able to experience it, but I haven’t had that scale of experience visually.
In a world that is hell-bent on censoring, codifying and regulating what every person speaks or thinks, this is my attempt to make things a bit more elastic. This regulation involves regulation from the centre’s ban on news channels to the (with all due respect) recent “liberal” outcries on the use of pronouns I got in my mail a couple of months back(come on, you really think the accidental use of “he” will discourage some people from participating? Are identities that fragile?). For now, let’s allow people to design their own mosques, hospitals, waiting rooms and all. I think it's just nice.
The last couple of weeks have been a bit overwhelming, and I’ve tried to stay afloat in numerous tetra-packs of fruit juice the cafeteria sold. There has been political dialogues, identity issues & misinformed instances of open communal hatred going around. The social service-oriented university is now in a transformation to an authoritarian state peeling off posters and blocking communication lines. On lesser charged fronts, I’ve been trying to adopt new practices in life. I am still figuring out my new sleep cycle, now that I’ve made it a point to watch the sunrise every day.
I came home this weekend, and the railways were nice to give me a class upgrade. It’s nice to travel with the rising sun providing ambience for the scale of change that has happened in a few weeks' time. It feels good to be home. It’s nice to eat food with mom. It’s nice to loaf around, spend afternoons as you did in high school and all. It’s nice to visit familiar places, it's nice to curl up on your bed reading some scrap of the newspaper. I wanted to go to the beach, but people are busy with their lives to make it happen, so I guess the beach will be another time.
I am going back to univ tonight, last time I went I had decided to start working out and not drink sugared tea. I still don’t drink sugared tea, in fact, I’ve stopped drinking tea itself. I can’t say that has been the case with working out, though I think I am in better shape than the time I made this decision to start working out. This time, I guess I need to cut down the tetra-packs of fruit juice and continue waking up before sunrise.
Hi!
Your writing is beautiful, as always. It makes me laugh, no chuckle, at certain moments, it makes me think, it often resonates with the confused thoughts I have about the world. But mostly, it just makes me appreciate who you are and how you look at the world, and how you relate to the others around you.
I don't know who you are, aside from the person (often in checked shirts!), that I see in the cafeteria daily. It is another question whether one can really know another person at all. How does one even attempt to understand the textures of a life? But your writing often offers me a fleeting sense of community, in the simplest things like messed up sleep cycles and too much tuck-shop fruit juice in our digestive systems- and for this, I am deeply grateful, for the college vocabularies that makes things "relatable" even when there is no relation.
We may never properly speak to each other, but I hope to keep reading your words, and keep chuckling in sultry Bangalore afternoons like today :)