Unwild Rumpus

 Anti-capitalism, for me, is not just a moral stance. Neither is it just a political flex or a purely academic pursuit. It is the recognition that my life and my value system is tied irrevocably to this economic system that's just plain toxic.  And while I don't have the ability or inclination to renounce wealth and lead a total treehugger lifestyle boycotting all kinds of capitalistic influences in my life, I can at least examine my preferences and correct my prejudices through this lens.  Here are 10 things I have slowly been learning from all the theory I've been injesting: 1. Not to place the sole responsibility for poverty on the poor. It isn't just laziness, bad habits or lack of financial knowledge that's keeping them poor. Poverty and inequality are inherent to capitalism.  2. And similarly, not to attribute billionaire capitalists success to their individual achievements but acknowledge that it is because of market monopolization, killing competition, explo...

I am a vegetarian. By birth. Not by choice. Ask my parents and they might tell you that vegetarianism was never imposed on me. Eating meat was always an option, though strongly discouraged. Growing up in a hill station, we were usually the only vegetarians in our social circles and parties always meant looking for that one vegetarian dish on buffet tables piled high with meat dishes of every kind. When my parents went to enrol me in boarding school, I was to be the only vegetarian in the entire hostel. After much deliberation, my parents enrolled me as a meat eater with an assurance from the boarding mistress that a vegetarian option be provided to me, if I desire. I am embarrassed to admit here that I never once tried meat during my entire hostel life. Every time I was asked "would you like a vegetarian option?" I responded in the affirmative. Now I realize that this wasn't purely by choice. The anti-meat conditioning all through my formative years was so strong that I h...

"Mommy" she calls me softly, and I take my eyes away from the kindle page I've been trying to unsuccessfully read for the past 30 minutes. "Why am I not normal?" My eyes well up instantly, and I blink rapidly before putting on a fake smile and reaching out to push the hair back from her face. "What do you mean, sweetie? You are perfectly normal" I say. But the sentences ring hollow even to my own ears. I know exactly what she means. "My friends don't have to go to the hospital this often" she persists. She's angry that she missed her favorite chorus class this morning. And that she'll be missing a math test that she's studied hard for. She's mad that she'll be missing "fun friday" at school and a chance to pick a totally useless trinket from the class treasure chest for her hard earned behavior points this week. Instead, she's lying in a darkened room, on a hard hospital bed, tubes attached to her, ...

I have never paused to consider what I like, or why I like them. Some of the most difficult questions I face are about my preferences in food, books and life choices. Because I just seem to have drifted through life without paying attention to my own preferences. I’m not a foodie. I eat to satiate hunger or boredom. And then forget about it. I am one of those people that forget to eat. I consume food mindlessly and hence, my issues with my weight. Sometimes I wish I actually enjoyed the calories I consume. Might make it easier to deal with the idea of the rolls I accumulate as a result. As a direct consequence of my lack of enthusiasm for eating, I display equal apathy when it comes to cooking. I cook well (I’ve heard it enough times to actually believe it myself). But I know my cooking lacks the magic touch a foodie has. The extra oomph. I am reminded of a day I spent in the Cotswolds in England. A day spent soaking in the sun in the charming English countryside.. the rolling hi...

I want to write about Natsume Soseki. I want to write about Kokoro. But how can I possibly write anything about the book without giving away spoilers? How can I say what I loved about it without robbing you of the experience that I had while reading it without knowing a thing? I don't know when Kokoro stopped being a fictional narrative and started becoming an intensely personal one; when the characters in the book started jumping out to steal faces of acquaintances from my past. Soseki bravely ventures into the murky areas of different relationships, the emotions we sometimes feel but prefer to not address - the secrets we hide from spouses, the feelings of resentment towards best friends, disappointment in the actions or words of those we look up to, hidden feelings of love, distrust in those that mean no harm.. the list is long. But it's a list that makes me uneasy. Only because I've felt them all. I don't want to talk about envying/resenting one of my closest ...

Reading a novel in Tamil is a completely different reading experience. For one, I am forced to read much much slower than I do in English. I read most sections twice, once to get the words right and the second time for the flow of the story. And I take breaks between chapters. Because I am tired by the time I finish the 5 or 6 pages that comprises a chapter. But this has just meant that I invest more deeply in the story. I think more about it. I mull over the characters, their interactions, their actions more. I observe language, structure, and the beauty of descriptions. It's such a contrast to my typical reading. When reading a book in English, I breeze through it. I consume as much as I can in one sitting. Usually, multiple chapters. Occasionally, an entire book. And then I spend some time chewing on it. A quick post about it. Next book. Now I want to slow my English reading as well. Read less, mull more. I kinda like that. My head is bursting with things I want to dissect and...

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off  course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.  Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds, many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea, fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home. The man of twists and turns - The polytropos one, as Homer supposedly refers to him. Fondly, I am sure because Odysseus seems to be a beloved hero. Polytropos - a word that hints at a man meandering, both, in his travels as well as in his mind. And it is this meandering of the mind that caught my attention (as it always seems to do). A restless mind that thinks of the most ingenious schemes to attack/escape from an enemy and the most fascinating tales to mask real identities. A mind that is torn between the need to indulge in new experiences and the urge to return home. I find nothing more endearing than the conflicted mind. It shows a propensity for rumination. A...

"He was right there next to me all the time. I just didn't see him that way. Now, he's my soul mate" she says holding his hands and looking straight into the camera. "We started off as enemies, then became best friends. Now, we are lovers" another couple gushes on the "Humans of" instagram page. I roll my eyes before switching channels or just scrolling down. Love stories bore me. But I am a hypocrite because I have my own. My very own sappy story. A love-hate relationship. An affair that I'm deeply embroiled in. One that I can't get over no matter how difficult it gets. I get thwarted and yet I crawl back every single time, with my tail between my legs. "I don't understand this unreasonable attachment" I've been told countless times. I don't either. I work harder at this than I've worked for any other relationship and I still am out of my depth. I am a lover spurned. I am a woman obsessed. I am a raging addict...

When I first finished reading Samskara, I thought I had it all figured out. A book about the personal transformation of a priest set against the backdrop of an orthodox brahmin community, is what I thought. Seemed simple enough. But I knew I was off the mark when I couldn’t tie it all together with that being the central theme. A few probing questions and I was fumbling, mumbling, and completely out of my comfort zone. What makes an English professor pick up his pen and write his ground breaking, controversial novel in his native tongue? His intended audience, of course. Not the readers from the western world attempting to get a peep into small town life in a remote South Indian village, but his own people. The community he grew up with up and lived in. URA, in an interview mentions, "My text does not exist in free space that some Westener can read and understand; it exists in my context. I am a critical insider". And I realized where I went wrong when I understood wh...

My dearest dearest baby, I can't believe you are 9 already. I love your curiosity and I want to encourage all kinds of questions from you. And I've decided to answer last night's question with a letter. Yes, I do have a "little red story" just like every woman around me. The story of my first period. But it's nothing big. Nothing dramatic. Nothing traumatic. I was 10 on that Saturday when I felt my first cramps. The cramps were followed by a dampness. The dampness that I'd already been warned about. I had a pack of sanitary pads from the presentations we'd had at school. I had also had 'the talk' with my mom. I knew what to expect. I knew what to do. Which is how I am hoping you'd be too on the day it finally happens to you. My mom walked into the house in the evening after a long day at work. I waited until she'd had her tea and then broke the news to her. "Amma, I got my first period today". She panicked for a bit, I t...

I'm sitting at my breakfast table. Multiple tabs open in my browser window. Running bioinformatics pipelines isn't the most exciting of jobs. I love the science behind the research but, for the most part, it translates to absolutely boring coding. "Just wait till you get all the results together" my boss pacified me last week. "The real fun starts then." Sure, if you say so. Until then, mind-numbed is my middle name. But, today, I have a saving grace. To my left is the window, and through the blinds, I can see rain pouring down the bare branches and trunks. Lightning flashes across my laptop screen now and then, followed by the predictable rumbling. There is an incessant pitter patter on my roof that I hear as a background to the music that's playing on loop. I haven't found a better rainy day music accompaniment than Illayaraja's soothing tunes. "Vaanam enakku oru bodhi maram... Naalum enakkadhu seithi tharum" croones SPB and I am i...

I like to proclaim that I find relationship beginnings absolutely dreamy. If I know you, I've probably asked you stories about how you met your significant other. They are always such happy little tales. Always following a predictable path of meeting, falling in love, getting together. I'll ooh and aah along with you and cheer at the appropriate junctions. I am the types to claim that rom-coms are my favorite movies. And nothing can be more perfect than Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks finally getting together (no matter the story). But deep inside, I am a sour puss. I am skeptical about relationships. I don't think they are made to last at all. I put an expiry date on my relationships. And on most relationships around me. And what really interests me more than beginning stories are the tales of how relationships ended. I am morbid like that. It's hard to come by break up tales. No ones wants to talk about it. They are either mean little 'dumpers' or sad little 'dum...

If I wake up when the first rays of the sun sneak in through the blinds and kiss me lightly on my eyelids, then I am most definitely still dreaming. If I wake up in my own bed, snuggled next to P, to the "opening" sound of the iphone alarm (snoozed thrice), then I'd call it a great morning. Because, I am a mom. Most mornings my alarm sound finds me wedged uncomfortably between two kid beds, with feet on my face. Otherwise, it finds me waking up on the couch, neck twisted awkwardly on the armrest, book open in one hand, half cup of yuck cold tea, luckily on the side table and not all over me and the couch. A pose indicating the sheer exhaustion that overtook me when I was hoping to squeeze in some tranquil reading time after the storms settled. And yet, these are my better mornings. The bad to worse ones include waking up to a wailing three year old, Kid #1 screaming that Kid #2 sneaked in to her bed at night and then peed on it, or the sound of ceramic crashing and shat...

I sometimes think I live my life constantly testing the borders of what's considered acceptable and what's not. Having spent all my formative years in a Catholic convent, I became more than just a little familiar with a lot of their practices. And the one that frazzled me the most? Confessions. Not because I had things to hide, but rather because I had nothing. I remember standing in line to confess, working up a sweat, because I didn't have anything to confess and somehow, that seemed like a bigger sin than others. The tension was real. So real that soon my life revolved around collecting little sins so I could add them to my confession arsenal. Ones that were safe enough to not get me into trouble but still significant enough to "confess": sneaking in a piece of chocolate during mass, reading a Mills and Boon under the desk during class, reading under the quilt with a flashlight after lights were turned off in the dorms.. Somewhere in the next twenty years, ...

This is a night like no other. I see the bright moon above me..casting a night rainbow in the clouds around. A fading beauty with a pockmarked face racing in the skies above to keep up with my ship below. She lights up the ocean around me.. streaks of silver in the darkness. It's past midnight and it's just me and the ocean and the skies. Stars peep through the clouds, zillions of them. Not a single man made light around me to dilute the effect of this gorgeous night sky. My senses are at war with each other. My eyes see peace but my ears hear war. The still water surface, sparking in the moonlight is a calm like none other. But the same ocean is loud around me, forever restless. The waves relentlessly hitting against the sides of the ship, wind blowing against my face. This discordance between sight and hearing is jarring. But it's easy for me to accept because I live in a similar discordance constantly - the one between my calm, serene brain and my loud, restless ...

Summer 2009. I woke up when the sun was rising, made myself some coffee and stepped out in to the balcony of the rustic mountain lodge we'd slept in the night before. There was a cool nip in the air, almost uncomfortable, but the view was breathtaking. Sun rising over the rocky mountains, mist still clinging to the plants and trees around me. We were in Leadville, Colorado - a sleepy little small town nestled comfortably in the rocky mountains. And the morning air was making me nostalgic. I grew up in the mountains. My childhood was a lonely one but one filled with idyllic images of forests of tall pine trees over blankets of brown pine straw, lush valleys with a scattering of red tiled roofs, blue mountain ranges in the distance, crystal clear waterfalls after rains, foggy mornings.. the list is endless. In my heart I'll always be "mountain person". Even now when I am asked to close my eyes and imagine something serene, my first thought is a walk through dense wo...

My high school, a gorgeous yellow building with a sloping red tiled roof, was nestled among the trees and overlooked a calm lake. Idyllic. We had a skating rink, a basketball courts, a sports field, woods all around, a cemetary, a convent with austere nuns, residential quarters with affluential boarding kids, and best of all - a calm, quiet library. The library was my haven. Wooden cupboards with glass doors lined the walls. The books arranged alphabetically by authors last name in each cupboard and increasing in difficulty and reading level as you went from one cupboard to the next. We started at the first cupboard near the entry way in sixth grade and then slowly made our way to the hallowed shelves at the back right next to the desk of the stern librarian. Shelves to which access was restricted. In a very Oliver Twist porridge scene style, I remember standing in front of the strict librarian asking "Please ma'am, may I have the keys to the cupboards with the classics?"...

Dearest "Friend-with-the-wild-hair", It has taken me ten years to do this. Ten years to even acknowledge that in some dark corner inside me, I have a bundle of emotions that I need to address. Ten years to deal with the fact that I wasn't there with you, for you, when you needed me and there's nothing I can do about that now. I was young, immature and took it for granted that we had our entire lives ahead of us - to talk again, to sort differences, to go back to where we started. I didn't stop to think that those pill overdoses and those slit wrists weren't just resolved incidents from the past but rather a warning that when things went from bad to worse, you had your own way to deal with it. I've seen you at your worst. I have very vivid memories of entering a smoke filled hostel room and finding you sitting on your bed, in the darkness, dark circles around your eyes, band aids masking your grim experiments. Vivid memories of being unable to get a wor...

I'm sure you've run into this person - the one who has an enviable memory. He remembers his first grade teacher, the place where he was when his first tooth wriggled and fell, the name of the boy who tripped him in kindergarten, the address of his first crush... you know the type. Well, I am the complete opposite. Sometimes when I am sitting around with my family and some old stories come up, I wonder if I even grew up in the same household! Some memories that I have of my childhood are not even my own - they are images in my head created after I've had those stories repeated to me/in front of me multiple times by my parents. I was a girl with her head in the clouds. Daydreaming was my favorite pastime and imaginary friends, my closest companions. We lived in the hills, amidst the woods, and when I wasn't in school, I was either hiking through the woods (imagining stories of adventure and exploration that awaited me beyond the next hill, around the next corner) or b...

When I posted my short review on Instagram, I started off by saying this - There are books that make you want to read differently; there are books that make you want to write differently; and then there are books that make you want to live differently. For me, Karukku by Bama definitely falls under the third category. I can safely say that it is the first book that made me pause and look back at my life through a different lens. All my life, I've been privileged enough to not have to pay any attention to casteism or bother about caste based discrimination. It didn't affect me at all. Actually, I take that back. It affected me. Once. When my ignorant ass ranted against the reservation system because I didn't get admitted to the medical college of my choice but a "less deserving" classmate of mine did because of reservation. She was a person from the Scheduled Caste community. It has taken me 18 years to realize how spoilt and ignorant I was then. How blind. Ho...