Step Into My Shoes..

Disclaimer :  I am not an expert, just an enthusiast. Roughly a year and a half ago, I bought my first plant – a Lucky Bamboo . It seemed like a safe bet. And so it proved for a long time…a year and a month, to be precise. Not long after that, I braved another buy – a Peace Lily this time. It didn’t have a flower bud yet, but I was adamant I would be able to bring it to flower in time. It still hasn’t. Then a friend of mine gifted me my first Devil’s Ivy – a ‘propagation’. She took root fairly quickly. I was proud of the way she was growing so well. She grew 5 leaves so fast, and then suddenly she was losing all of her original leaves and she wouldn’t grow much further. My Lucky Bamboo My Devil's Ivy and her original leaves The new leaves on my Ivy Then I brought home a couple of succulents – a Jelly Bean and a Sedum Spathulifolium. Back then I used to live in this igloo of a house, so I managed to kill my precious Jelly Bean for the lack of sunlight. T...

About 3 and a half years ago, I had posted a blog piece called, "Are you friends with me? I think I know your type." It referred to being friends with me in Facebook. 3 and a half years later, I no longer am a user. I have moved to being a compulsive and abusive user of another application - Instagram, and I feel the need to diagnose the types of people I am connected to here.  **Disclaimer - I mean no offence. Broadly, there are 7 types of people for me on Instagram, 1) The ones I follow and the ones that follow me back (doesn't matter who followed who first, it's like which came first, the chicken or the egg) eg. close friends and family 2) The ones that only I follow and ones that don't and will not follow me back, but the ones I will keep on following regardless. eg. Liverpool Football Club 3) The ones that follow me but ones I won't follow back, either because a) their profiles are private (don't know why people expect...

When I first joined Instagram about 5 years ago, I had felt like I had joined the party too late. Everyone I knew had an account. After a few months though, I realized that I was the only one really enjoying the party. Most people didn't even open their page, much less post anything. I then had to turn to people who I didn't know, who were actually using the app in full swing. I miss the frivolity with which I could post anything, anytime, without the care, without the judgement. What followers and following I had, I had inherited from Twitter and they would be the last to judge me for the frequency with which I posted. The food I ate, the birds I saw, the drops of water, the screenshots of my tweet, random quote-y picture from the Internet, anything interesting I stumbled upon. I didn't care for the likes, the follows. Swipe a few times, the filters seemed to make my pictures better; apply that Lo-Fi border and the post became absolutely gorgeous. Everything was beau...

2018 is going to be a complicated year. Here’s why. Last year, I had tried putting my Instagram profile on private. It lasted a few days before I decided privacy in social media isn't for me. For one, I am a story teller; I like telling stories about the places I have been to, things I love doing. Moreover, I have also found that I like people more when they are open about their lives in a balanced manner (which I believe is what I do). Now, my pictures are out there for anyone who cares to see. The question is, are there too many of them? This year, I have decided I will have a go at abstain-ism. Insta-stories have arrived just in the nick of time. I had resolutely resolved to not have any resolutions this year. My reason was, at this stage in life, you don’t have resolutions; you have checklists. But as the first month of the year is wearing down, my mind has been nagging me to set some resolutions, anything. Now here comes the complicated bit. As much as my mind...

I'm not a people person. And I'm not proud of it. My CV might say I am good with people but only I know how big of a lie that is. I mean if you come talk to me, I won't hiss and spit at you but I have been known to straight up pass people by on the street without so much as saying Hi or smiling. My reason being - I just don't like indulging in small talk, especially when I don't have to. You're from work, we'll talk at work. You're friend of a friend, we'll talk when that friend is around. We went to Uni together, that was so in the past - if we aren't in touch, then we probably shouldn't be. There are so many measures I take in order not to have to go through the pain of small talk with someone, you'd be amazed. It's not because I don't like you or anything. It's not just you. It's everybody. Here are a few of them- The classic whipping out my phone to check something out Looking the other way to...

"All your life you wait, and when it finally comes, and are you ready?" Along with December 2017 came a crushing realization that my resolutions for the year had remained only partly touched. I knew I still had a month but who was I kidding. My resolutions had wings and they had already perched themselves on the next year, impossible to achieve as they were in a mere four weeks' time. The mechanisms of my mind on the day the realization hit very hard will always remain a mystery to me but I remember feeling like a caged animal, desperate to do something, to find an escape from the helplessness. One of my resolutions had been to get inked. But hadn't that always been on my list, year after year? The first time, I wanted to have my name in Tengwar, just like Fernando Torres has. Then I wanted to get a clover (wishes, wishes). I also was keen on a tulip. Deathly Hallows perhaps? Ganesha, or a Saraswati Mantra. The options were plenty and not enough resolve. ...

Yesterday I had an epiphany. It involves my looks. It involves your looks. It involves how we all look like. First, background story. My mom once told me that I look good in my pictures. She let it hang there. She didn't have to mention "...as opposed to in real life" after the statement for me to know what it meant. To look at the positive side, it means I am photogenic. And to look at the negative side, it means that my pictures are clearly deceiving and if you've seen only my pictures you'll be left disappointed when you meet me irl. To look at the darker side, my mom, who's supposed to love me for what I am, still feels I'm uglier outside of my pictures, to put it blandly. O-kay. It is no news that almost everyone who's got even an ounce of vanity in them wants to take great pictures of themselves. And why not. I've only heard of one exception where this girl from YouTube talked about how she puts not-so-good pictures in her Tinde...