P's Notes

 You remember as kids we used to have slam books where our friends would fill their favourite colours, favourite city, favourite actor, etc, etc. And as we grow up, we usually grow out of favourites. Either there are many things to like in a category and you can never pick one or you have stopped caring about the category altogether. Who cares about a favourite colour anymore? (I'm sorry if you do). However, today I was thinking about my favourite day in a week and even though the options are only seven the decision was not difficult at all. My favourite day is Saturday.   Saturday marks the end of a work week. It's the first day after a series of five days when I am not waking up in a hurry to log in to my work laptop. Even if I wake up early, I still have the time to lounge around and look at the money plant on my work desk being greeted by the morning sun.  I usually start by making my bed and opening the curtains. The morning sun makes me feel better immediately. On Saturda

I hardly ever write about the good days. The need to vent and get it out of my system often leads me to this blog. On the days that are not overcast and I can sit and eat rajma chawal on my sunlit balcony without worrying about work, I  feel. I feel a lot but I don't sit to write. Does that happen to you? It's Monday and I am recovering from a weekend that involved a lot of feelings. Saturday was calm and I wondered if sunlight could make me so happy, why do I need the money? If you can derive pleasure from nature and people, which is the truest kind of pleasure I believe, then maybe capitalism might not be able to weigh you down? I don't know. These are just thoughts. Good to think about them, hard to pursue them. Saturday was also about a cup of coffee during the sunset with a long conversation with Purvash. We talked and talked each other into it and then out of it.  Purvash and I talk a lot (to each other). Sometimes our conversations are in sync, we are both enabling e

Okay, so in an effort to be completely honest with my blog and also to test if journalling can truly make one feel better, I am here again for the second time today.  I worked from home today so this day shouldn't have ended like this but ah who can predict, right? I was crazy busy today between 10:30 to 5. In between, I took a one-hour break to cook, eat, and take a shower. I was running in the break though, literally jumping from one thing to another. It didn't help that I decided to wash some of my woolens today. But somehow right when I was going to finish work around 5ish, Google News decided to show me a notification that talked about B12 deficiency in vegetarians and its severe impact on a particular girl. I was already tired but I started feeling really low especially after looking at this notification. Can your mental health or how you are feeling at a particular moment affect you physically? I think it does. I feel that my mental health has physical manifestations. Ho

I feel quite uninspired and blank. Before coming here, I scrolled through everything that I could. I don't know what to write about today. I was working and thinking about a piece for months. I sat on it for so long that I kept missing deadlines. Somehow I finished working on it yesterday and sent it to the editor. The default expectation is always rejection but let's see. I am also imagining and wondering what if it gets accepted. But it feels like that piece has left a void. Last few months, I had something that I was supposed to work on. Now my mind is looking for a new subject. I am reading Mason Currey's book. It has all these stories about women artists and how they worked, what was their daily routine like. I love reading/watching the daily routines/rituals of people. It's strange and weird. This need to be so voyeuristic. But it is what it is I guess.  Anyway, this book is extremely inspiring. It tells you how despite all kinds of adversities and responsibilitie

Am I honest with this blog? Can we ever be completely honest outside of our heads? There are thoughts that cross my mind all the time and are so strange that I don't even want to document them anywhere or say them aloud. They are not things I want or think about, but somehow the fleeting thought doesn't care about that. It comes, if it has to.  Think about the weirdest thought you had today? What is it? Can you say it out aloud to someone? On my way to the office, in the auto-rickshaw, I often think about me rolling down or stumbling and falling out of the rickshaw. Sometimes I also imagine my head flying out of the rickshaw (something like what Alia Bhatt did in Brahmastra). If we are ever on a quiet road, I think about the driver taking me somewhere else and violating me. When I see an ambulance on the road, I think about the urgency of the siren, of the person whose loved one is on the stretcher.  The other day I saw a guy standing across the bus stop and it seemed like he w

I always take too long to come to this. I don't know if it's the fear of a blank page or just the usual habit of procrastinating everything. Even the feeling of accomplishment and the so-called 'joy of writing' which I genuinely feel every time I write is not enough to push me to be here sooner. I had dinner, switched off the tv, cleaned the house a little bit unnecessarily, played music, scrolled through my phone, and a couple of blogs that I follow and when finally there was nothing more to look at, I decided to open the blog. It's been a weird day. Work was tough, although I was working from home which always makes it better. I have told you how much I like the sunlight. My work desk at home is near a window and the light was falling on my face while I was on a video call. It was making me look a little better haha. There is also a mirror right beside my work desk so I was peeping and looking at myself in between and what that sunlight was doing to me. I know my

 I was watching an interview series yesterday that talked about violence and cinema and was hosted by Varun Grover. At some point, Grover said that all Indian parents want their kids to make Baghban.  His comment took me back to the day when I watched this film with everyone at home. As I grew up, and my parents grew older somehow their interest in cinema deteriorated. Maybe adulthood and responsibilities did that. I am not sure. However, the memory of watching certain films is still fresh in my mind. Like it happened yesterday. Baghban is one of them. Amma, papa, mummy everyone was crying by the end of it, as expected. I don't remember how I felt exactly after the movie. What I remember is that my father (being his very own self) asked both Prakhar and me to write a movie review of sorts.  I wrote a three-page essay I think. However, I remember wanting to write a lot more. I was reading a story at that time (I think it was a comic book). In the story, a girl was asked to write an