Today was the last day of B1 French, feels very surreal. This picture encapsulates a portion of what 2020 was i.e. the red notebook which contains all my music theory, French book and workbook, the jaw-dropping book written by Dan Brown through which sitting at home, I have travelled the whole of Florence, Italy and Japanese Proverb book that I stole? or just refuse to give back to my friend.
I am just realising the enormous change just a year can bring, it is almost as if I wasted the rest 24 years of my life. There is so much to do, so little time.
Dans un peu mots- C’est incroyable pour moi. Je n’ai jamais pense que je pourrais parler dans une langue étrangère mais.. lol
Born in 1265 in Florence, Dante, like my grandmother had twisted ideas of hell, with none whatsoever personal experience or proved theories, both of them liked to believe that the sin committed by us in this human life will be paid by us once we die.
The Divine Comedy, a poem written by Dante included a part wherein he described what ‘hell’ was, this part of the poem was called Inferno and was widely lauded by Italians.
Does hell really exist or is it a fictional place created by humans to scare fellow humans?
2020 has been an awful year for not just the entire humanity but even for animals. People lost their lives, businesses and had their career growth impeded massively! Corona virus is one of the most pathetic things which happened to people globally in a long-long time, however just like any two sides of a coin, I tried looking at the side towards the light.
I, along with the entire human race was jailed inside my home with a lot of uncertainty, although unlike a lot of people, I secretly liked it. I realised that not needing to rush to Court every morning had made my mornings a lot peaceful which in return made my entire day a lot more calmer.
In April, with little to no-work at hand, I was forced to just sit with myself and comprehend who I was outside of being an Advocate, who am I, if I am not prepping my files? caught up in road rage at 9:30 every weekday? or driving back home thinking about my matters the next day? What books do I read apart from CPC & CrPC? The massive need for doing something led me cut my own bangs, and not just any, but french bangs- the trickiest of them all and as fate would have it, they looked awful and consequentially I looked hideous, lucky we were in a lockdown!
2020 was also a year which forced us to re-think what we have been doing in our lives, I spoke to my friends a lot more than I did in months! I was video-calling one friend or the other almost every night and there were even nights when I spoke to three friends consecutively for at least an hour. Now that would have been an un-imaginable thought before March 2020 for me. I grew a lot closer to a lot of my friends, I re-connected to a lot of them and definitely realised the importance of family. Times like these, one really appreciates the little things.
I do not remember much of this day but I am certain that this is the moment, I have been heavily mocked at and I am unable to comprehend the massive insult!
Weeks later, still clueless, I realised I was caught in the body of a 20 year old someone, who, my 15 year old self wouldn’t approve of! And so I went down the memory lane, to my first room, the one I shared with my sister, back home. I went back to those nights of High School when I couldn’t wait to get out of school because it was so boring, I thought of all things I wanted to do, I was sure that I’d be a multi-lingual adult, one who could play a few instruments and make amazing cocktails.
Well, on the positive side, I do make cocktails but not the fancy ones, the basic ones only for now. I wasn’t quite happy with the kind of human I was turning out to be despite weeks of convincing myself how litigation is a 24/7 hr job and to squeeze out time to complete my sleep cycle in itself is an achievement.
In May, upon much insistence of my family & K, I finally started this blog and I am absolutely thankful to them for this, although I still don’t know where any of this is leading. In addition to this, I also undertook to complete 100kms of running in a month. As intimidating as I thought it was, I was able to complete it and it felt exhilarating!
After some eight odd weeks of performing various acts each evening, directed by our circus master, PM Narendra Modi, I injured my left knee permanently while running. So now every evening, I stood in my balcony, hitting the steel thali with a steel spoon with a poker face, looking into the sky hoping to find some answers for my slowly creeping existential-crisis.
In July, after a week of being bed-ridden, I realised that as much as I love litigation, I am a person beyond it as well and I need to have other skills apart from researching, drafting and arguing. Coming back to the thoughts of my 15 year old self, I vowed to learn a new language and a new instrument. Of course none of them happened simultaneously, but by the end of July, I had begun, both, my French as well as my guitar lessons. Alors, je parle en Francais maintenant et joue de la guitare. C’est incroyable, non?
Starting August, I tried my hand at some free-lancing along with my job and although I was well aware that just like any industry, ours also thrives on exploitation of the juniors but to what level, is something I got privy to. I had absolutely no plans of doing any sort of free-lancing until a few years but then, 2020 has been quite unpredictable for everyone.
By Sept & November, Google Photos begun showing me the massive amount of fun I had in 2019, going to the grand Dusshera celebrations at Ramlila ground, Navratra celebrations at Green Park, food festivals at the Indian Islamic Centre, Zomaland, and Concerts but like most of the global population, I cooked a lot of my favourite food, from Focaccia and Kerela Vegetable Stew to Japanese Miso Soups & Sushi. Mumma ventured into Thai & Lebanese cuisine so naturally I have coconut curry and hummus grilled in all my cells by now.
By the end, in October I accidentally made an amazing Korean pickle that I had been crushing on for over a year and spilled it on my laptop. In my entire life of 2.5 decades, I had never been as heartbroken as I was that day- 19.10.2020. If this were the 70s, I would have draped a white sari and broken my bangles in Nehru Place when my beloved laptop was declared dead. This may sound like an over-exaggeration but I am very attached to my gadgets, so sue me! I put a lot of thought in buying my gadgets and although I am not a gadget freak but I like them. So, by the end of the year I was quite devastated with my inability to climb a flight of stairs, coping with the loss of my laptop, Smacky (S-Mac-Ky) and of course, the uncertainity in general
But with Christmas tying the festive red ribbon on the entire year, in retrospect, it wasn’t so bad after all. I even managed to squeeze in a little trip with friends to Rajasthan, so as sad as this pandemic was and still is, I am glad I could squeeze out something good to remember this year by and not trying one, but two new things this year!
A very well established principle in Psychology is that if one get’s to know about another person’s childhood, they can most certainly figure out why a person behaves the way that they do and I completely agree to this having observed the same pattern in a lot of people.
Now, there is also a principle that the psyche of a person can be changed gradually but the issue with most people is that they are unaware that there is a problem with them, to begin with. Unless a person acknowledges that there is something wrong with them, they can never rectify themselves.
For example, let’s picture a 50 year old male adult, this gentleman is relatively shorter compared to other Indian males in height. He hails from the mountains and came very early to the capital of our country to earn a living. On a closer interaction with this man, one will find that he gets irritated at the tiniest things, boasts a lot about himself and likes to talk in a demeaning way to his employees.
If we look at it from the lenses of Psychology, he is anxious, insecure and has an inferiority complex, the lack of awareness about the same has lead him to spend the better half of his life in a way where people dislike him. Coming to this person’s career, he is decent, he earns a good income but in comparison to his peers, one may not call him very successful in a stereotypical way.
On the personal life front, he possesses a rather shabby apartment, usually talks in a way where it seems his wife bullies him, has a kid and walks as if he is a body builder. Each characteristic of this man leaks out insecurity and lack of control over his own life.
Now, all of us, at least till my generation, have been brought up in a way where emotional intelligence and mental health aren’t talked about very often, leading us to none whatsoever idea about the same and growing up into disabled individuals.
The example I just took is a very normal guy, that a person must have encountered in their life, in one way or another but being at peace with such behaviour not only makes the interaction with such person very toxic but also makes the receiver a disabled person in the long haul. What happens is, when a person gets frustrated over the other person, the person receiving it gets filled with negativity and usually aims his/ her frustration at other people, animals or things that are submissive to them, thereby creating a vicious cycle.
An animal’s basic instinct is to scare the animal/ person before them, when they, themselves are scared. We have often heard this rule, no? If you don’t harm or scare the dog, they won’t bite and they don’t! How exactly have humans evolved if we vent out our frustration, anxiety, etc when we shout and blame the other person?
It is very normal to want to remove the feeling of being overwhelmed when someone is shouted at, or blamed or just the target of an unknown frustration of another person, by subsequently pouring the frustration at someone else, this just makes it a never ending loop and a highly toxic environment where everyone is frustrated, angry and anxious. How is love, happiness and creativity supposed to thrive in such an environment?
Prolonged exposure to toxic environment also leads people to certain Psychomatic disorders. Science has legit proven that a toxic environment will cause diseases in our bodies. A person could be physically fit but if the insides of their cerebrum aren’t in a good shape, they are most likely to suffer from un-diagnosed aches and pains.
In a nutshell, all of us must learn to process our emotions. People only want to be loved and respected, they do not want to harm anyone with their words, they only want to feel better about themselves, but by taking the load off their chest and throwing harsh words/ actions at someone else won’t help.
I slept last night at a little past midnight, unable to peel myself from the captivating content on the internet, I did manage to doze off promising my future self to wake up at 5am the next day, compromise on my sleep to enjoy those wee hours. I have started enjoying early mornings lately, it’s really quiet, the world hasn’t woken up and it seems these are free hours of the day where you can do anything. Although I got up to commence my Surya Namaskar routine but I was unable to, due to my knee issue and so I sat in my balcony, catching up with some work. A little after that I checked my Instagram, a person had uploaded a picture of a boxer, called Rosie.
This is a really lean and sick boxer whose eyes seemed really huge for some reason but without any eyes, it was with something white. I thought she had no eyes in her sockets, upon reading more it turned out that Rosie’s eyes were infested with live maggots who were eating up her eyes. She further had lots of maggots eating her insides. The images were really gory to me. The doctor pulled out live maggots from her eyes and insides as much they could, lots of tests are being currently conducted on her. I don’t think there are much survival chances but I’d like her to have a better death than she would have had other wise. The girl who picked her up is an angel and deserves to be blessed.
It is weird, right? I want this girl to be heavily blessed for doing something so basic, for caring for a wounded defenceless creature. Our society has gone down so low, the human standards have gone down so damn low that a person being kind is considered a rarity.
She says that Rosie was left out on the streets to die by a breeder who made money on her pups. I can’t shake the image of wanting to tie up this breeder and let maggots feed on his genitals and the insides of his mouth, just leave snakes, maggots, leeches on him until he is on the verge of dying and then feed him enough for him to stay alive only to keep torturing him, death would be an easy way out for him.
I can’t imagine the pain Rosie must be feeling, the pain of maggots feeding on her, not being able to see, hungry, not being able to feel better or tell anyone about her pain. Left out on the streets, alone. Rosie was a puppy once, a happy puppy who loved to play and be loved. She is still very welcoming and is very warm.
Today I saw my little brother, Jabbar from a very different perspective. Until this morning I just saw him as an absolute brat but today I understood how blessed he is, to have four absolutely doting humans around him. Jabbar’s one bark gets all of us on our toes and we instantly drop everything to attend to him. I hope Rosie gets a family like ours in her next life.
I am ashamed to be a human. I feel I have let down Rosie, it is weird. All my life I have run away from these feelings because I get very upset but I don’t think I can do it anymore, even if I want to. I am a privileged human and I can’t let my privilege go to waste. There are tonnes out there like Rosie, not just dogs but plenty of other animals who need us. We don’t have to be hero’s, we don’t have to do start a new foundation, all we need is a start.
I may not know you, yes you, reading this post but I’d like to urge you to do something. Please feel free to reach out to me, any organization near you or just feed or take care of animals around you. If you feel you don’t have the means to, just let someone know who can do something about it. Don’t stay quiet.
Here are some pictures of Mr. Jabbar Tandon & Me, I don’t quite know why, but it makes feel better.
It is only after years of watching Ellen I understand why she focuses so much on being kind to one another.
Over the past few days leading up to today i.e. 01.07.2020, I convinced myself to finally learn guitar from a tutor. The past two months have been quite a learning phase for me where I got acquainted with the basics of guitar and I am sure that, those learnings will help me get a head start.
I have a demo class tomorrow and I will mostly commence from tomorrow, I am going to have eight classes over the span of this month. I think it is an understatement to say ‘I am very excited’, I may be jumping to conclusions too soon but I want to be able to ace the exams and get certified from the Trinity School of London, although only hardcore musicians who take music as their career are able to do that but well.. I don’t see the point of doing something and not being certified for it, what does an uncertified skill really mean?! I know I don’t have to perform in concerts but for me, it is like a mental check, to have acquired a skill completely.
Apart from learning how to play Guitar, I am also going to be taking up French lessons for which, again I am too damn excited. I have gotten ahead of myself and learnt the French pronunciations of the alphabets, or now as I’d like to call it, l’alphabet, months = mois and numbers up to 1-12. You get the level of excitement, don’t you? Again, to be certified in French takes years and out of six levels, the last two are the hardest. My teacher herself has only cracked the first four and well, that is what I need for my TEF exams. Although I should mention that I am not learning French only to score marks in TEF but because as a kid, I always wanted to be multi-lingual, I dropped that dream few years back thinking I was being too unrealistic but I feel, it really isn’t. Little by little I am sure I’ll be able to do it, although one thing that does worry me is my vocabulary, I don’t think the course can teach me vocabulary and fluency. I wish I had some French friends to talk to. N’importe qui? J’ai bison de vous.
Apart from these two new skills, I am planning to incorporate some Yoga, Push Ups, Pull- Ups and substitute running to brisk walking. I have finally started to get my knees back and I am going to be ultra careful with them this time. I did Push-ups and Pull-ups very erratically in June so I have thought of doing them everyday from tomorrow on.
If I am able to do these things, I think my July will be far more productive than all previous six months combined. It will be a dream to have completed all these things, everyday for a month. Although I do think that to be even intermediate at these things, I need to do all of these things for a minimum of three months before I can judge my progress I.e. July, August & Sept ..oof I don’t think Lockdown is gonna extend till Sept. Do you? 🤔
Today is 31.05.2020 and I am SUPER happy, I completed running 100kms in under 25 days and I never thought I’d ever do something like this. It is probably nothing big and very achievable for a lot of people (I think I may be borderline suffering from Imposter Syndrome, do I?!)
Screen grab from my Nike Running Club App
I love everything that comes with it, when I began, I couldn’t run more than 10s at max, today I can run for a minute and a half. Earlier this month, a km felt like a lifetime. I am just really PROUD. In order to continue making the most of time at home, in quarantine, I have decided to get fitter in other aspects, I am planning to practise some Calisthenics since I hardly have any equipment at home and Yoga. Yoga is something that I have been wanting to do for sometime now and I think it is going to compliment Calisthenics, so this is my June diary. In this month, I want to do the following things:
Run another 100kms
Meditate for 30 days straight
Complete CPC
Read India After Gandhi
Learn Guitar, a bit more
Week 1: If I were to define my week in terms of growth, it was as big as Oprah calling me in the next five minutes, negligible, yes. The first few days went in creating a workout program and well, I am sitting on the first day of the Second week and I still don’t have one, but I have successfully ruled out a couple of things. I have ran only thrice this week, although 5kms each time but still, insufficient. I haven’t been reading or meditating which is sending me down a spiral. In a nutshell, I was unproductive as hell. On the, well not brighter, but maybe glistening side, I started doing push ups and got my pull-up bar installed and I usually collapse on the ground with a loud thud after my fourth-not-even-halfway-reaching push up. Hoping for a better second week!
Week 2: Undoubtedly this week has been better than last week, I think I saw some progress in my push-ups, I studied CPC better and I ran more but it hasn’t been upto the mark. I didn’t run on Sunday and well.. today the first day of the Third week. I have been wanting to dye my hair and after I bleached my hair, my hair just didn’t pick the pink dye. I have been really off because of that and I want to find some solace at the bottom of a Nutella jar but I stopped myself on a couple of spoons of Ice-Cream, Five Star and two packets of Gems. I spent my entire Sunday, binge watching Designated Survivor and OH MY GOD! it’s so good. I have also been feeling awful for not sticking to my routine in the pas two days and I meditated for only a day. God, it is the hardest for me to meditate. Gonna get up tomorrow morning at six and go running! Hoping the third weeks catches up, I fear I will waste June 😦
Week 3: To summarise my third week, I think it is sufficient to say that I am updating my third week on the fifth day of the fourth week. I ran for five days, this week. I did push ups, although I doubt I got any progress in, I had immense progress on CPC front and I started a great book, its called the Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawking, although I must point out, most of it bounces off my head but I do understand it a little bit, I find it to be one of those books which one needs to, or at least I need to read a couple of times before I understand it fully. Third week was pretty dank actually, my runs were fabulous, everything was on point.
Week 4: On the Saturday of third week something happened during my run, I felt the pain that I felt years ago. The pain of my knee cap being dislocated but I got confused, how can I have that pain without having my knee cap dislocated. I thought to myself that my knees must have a brain of their own to behave in such an erratic way and so I continued my run only to discover a pain I never felt before later that night. Excruciaiting pain, pain to the extent that I couldn’t even go to the darn washroom!
The next day was spent in envying everyone on internet whom I saw dancing in weddings or just tik-tok videos, I spent Sunday looking like a 24 year old and feeling like a 80 year old woman. I felt the pain my grand mother felt and I felt all those feelings she must have had when she saw us running around when she ended two people to just get from the couch. So Sunday was spent like a drunk melancholy person sans the intoxication. Obviously, my entire week was hella unproductive, I watched a few movies and although loved it, I watched the entire series of Bad Boys and dude, Will Smith & Martin are killing it! I ate like a pig but the last few days of the fourth week were spent focusing and making goals for July
June was good, not as productive as may but good in other ways. I feel happy. Yay. Flower Emoji.
Memes & Mimosas 